Suchergebnisse

In June 2015, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court of the United States determined that there is a fundamental right to marriage that extends to same-sex couples. This Article analyzes the Obergefell decision in light of the Court's 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby regarding religious protections that might by analogy be afforded under state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts. In particular, the article considers whether a government official may claim the right to religious freedom to deny issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Additionally, the article suggests that a new standard for the separation of church and state may be required. Although the 2015 decision prevents the government from denying marriage to same-sex couples, the decision does not directly affect private businesses that choose not to provide services for same-sex weddings. It may, however, have an important indirect effect if laws are already present that prohibit sexual orientation discrimination. Therefore, the article explores possible avenues for protection from private discrimination and considers the questions that remain in the wake of the Obergefell decision.

Does the supremacy provision of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution undermine the legal force of international law in the United States? Recently, there has been some debate on this issue arising out of the claim that if the U.S. Constitution is "the supreme law of the land," and that only constitutional officers of the United States, in keeping with their responsibilities to uphold the Constitution, can decide what is international law for the U.S. Such debates are not new to the history of the world. For much of world history, national rulers have claimed that their legal authority derives from some supreme source, be it: God, tradition, or, in more recent democratic times of which the Constitution is a part, the people.

This study investigated the expressed attitudes of deaf people in India toward career choices for deaf and hearing people. Deaf adults from Pune, India rated the suitability of 12 professions for deaf and hearing people and gave written comments on the suitability of any other professions they could list. The results, in general, were consistent with those of other studies in the United States, England, Italy, South Africa, and India with hearing teachers and parents of deaf children, which indicated that the hearing status of imagined deaf and hearing advisees selectively influenced attitudes toward the suitability of certain professions. Some differences in profession preferences also emerged indicating that the deaf respondents' criteria for career choice appeared to be primarily based on the use of hearing, speech, and visual skills required for a particular career. There was some suggestion that culturally specific factors played a role in shaping attitudes. These findings underscore the importance of understanding the attitudes of deaf people.

EAF college students' attitudes toward a variety of issues related to racial/ethnic diversity were surveyed by contacting all racial/ethnic minority deaf students and a random sample of Caucasian deaf students attending the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), Rochester Institute of Technology; 38% completed the survey. Although racial/ethnic groups similarly perceived NTID's commitment and efforts related to diversity, they differed significantly on some items related to campus climate and role models. Furthermore, the racial/ethnic minority groups differed from each other in their perceptions of campus comfort level, racial conflict, friendship patterns, and availability of role models. Educational satisfaction was positively correlated with campus comfort level; both correlated negatively with perception of discrimination and racial conflict. Qualitative data analyses supported quantitative data analyses and provided rich detail that facilitated interpretation of deaf students' experiences related to racial/ethnic diversity.

Deaf individuals typically experience English language difficulties at all levels of linguistic knowledge. Hearing individuals with English language learning disabilities (LD) can exhibit the same kinds of English language difficulties as deaf individuals. Although the existence of deaf individuals who also have LD has long been recognized, no definite criteria for identifying them exist, partly because of the confounding effects of deafness and LD on English language development. Despite the confound, previous surveys suggest that teachers believe atypical English-language behavior is a potential diagnostic marker for LD in deaf individuals. In the present study, a survey solicited the intuitions of experienced teachers and tutors of English to deaf college students regarding the degree of difficulty deaf students with and without LD might be expected to have in dealing with 30 specific English language phenomena. Spelling knowledge and a variety of English discourse, lexical, syntactic, and morphological phenomena emerged as candidates for further study as potential markers of LD in the deaf population.

This paper describes an experiential speechreading course that was designed to provide hearing-impaired students with real-life communication experiences. The course, intended to function as a supplement to traditional speechreading courses, was evaluated with a self-evaluation questionnaire completed by students who took the course and by a matched control group. Results indicate that the course was effective in increasing student self-perceptions of communication success in real-life situations.

This paper presents four research projects in process in the Communication Sciences Laboratory at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. These projects illustrate four broad areas of research on the relationships between higher order information processing systems and the communication skills and problems exhibited by deaf people. Research will be discussed regarding (a) neural factors related to speechreading skills, (b) the relationships between cerebral specialization and communication skills, (c) the role of imagery in memory for signs and words, and (d) the relationship between speech motor programming and speech timing errors in deaf speech. This brief overview is intended to illustrate the utility of research on higher order information processing in increasing our understanding of the communication skills and problems of deaf people.