Govt. 411 - Constitutional Law of the United States

Syllabus for Summer 2002

Dr. Robert Jeffrey
206 Daniel Building
Phone: x4581 (office) or 948-1297 (home)
E-mail: jeffreyrc@wofford.edu or rcjeffrey@home.com 
Office Hours: before or after class

Douglas W. Kmiec and Stephen W. Presser, The American Constitutional Order: History, Cases, and Philosophy (Anderson Publishing Company, 1998).

Kmiec and Presser, 2000-2001 Supplement to The American Constitutional Order (Anderson Publishing Company, 2001).

William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court (Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 2001)

Each student will be assigned a case to report on to the class. The student will prepare a 5-7 page paper beforehand to read in class at the appropriate time. The report shall not take longer than ten minutes, after which the student will answer any questions from the class or from me. You should think of these reports as a brief of the case, in which you summarize the facts and the main arguments of the opinion of the Court, the dissents, and concurrences. You should also take a position on the case and say why you think the case was rightly or wrongly decided. As much as possible, you should base your judgment

on what you know about American constitutionalism. Please avoid just quoting different parts of the opinion. Learn to paraphrase artfully and to summarize with your own mind. I will hand out assignments for the second week on the second day of class, and for the rest of the term the second week of class (after the numbers stabilize).

There will be a brief quiz each day over the assigned readings. The quiz will take no longer than 5-10 minutes. The quiz grades will be averaged at the end of the semester. Positive class participation will be factored into the participation grade at my discretion. The lowest quiz grade will be dropped for each student. Regular attendance is expected. Unexcused absences will lower you participation grade substantially. After two unexcused absences I may ask you to withdraw from the course.

Our purpose in the course is to become familiar with most of the key areas in constitutional law as well as with the key cases which illustrate the thinking of the Court in these areas. Emphasis will be placed on the arguments used by the Court to justify their decisions and how these arguments have changed, especially in modern times. I will also stress the crucial issue of the methodology of constitutional interpretation by constant comparison of the Founders' views with the views of the Court over time.

The student will be compelled to consider the relationship between a self-limiting view of the Court's role and the possibility of republican government. I have also found that studying Court cases is a terrific way to learn more about the American regime. This is because, no matter what you think of any particular Court decision, the Supreme Court is our only institution which consistently makes formal reasoned arguments in consideration of our founding documents, and hence the principles and ends of our nation.

We will all be expressing opinions in this course. In fact, I will be requiring you to do so when you as a student and citizen evaluate the reasoning of the members of the Supreme Court. Further, we will disagree among ourselves, and all of you will be likely at some point to disagree with the professor. That is all right. It is more than all right.

By offering the best arguments we can for what we opine, and at the same time acknowledging the arguments of the other side, we testify to our utmost respect for speech and its ability to reveal truth to those who labor with the mind on its behalf. I do ask that you consider that all opinions can't be right-that sometimes one must be true and the other false. We will see instances of this. Yet apart from the fact that most opinions contain some truth, we will also see that people with whom we disagree are sincere in their reasoning. This testifies to the weakness as well as the power of the human mind. It goes without saying that in the class you will be graded on your familiarity with the cases and the arguments rather than on your opinions.