In recent years I've supervised countless undergraduate research papers and numerous senior theses. Not surprisingly, I repeat myself about basic research and writing hints, suggestions, and outright warnings. This handout, “Write Tigers Write!” prepared for the “tigers” at Princeton and The Colorado College (the mascot is the same), attempts to help the novice researcher and is, as well, an act of self-protection.

What follows are suggestions and cautions for students writing a research paper. My suggestions are merely that. They are personal, general and speak more about writing than about research.

Make no mistake about it. Research and writing are demanding work even for the professional. You won't hear professional scholars or writers boast about the easiness of their craft. No matter how much they love it, and they often love it more than anything else, they find it demanding, exacting, lonely and often painful—if they really work at it.

The United States is increasingly becoming an information society. Over half of the labor force is now engaged in work requiring some level of information processing. Computers are the “engines” powering this information society and consequently, their diffusion is considerable and growing (Kraemer and Northrop, 1984:2).

University professors, especially those who teach the social sciences, recognize that an understanding of computerized society is not enough. Students should be prepared to use these “engines of the information age.“

For those of us who teach public administration, especially on the graduate level, the task of preparing our students for the computerized world is even of greater urgency and somewhat different in nature. Professors of public administration are not only preparing students for a computerized future, but more importantly, a computerized present.

A crisis of confidence has gradually evolved in our governmental institutions. People no longer look on government as a glorious and shining Camelot, capable of handling all problems; people now perceive government as a great grey maze of bureaucratic indifference, where all actions are suspect. I believe that a major part of this malaise is directly attributable to the twin debilitations of over-regulation and the application of unwise regulations.

The liberal legacy of the Warren Court, the turmoil within and around its successor, and the advent of the bicentennial of 1787 have increased popular as well as scholarly interest in constitutional theory in general and constitutional interpretation in particular. We are now being treated to a new and intense version of an old debate about the nature of the American political system and proper institutional roles in determining the meaning of the principles underlying the polity. This debate highlights not only issues of fundamental disagreement but also central questions that must first be addressed before one can construct a systematic constitutional jurisprudence or a coherent theory of constitutional interpretation.

The issue over the original locus of sovereignty in Revolutionary America has been recently criticized as “a continuing fruitless debate from the nineteenth century to the present over the priority of the union or the states.” Most of those opposing the view that sovereignty originated with the nation and not the states based their theory on the Articles of Confederation, notably Article II, and the relatively brief debates on its preliminary and final drafts. They ignored the fact that the Articles did not go into effect until March 1, 1781, almost seven years after the initial Congress had begun to take united action on behalf of the American people.

The first part of the seminar examined a mystery that reverberates through two centuries: how does a constitutional system of government, itself born of revolution, properly provide for its own revision — provide literally for its own reconstitution? We first considered the political and intellectual assumptions against which Article V of the United States Constitution — the amendment article — was drafted, and then looked briskly at the historical context in which the Constitution's twenty-six amendments have been adopted. With this as background, we addressed a range of issues concerning the law and policy of constitutional change that are currently the subject of lively dispute in America.