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Course Documents Archive
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Constitutional Law
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for APLS 431
Constitutional government is the essence of the American political system. For Plato, in the ancient world, a constitution meant “the soul of the city, writ large”: we could know who a people is by careful examination of the laws by which they governed themselves. Our own constitutional tradition begins, not from those classical origins, but in the English constitutional tradition dating back to Magna Carta, where the constitution evolved as a set of restraints on the power of the king and organized around principles such as the rule of law and the separation of powers. Despite the fact that American constitutional law derives very little from Plato’s understanding of a constitution, we still can know something of a people from the laws by which they are governed. For that reason, our course examining how constitutional law evolves and its content not only will explain the Constitution of the United States and how it has evolved, but also will ask students to make judgments about our constitutional past, present, and future. At the conclusion of this course, students should expect to be familiar with (1) the functioning of constitutional interpretation, its different approaches and applications, in the American political system, (2) the mechanisms of constitutional interpretation, (3) basic concepts in constitutional law, such as due process, separation of powers, etc., (4) the process of reading and briefing decisions of the Supreme Court, and (5) the nature of constitutional government under the American system. Important Reminders |
