Federal Courts

Catalog description

Elective Course Prerequisite: Constitutional Law I Course Requirement: Final exam Fulfills Current Concentration Elective: Government and Public Interest- Basic Government Track, Litigation- Civil Litigation Track Federal Courts is a course about the nature and limits of judicial power,and about its distribution within our federal constitutional system. It is a course for students interested in working with, working within, or just better understanding the federal court system. It builds on themes from constitutional law and civil procedure, including jurisdiction, separation of powers, and federalism. This course examines the role of the Article III federal courts as part of the distributed separation-of-powers system, covering topics like justiciability doctrines, congressional control over federal courts, allocation of Article III jurisdiction to non-Article III actors, and the nature of federal common law-making after Erie. This course also examines the relationship of federal courts to state power within the system of federalism, covering topics like the Eleventh Amendment and state sovereign immunity, Section 1983, federal abstention doctrines, and Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over state court decisions.