Narrative in Deliberative Systems: Hearings on SCOTUS Confirmations

• In Event: New Theoretical Perspectives for Democratic Innovations

Abstract

Deliberative democrats sometimes disagree about the form of communication that deliberation ought to take. The most traditional models often presume that deliberation should consist nearly exclusively in formal, logical argumentation. Updated models, however, have allowed for a more diverse set of communicative styles that include: greeting, rhetoric, storytelling, gesture, and even more artistic forms of expression. While this turn has been welcome as it is more inclusive and thereby renders decisions made via democratic deliberation more legitimate, it does not come without some potential costs. In particular, epistemic costs. In other words, the process of reasoning giving (and receiving) is an inherently epistemic one. If we sideline it, do we also sideline the epistemic qualities of deliberation?

This paper is part of a larger project that aims to provide at least provisional answers to that question in different venues of democratic deliberation. Leveraging, in particular, the deliberative systems literature which suggests that are four prominent arenas in a deliberative system (binding decisions of the state, activities directly related to preparing for those binding decisions, informal talk related to those binding decisions, and arenas of formal or informal talk related to issues of common concern). Here, I will focus on the binding decisions of the state via accounts of some public deliberations in the US Senate. More specifically, I will focus on the storytelling elements present in the recent judicial confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson. Though there are certainly drawbacks, the paper will conclude that the inclusion of storytelling in these hearings is net positive along the epistemic dimension of deliberative democracy.

Author

• Matthew Bryan Chick, Hartwick College