State Constitutional Law (Indiana, Mostly): A Reading List (5/28-6/3/2026)

 I got the idea this morning to make a list of what I have been reading since I started on my latest research project. The hope is that it will give me time to get my eyes to focus.

State Constitutions (Indiana Historical Bureau)

Originalism and Natural Law by Brian T. Fitzpatrick

Beyond Standard Legal Positivism and "Aggressive" Natural Law: Some Thoughts on Judge O'Scannlain's "Third Way" by Michael Baur

Has the Indiana Constitution Found Its Epic by P Baude 

The Natural Law in the American Tradition  by Hon. Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain

Matter of Lawrance 

Morrison v. Sadler 

Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England in Four Books, vol. 1 [1753] 

SELF-DEFENSE, DEFENSE OF OTHERS, AND THE STATE, DARRELL A. H. MILLER

Wrigley v. Romanick 

INTERPRETATION AND AUTHORITY IN STATE CONSTITUTIONALISM , Paul W. Kahn

Interstate Dialogue in State Constitutional Law, Patrick L. Baude 

INDIANA'S CENTURY OLD CONSTITUTION by JOHN D. BARNHART and DONALD F. CARMONY

Kiste v. Red Cab, Inc., 106 NE 2d 395 

Matis v. Yelasich, 132 NE 2d 728 

MEDICAL LICENSING BD. v. Planned Parenthood, 211 NE 3d 957 

Meredith v. Pence, 984 NE 2d 1213 

Okla. Call for Reprod. Justice v. Drummond, 526 P. 3d 1123  

PEACHEY ET AL. v. BOSWELL, MAYOR, ET AL., 167 NE 2d 48 

John Pettit 

Price v. State, 622 NE 2d 954 

Pritchard v. State, 230 NE 2d 416 

Ratliff v. Cohn, 693 NE 2d 530 - 

Report of the Debates  

Richardson v. State, 717 NE 2d 32 

Schuchman v. State, 236 NE 2d 830 

Sidle v. Majors, 341 NE 2d 763 

Solomon v. State, 119 NE 3d 173 

Specht v. State, 163 NE 2d 581 

The Maturing Nature of State Constitution Jurisprudence Randall T. Shepard 

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Cover Letters & Query Letters

 

I admit I am lax about them. Probably because I think it will not help me get published; and that when I got business mail I wanted it to be concise so I could get to what lay underneath. A better way of doing them is here, Cover Letters: What they are and how to write one.  

While each differs a bit, they will all have a similar format. 

1. Editor’s name (if you can find it) and brief greeting 

2. Word count rounded to the nearest hundred 

3. Title of the short-form piece 

4. The genre 

5. Short description of the piece 

6. Your credentials, if applicable 

7. Whether it's a simultaneous submission 

Strange Horizons has some great cover letter examples on its website and tips for writing your own. 

There seemed to be a lot of query letter examples online, but I keep losing them. Soon, maybe sooner, I will need to be writing them. So, I am putting Everything You Need to Know About Query Letters here for safekeeping.

While every letter can differ depending on the author and their experience, you can expect it to have these elements. 

● Opening greeting: Personalize this to the agent you are sending it to if you can. If you don’t have a connection to the agent (maybe you were referred or met them at a conference), you can always fall back on the story. 

● Hook: Catch the reader’s interest fast with a line or a sentence about the book. If you can’t think of a hook, jump right into the “housekeeping.” 

● Housekeeping: Includes the title, genre, and word count (to the nearest thousandth). These three things are something every agent needs to know. 

● Book Synopsis: Typically around 150-300 words, the synopsis should provide a concise description of the plot, the characters, and the central questions and conflicts without spoiling the book. Think of it as the jacket copy (the copy you find on the dust jacket or the back of a book) for your future book. Make the stakes for the main character clear. 

● Comp Titles: You can compare your manuscript to these titles as proof of its market viability and potential readership. You’ll often see formats of introducing comp titles like “A meets B” or “for fans of…” Comp titles are often the most frustrating part of writing the query letter. Things to consider when choosing comp titles: 

    ● Don’t choose a classic book or any insanely successful book 

    ● Make sure it’s been published within the last five years (and that the author is alive) 

    ● Don’t choose a super obscure book/title 

● Your credentials: This is the opportunity to share relevant accomplishments or accolades about yourself. Everything you include in your bio should be pertinent to the agent. This includes (but is not limited to): publication credits, self-published work, your job (if relevant), writing credibility such as BFAs or MFAs, writing 

events/workshops/conferences, relevant research (if applicable), and awards and competitions. If you aren’t sure it’s relevant, err on the side of caution and don’t include it. Don’t just say you’ve been published in “various magazines/ and or journals”. If you can’t name them, don’t include them. But if you are unpublished, it’s implied you lack any credits if you don’t list anything, so don’t state it. 

