First-Year Research Seminar: Supreme Court in American Life

Catalog description

A core principle of the U.S. Supreme Court holds that it can only decide a judicial question through a specific case brought by two or more interested parties. Many times in its history, however, individual appellants to the Court have become secondary to the larger constitutional issues at stake. A lively debate among the current justices involves how much weight should be given to consequences for the individual parties involved alongside more formalist methods. In this course, we will explore the history of the Supreme Court and the nature of judicial power in American society from the perspective of how rulings of the high court have affected the lived experience of American citizens (and non-citizens). In addition to learning the institutional history of the Court – its constitutional origins, relation to the political branches, and key doctrines – students will analyze case studies of landmark decisions, supplementing the facts of the cases with other primary sources (fiction and memoir) to richly imagine the circumstances of each case. We will also interrogate the “myth of the law” in the U.S., asking to what degree justice can be achieved through constitutional law and judicial politics. Case studies will include: slavery and civil rights; Native American sovereignty; economic and enviromental regulation; immigration law; criminal justice; educational equality; and personal and privacy rights. Based on these case studies, students will write a research paper on one recent Court decision of their choosing.