Jurisprudence

Catalog description

This seminar addresses debates about judicial philosophy and legal reasoning, with a special focus on the law/politics distinction. Students will examine scholarship by Dworkin, Scalia, Breyer, critical legal scholars, and others that asks how judges might be constrained in their decision-making - i.e., through precedent, deference to the elected branches, originalism, etc. Students will evaluate how the legal interpretation of the common law, statutes, and the Constitution differs from any other type of political decision, and explore what their conclusions imply for the ideology of the rule of law.