● Professional Conclusion: Keep it short but simple. Thank the agent and sign off. No need to suggest how great the partnership would be or your availability. 

sch 5/28 

 

 

Swimming From Friday Through a Sea of Obsession To Tuesday Night

Obsession struck these past few days. I have been delving into Indiana history. I have not been doing much else than writing and researching; it left me a bit tired. I did the group thing on Friday, a little grocery shopping; Saturday, I hit the convenience store; Sunday was church; Monday, a visit to Walmart; and this morning was church, again.

I did work on a new section for the project after church, and I napped for around 4 hours. I tired some fried sardines in spaghetti sauce. Not bad, but I wish I had some peppers to balance the fish a little better.

Now, I am finishing up this post. 

I sent “After Making Landfall” to Ploughshares and to Ex-Puritan, and “Plain Tales from the Flatlands” (what I had been shopping around as “Scenes from a Small Indiana Factory Town”) went to Black Lawrence Press. “The Unintended Consequences of Art” was sent to NewMyths.

I read “A Sandwich for Lunch” by Penny Pepper (Litro) and was impressed by what Ms. Pepper did with a short story. She made me envious.

Marrow Magazine rejected “Saved by Rock and Roll” on 5/29.

Thank you so much for trusting us with your submission, Coming Home.

While your piece isn’t quite right for Marrow at this time, we wish you the best of luck in placing it elsewhere, and we hope you’ll keep writing.

Best,
The Editors

Same story was rejected on 6/1:

Thank you for submitting to Flash Frog and allowing us to read your work. Unfortunately, “Saved by Rock and Roll” is not a right fit for us. We wish you the best of luck in finding a good home for it and sincerely appreciate your interest and support.

 

With gratitude,

Flash Frog

www.flash-frog.com

Some videos from the past few days I want to pass along.

A Hoosier you've probably never heard of: John Hay. A very important man.

 Indiana is not all corn:

 A lecture on The Maltese Falcon:

 And one about Steinbeck's Cannery Row. I agree with one fellow that Tortilla Flats is better. That Steinbeck does not get respect may be because of books like this, but then why is Hemingway not excorciated about To Have and To Have Not?

 I am never sure who I enjoy reading more, Mario Vargas Llosa or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My solution has been to keep rading both.

 

 Atwood on history:

The Prophet coems to Indiana:

 

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Quotation Marks

Maybe I never understood Cormac McCarthy's lack of quotation marks. For me, this made his novels to be read out loud, as I do with poetry.

Then came some critiques of my writing dialog, which I will summarize as being more about exposition than a conversation. All right, I have spent much time reading plays and trying to write a few.

All these thoughts came out as I read Larissa Pham's Thought, Speech: Dialogue Without Quotation Marks (Poets & Writers).

In my second semester of graduate school, I stopped setting my dialogue in quotation marks. At the time, I was working on a historical novel, set in Vietnam, and I was struggling with the voices of my characters—they felt too stagey, too dramatized. I suspected it was something about the quotation marks—the way they drew the eye immediately, throwing the dialogue up onto a slightly different plane from the rest of the text. It read like lines, not speech. 

And they are lines for me, just as if the story were a play. I have a sense that people act, so my characters were acting. Some of that acting was meant to be explicit.

I continue to work on “Love Stinks” in which I use two different time frames. Memory was meant to be a construct like a play. But then Ms. Pham blows that idea up.

Though I don’t replicate Moss’s technical trick in Discipline, I was interested in a narrator who filters experience for the reader, and who also withholds information—and even emotion—from other characters, as well as herself. Christine, the narrator of Discipline, is a writer, one who has turned a real-life relationship into a sensationalized novel. She’s an unreliable narrator precisely because she is a writer—she knows the power storytelling holds—and it was a pleasure to push that part of her character, applying pressure on what not only Christine but also the reader takes to be the truth. When we see quotation marks on a page, we assume what they contain is, in some way, true. We believe someone said that, for dialogue is faithful. In removing quotation marks, we ask the reader to read carefully, thoughtfully, and to trust our narrator to take them somewhere else, somewhere new.  

Do I want to rethink “Love Stinks”? I am always thinking and rethinking. The point trying to be made in that story (and several others) is to put the purported truth in one character's memory against the purported truth in another's memory. The truth would contain parts of both characters's memories. Of juxtapositions showing unreliabilty.

But what if instead of a contrast conveyed through competing marks, what about memory without quotation marks and current affairs denoted by marks?

Something to think about. It is also easier typing without quotation marks.

sch 5/27 

 

Cognitive Behavior Therapy

On Fridays, the federal government has me attending a group therapy program. My notes from these sessions are to be found under “group session notes” or by reviewing the Supervised Release archives link (look at the right hand side of your screen).

My new PO has been keen to know how my “treatment” is going. 

I decided to (finally) check into what kind of therapy it is I am in the middle of, and that led me to the National Library of Medicine's entry for Cognitive Behavior Therapy. 

Now, my takeaways from reading that entry.

