Better to be Safe than Sorry

"According to Aristotle, maxims are general statements which deal with human actions that should be chosen or avoided" and "are generally accepted by the rhetorician's community." Maxims seem to be cliches that are based on common sense. I found an implied maxim in an article in the DA titled "Student Health takes measures to prevent meningitis." As everyone on campus knows, a WVU student recently died from meningitis and the entire student body and their parents are in an uproar. The article I read was published on March 3, the day she was hospitalized. It seems that the unversity took it seriously because Student Health distributed free vaccine pills, which normally cost $90, to 20 people whom she may have infected. The pills were free of charge.
The university claims it has exhaulted all means to prevent the spread of meningitis on campus. The article first explains its symptoms, then goes on to explain how all freshman students have been required to receive the vaccination since 2006. I transferred to WVU in 2006 and not only was not required to be vaccinated but was never advised about the risks of meningitis from university personnel.
Nice try on the university's part to downplay this tragedy. The article details the sickness of the female student, explains its symptoms, and professes it attempts to warn or vaccinate students. The pill was free to 20 people, but others should pay for the vaccination soon. After all, better safe than sorry.

Opinions: Fact or Political?

Look around you and listen. Where do you find people practicing rhetoric. Do people try to support these arguments with facts? Or do they use other means of cinvincing people to accept their arguments?

I've just left my Civil Liberties class on Monday night when I start blogging for Writing Theory. So, along the lines that presidents and members of Congress are good sources for rhetoric, I've been thinking about the way US Supreme Court Justices use rhetoric. Most people would think that the justices use fact to determine each case. When judges look to precedent, the details and outcome of cases decided before them, they do use fact. However, some justices pretend to judge cases based on fact but really base their opinions on politics.

A reoccuring tool my political science class and I have studied in the past few weeks is the creation of a test to determine if a particular case meets an established standard. For example, when talking about free speech, Justice Powell created the substantial interest test that determines if the issues at hand dealt with the first amendment, related to substantial government interest, and advanced these interests. Justice Rehnquist uses the test to reject a policy and then one year later uses the test to uphold a policy. The relevant question asks how rhetoric is being used. Can justices use fact to reject and uphold cases or do Supreme Court decisions mirror Crowley and Hawhee's explanation that opinions can no longer be held as fact?