Constitutional Decisionmaking

Constitutional Decisionmaking - Professor David Schraub

• Course Number: LAW-209
• Course Type: Highly Specialized
• Credits: 3
• Enrollment Limit: 14
• Description:  Have you ever read the Supreme Court’s constitutional law opinions and thought “I could do better”? Here’s your chance to prove it. Students will enroll as members of seven-member “courts” tasked with deciding a series of mock equal protection cases. As the semester proceeds, new cases will be decided based on the doctrinal rules and precedents your “court” crafted and applied in the previous weeks. Students will be expected to draft opinions (both majority and, where desired, concurrences and dissents) that credibly and cogently explain how given outcomes cohere with the body of doctrine their court has created, including by citation to their own previously written opinions.

Students may coordinate in advance to enroll as a (complete or partial) “Court,” and are encouraged to do so. Please connect with the professor in advance if you are interested in enrollment.

• Prerequisite: Constitutional Law I
• Corequisite: Constitutional Law II is recommended
• Evaluation Method:  Students will be given two cases to decide every two weeks, for eight two-week periods (so sixteen cases total). Students can decide for themselves who will author opinions (including concurrences or dissents); however, each student must author at least three substantive opinions (including concurrences or dissents) over the course of the semester. 
• Capstone: yes
• WIE: yes