Constitutional Law Seminar: Constitutional Rights

This seminar will study the Bill of Rights. The first two weeks will look at the Bill holistically, rather than focusing on individual amendments. We will begin by examining the origin of the Bill and by investigating the original understanding of it as a bulwark of federalism. We will then consider the impact of the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment on the Bill and the enormous change effected when much of the Bill was “incorporated” into the Fourteenth Amendment. We will then spend several weeks exploring the First Amendment, with classes devoted to the protection of speech in public forums, restrictions on campaign finance, the Free Exercise Clause, the Establishment Clause, and religion in schools. The next several classes will consider selected other Amendments, the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and the Seventh Amendment. Students will have the option to write either several short “reading response” papers or a longer research paper.