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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Right To Participate, Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, Richard H. Pildes
The Right To Participate, Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, Richard H. Pildes
Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)
The following essay is excerpted and adapted from The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, © The Foundation Press, Inc., Westbury, NY (1998). Publication is by permission.
Constitutions are often viewed today as constraints on majoritarian power in the service of minority interests. But constitutional ground rules also create the possibility of ongoing democratic self-government; constitutions establish relatively stable and non-negotiable precommitments that enable generally accepted structures of political competition to emerge and endure.
Despite the centrality of this role for the American Constitution , however, there is paradoxically little that the text or its history offers …
Constitutional Conflicts: The Perils And Rewards Of Pioneering In The Law School Classroom, Derrick Bell
Constitutional Conflicts: The Perils And Rewards Of Pioneering In The Law School Classroom, Derrick Bell
Seattle University Law Review
The challenge in teaching Constitutional Law is to teach the doctrine while puncturing the myths. It is not an easy task. Americans treat the Constitution as a hallowed document created by men so divinely inspired that the document they produced in 1787 has been amended less than three dozen times. They might add that because of a number of factors, including those amendments, there are now only about 300 operative words in the Constitution, and that most litigation has centered about the meaning of a dozen or so terms: "due process," "cruel and unusual punishment," "commerce," "free exercise," "commander- in-chief," …
Cases Versus Theory, Richard B. Collins
The Pedagogical Considerations Of Using A Constitutional Law Textbook In Political Science, Christopher P. Banks
The Pedagogical Considerations Of Using A Constitutional Law Textbook In Political Science, Christopher P. Banks
Seattle University Law Review
This Review first describes the importance of each consideration by analyzing how a two-volume constitutional law casebook, written by Professor David M. O'Brien of the Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, can be admirably employed to teach the principle that constitutional law is, in fact, politics. Overall, the volumes are excellent undergraduate political science constitutional law texts. However, the casebook volumes have two flaws. First, they do not address the vital question of "what is political science?," a query that ought to be routinely asked by anyone teaching public law courses. Second, they …