In the 1960s, Aaron Beck developed cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) or cognitive therapy. Since then, it has been extensively researched and found to be effective in a large number of outcome studies for some psychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse, and personality disorders. It also has been demonstrated to be effective as an adjunctive treatment to medication for serious mental disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. CBT has been adapted and studied for children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. Its efficacy also has been established in the treatment of non-psychiatric disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, insomnia, migraines, and other chronic pain conditions. (footnotes omitted)

Back in 2010, I was diagnosed as having severe depression. This blog is a chronicle of my dealing with my depression. 

The following is the curriculum of the group meetings, so I am correct connecting with this article:

Cognitive Distortions

Errors in logic are quite prevalent in patients with psychological disorders. They lead individuals to erroneous conclusions. Below are some cognitive distortions that are commonly seen in individuals with psychopathology:

• Dichotomous thinking: Things are seen regarding two mutually exclusive categories with no shades of gray in between.
• Overgeneralization: Taking isolated cases and using them to make wide generalizations.
• Selective abstraction: Focusing exclusively on certain, usually negative or upsetting, aspects of something while ignoring the rest.
• Disqualifying the positive: Positive experiences that conflict with the individual’s negative views are discounted.
• Mind reading: Assuming the thoughts and intentions of others.
• Fortune telling: Predicting how things will turn out before they happen.
• Minimization: Positive characteristics or experiences are treated as real but insignificant.
• Catastrophizing: Focusing on the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is just uncomfortable.
• Emotional reasoning: Making decisions and arguments based on how you feel rather than objective reality.
• “Should” statements: Concentrating on what you think “should” or “ought to be” rather than the actual situation you are faced with or having rigid rules which you always apply no matter the circumstances.
• Personalization, blame, or attribution: Assuming you are completely or directly responsible for a negative outcome. When applied to others consistently, the blame is the distortion.

But this article raises problems for me.

Underlying beliefs shape the perception and interpretation of events. Belief systems or schemas take shape as we go through life experiences. They are defined as templates or rules for information processing that underlie the most superficial layer of automatic thoughts. Beliefs are understood at two levels in CBT:

Core Beliefs

• The central ideas about self and the world
• The most fundamental level of belief
• They are global, rigid, and overgeneralized

Examples of dysfunctional core beliefs: 

• “I am unlovable”
• “I am inadequate”
• “The world is a hostile and dangerous place” 

I emphasize that sentence because I do think that way. If it were otherwise, there would be no murders or wars. Genocide would be in our dictionaries. We would not have plagues or hurricanes or blizzards. Nor would we have governments or natural selection. The former means to ameliorate the world's dangers (see John Locke and Thomas Hobbes if this idea is alien to you.) Without a dangerous world, there is no need for adaptation, therefore no evolution.

Moving on.

Cognitive behavior therapy is a structured, didactic, and goal-oriented form of therapy. The approach is hands-on and practical wherein the therapist and patient work in a collaborative manner with the goal of modifying patterns of thinking and behavior to bring about a beneficial change in the patient's mood and way of living his/her life....

The Friday meetings are structured - the person leading them rattles off the concepts.

Didatic? Obviously.

Goal-oriented? No one has told me what the goal is for me.  It seems to me that the goal is to persist in lecturing the same material until one is released from probation or three years, whichever takes longer.

Following upon goals:

Most psychotherapists who practice CBT personalize and customize the therapy to the specific needs of each patient. 

This is a group meeting, there is no sign of customization. There is nothing done to apply the ideas expounded to anyone's specific experience, let alone needs. 

And nothing like this has been done:

The first step is an assessment of the patient and the initiation of developing an individualized conceptualization of him/her. The conceptualization based on the CBT model is built from session to session and is shared with the patient at an appropriate time later in therapy. The approach to therapy is explained very early at the start of the therapy. The problems patient would like to work on in therapy, and goals for therapy are decided in the first or second session collaboratively. The prioritized problems are worked on first.

 So, I am being treated for depression as part of a sex offender management program? Or is it the SOMS as treatment for my depression? 

I have no idea, other than this is your tax dollars at work.

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Plotting

 Emma Copley Eisenberg Is Tired of the Plot Police (Electric Literature)

8. What’s a piece of writing advice you never want to hear again?

ECE: I never want to hear that something “doesn’t have a plot” or to “give it more plot” because I don’t think people really know what that means. A lot of books that feel really propulsive have a plot, they just aren’t incident-based. I had a student at Temple say “I think what people mean when they say something doesn’t have a plot is that they don’t care about it.” Or they don’t care about the character. And I think that’s true. If you care about the character or what’s going on then the incident becomes sort of extraneous. 

sch 5/12 

Fear

 From K.M. Weiland's 6 Ways to Discover Your Character’s Greatest Fear, I want to point out the following:

Not every character in your story needs a deep fear holding them back, but the important ones do. Once you identify your characters’ greatest fears, find out how deep those roots go. Entwine them in the characters’ relationships, show them through the situations they avoid, and let their insecurities act like a neon sign. Show the impact of fear throughout your characters’ lives, and readers will feel its weight.

sch 5/12