So What if They’re Lying to Us? Comparing Rhetorical Strategies for Discrediting Sources of Disinformation and Misinformation Using an Affect-Based Credibility Rating

Despite growing research on false information, a theoretical framework to organize findings is lacking. We use affect control theory to fill this need and introduce the affect-based credibility rating for interpreting the effectiveness of rhetorical strategies in discrediting the source of falsehoods. The rating quantifies the difference in connotations between the labels used to characterize the source and an ideal, credible source. Successful discrediting amplifies the difference. We use the rating to compare rhetorical strategies for discrediting opponents as sources during rival information campaigns about the Equal Rights Amendment. We show claiming the opponent is spreading disinformation rather than misinformation (stating the opponent is spreading falsehoods deliberately, rather than unwittingly) appears more effective at discrediting, particularly when disinformation claims allege more sinister motives for lying. The new rating helps organize findings by enabling direct comparisons between strategies, thereby contributing toward efforts to detect and discredit falsehoods in media.

The Equal Rights Amendment, Then and Now

One hundred years in the making, the Equal Rights Amendment is the only proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that has met the requirements of Article V of the Constitution but has not been added to the Constitution due to a congressionally imposed ratification deadline. The amendment guarantees that “[e]quality of rights shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” like gender equality guarantees in most constitutions around the world. This chapter exposes the unique trajectory of the Equal Rights Amendment to shed light on the process of feminist constitutional change and the evolution of substantive feminist legal aspirations. The revival of the ERA ratification process, decades after Congress’s deadlines, has generated transgenerational public meanings for a new body of gender equality law and public policy.

Das Equal Rights Amendment – ein Katalysator für die US-Frauenbewegung oder ein Relikt der Suffragetten?

Zusammenfassung Seit fast 100 Jahren kämpft die feministische Bewegung für ein Equal Rights Amendment zur US-Verfassung. Getragen von einem neuen, aus Ablehnung der Trump-Administration heraus entfachten Momentum, erreichte das ERA im Januar 2020 die letzte der 38 benötigten bundesstaatlichen Ratifizierungen – und steht damit, so scheint es, seinem Ziel zum Greifen nah. Gleichzeitig jedoch hinterlässt Trump einen noch konservativer ausgerichteten Obersten Gerichtshof, der die über Jahrzehnte erarbeiteten Erfolge der Bewegung zunichtemachen könnte. Dieser Artikel liefert auf Basis journalistischer Interviews und Recherchen einen Überblick über die ERA-Bewegung, die mehrere Generationen an Frauen mobilisiert, empört und für ihre Rechte sensibilisiert hat; die zugleich Spalter und Katalysator für eine professionelle Frauenbewegung war. Neben den Kernforderungen der Bewegung und ihren aktuellen Akteurinnen beleuchtet dieser Artikel die zentralen Kritikpunkte, die das ERA noch immer von beiden Seiten des politischen Spektrums der USA anzieht, und gibt einen Ausblick zu seiner Zukunft.

“Champion Man-Hater of All Time”: Feminism, Insanity, and Property Rights in 1940s America

Legions of law students in property or trusts and estates courses have studied the will dispute, In re Strittmater’s Estate. The cases, casebooks, and treatises that cite Strittmater present the 1947 decision from New Jersey’s highest court as a model of the “insane delusion” doctrine. Readers learn that snubbed relatives successfully invalidated Louisa Strittmater’s will, which left her estate to the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, by convincing the court that her radical views on gender equality amounted to insanity and, thus, testamentary incapacity. By failing to provide any commentary or context on this overt sexism, these sources affirm the court’s portrait of Louisa Strittmater as an eccentric landlady and fanatical feminist. This is troubling. Strittmater should be a well-known case, but not for the proposition that feminism is an insane delusion. Despite the decision’s popularity on law school syllabi, no scholar has interrogated the case’s broader historical background. Through original archival research, this Article centers Strittmater as a case study in how social views on gender, psychology, and the law shaped one another in the immediate aftermath of World War II, hampering women’s property rights and efforts to achieve constitutional equality. More than just a problematic precedent, the case exposes a world in which the “Champion Man-Hater of All Time”—newspapers’ epithet for Strittmater—was not only a humorous headline but also a credible threat to the postwar order that courts were helping to erect. The Article thus challenges the textbook understanding of “insane delusion” and shows that postwar culture was conducive to a strengthening of the longstanding suspicion that feminist critiques of gender inequality were, simply put, crazy.

The Nineteenth Amendment Today

Chapter 8 concludes that the Nineteenth Amendment can be revitalized today, to more fully ensure women’s equality. It reviews new legal scholarship that suggests direct applications of the Nineteenth Amendment to today’s voting rights challenges. And it describes how some scholars suggest that the Nineteenth should be read together with the Fourteenth Amendment, as a normative matter, to provide a more capacious understanding of the Fourteenth, as applied to women’s rights, beyond voting. Given persistent gender inequality, and the uncertain status of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the chapter concludes that it is worth revisiting the jurisprudential potential of the Nineteenth Amendment, at its centennial.