Why you should be suspicious of "people on the street were more ignorant of X than Y" stories

[mmcirvin]

I missed this in March: Mark Liberman of Language Log takes apart the "more people could name the Simpsons than First Amendment freedoms" story.

The people who could correctly name N First Amendment freedoms (I assume they didn't split freedom of religion into the establishment and free-exercise clauses) decreased monotonically with increasing N, whereas the Simpsons distribution was bimodal, with more people ignorant of even one Simpson than of one First Amendment freedom, but also a fairly large population who could name all of them. From these numbers it is possible to extract just about any message you want, especially if people repeating the story are inclined to garble the result in the desired direction.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I have terrible trouble remembering the numbers of the amendments dealing with unreasonable search and seizure, no forced quartering of soldiers in private homes, the right to jury trial, etc. (I know that freedom from self-incrimination is in the Fifth, because everyone who's watched an American courtroom drama knows that.)

I know that those rights are in the Bill of Rights, but a survey of this type would probably flunk me for forgetting which number is which.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

For this same reason, I'm not at all impressed when people attempt the same sort of Gotcha! by asking bible-thumping politicians to identify particular commandments, or summarize the famous 10.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Well, there are actually a few different issues there. Actually asking someone to get the Ten Commandments in order is ridiculous because, for one thing, different religious traditions count and group the Bible verses differently; the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant Ten Commandments are different.

But the Ten Commandments Gotcha usually has an element of exposing hypocrisy to it, because the Bible-thumping politicians in question tend to be the same people who go on about how everyone should constantly be reminded of the Ten Commandments and that they're the basis of all law and morality.

The other useful point of that exercise is the reminder that, contrary to the strangely common belief that the Ten Commandments are universal moral precepts reflected in all civilized law and appropriate for a secular courthouse wall, approximately the first four or five of them (depending on your count) are all explicitly religious and even sectarian; the sensible moral precepts don't start until after that. Jews don't even believe that the Ten Commandments apply to non-Jews; only the earlier, less detailed Noachide commandments are for the gentiles.

[cpr94.livejournal.com]

In addition to Matt's point about hypocrisy:
Being unable to recall the contents of the Bill of Rights is considerably more forgiveable for the man on the street than it would be for a federal politician.

And yes, I'm always amused when people pretend the 10 Commandments are universal and moral, when the first three (in the Bible I have) are all, in essence, "Who's your Daddy?".

Oh, and they never mention that the Bible's prescribed punishments for breaking the 10 Commandments are usually death. In some cases, it could be metaphorical (though there's plenty of reason within the Old Testament to support a literal reading), but some are explicit e.g. if your husband or sibling comes home saying Let's worship other gods, you must be the first to stone said loved one.

rounding out the thread

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Hunh. So I was wondering which was which myself (though I recall that the 4th is the search-and-seizure amendment, and of course you probably recall the contents of the 2nd amendment as another famously controversial one), and so I searched for a copy of the Bill of Rights (http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/funddocs/billeng.htm).

I hadn't realized that the right of a jury trial was spread over two amendments-- 6 covers the right in the case of criminal prosecution, and includes the right of a speedy and public trial, impartial jury, confronting one's accusers, etc. 7 covers civil law, which creates a right to jury trials for matters where $20 or more is at stake.

3 is the quartering of soldiers. 4, as I mentioned is about reasonable searches and the causes for warrants. 8 is about bail. 9 is "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." which seems like something one can take for granted these days, and 10 about the powers not delegated in the constitution to the Feds or the States belong to the states or the people, respectively.

Re: rounding out the thread

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Somewhere recently (was it Rone's journal?) I was reading a thread about that twenty-dollar minimum on civil suits, and a bunch of lawyers pointed out that in practice it never comes up today; there are various statutes that effectively set a higher bar than that. The reasoning by which they are considered constitutional is somewhat above my head (though I suppose it's fortunate they are; $20 in 1789 was a lot of money, but not so much today).