Sylabus
Day 1, 1st session.
Introduction: Course overview and "American Society and Law"
Lecture: Law, the Constitution, and the U.S. Supreme Court in American Society
[Recommended reading: Preface to the 2nd edition, Stuart Scheingold, The Politics of Rights]
Day 1, 2nd session.
The Nexus Between Legal Rights and Social Values: equality of persons
Lecture: Race, Gender and Citizenship, and how social movements shape (and do not shape) rights
[Reading: the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (entire opinion); selection from Kristin A. Goss, The Paradox of Equality: How American Women’s Groups Gained and Lost Their Public Voice, pp. 3-23]
Additional Sources, for research/reference or further consultation:
Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights (Oxford, 2004)
S. Laurel Weldon, When Protest Makes Policy: How Social Movements Represent Disadvantaged Groups (Michigan, 2011)
Day 2, 1st & 2nd session.
The Nexus Between Legal Rights and Social Values: dignity of persons
Lecture: The Same-Sex Marriage Debate in the U.S.-and a parallel note on women’s dignity, in the on-going contraceptive rights debate
[Reading: selection from Michael Klarman, From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage, pp. 203-19; excerpt from Notorious RBG, pp. 131-5; Recommended reading: Jill Lepore, "To Have and to Hold: Reproduction, marriage, and the Constitution," The New Yorker (May 25,2015)]
Additional Sources, for research/reference or further consultation:
Edward J. Eberle, Dignity and Liberty: Constitutional Visions in German and the United States (Praeger, 2002)
Obergefell v. Hodges (2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision, especially Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the majority)
Day 3, 1st & 2nd session.
The Nexus Between Legal Rights and Social Values: fairness and the death penalty
Lecture 1: Capital punishment, "cruel and unusual punishment," and the "Framers’ intent" vs. a national/international consensus of "evolving values of decency"
Lecture 2: Punishment, fairness, and race in the American criminal justice system
[Reading for both sessions: Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion in the 2002 Supreme Court case of Adkins v. Virginia; selection from Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, pp. 109-114]
Additional Sources, for research/reference or further consultation:
"Twelve Angry Men," 1957 American film directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Henry Fonda
Day 4, 1st session.
The Nexus Between Legal Rights and Social Values: gun ownership and personal safety
Lecture: The right to "keep and bear arms" in modern American society, and the successful legal lobbying campaign of the National Rifle Association
[Reading: Excerpts from the campaign literature of Clinton/Sanders and GOP; Recommended reading: the amicus curie (i.e. friend of the court, or interest group) brief filed by the NRA in the Supreme Court case of D.C. v. Heller, decided 2008]
Day 4, 2nd session.
FINAL EXAMINATION
DAY 5 Individual Student Meetings, final grades discussions (optional)
COURSE APPENDIX - OPTIONAL
Additional Topics for Study:
The Nexus Between Legal Rights and Social Values: privacy and (national) security
(The privacy of electronic communication, and reasonable and unreasonable invasions of personal privacy in the internet and digital age-a good introductory reading here is John Gilliom and Torin Monahan, Supervision: an Introduction to the Surveillance Society (Chicago, 2013))
Additional General Sources-provocative readings on American political culture, law and society:
Erwin Chererinsky, The Case Against the Supreme Court (Viking, 2014)
Charles R. Epp, The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective (Chicago, 1998)
Stephen Holmes, The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (Harvard, 1993)
Anotace
The course will meet on Wednesdays April 6 and 13 and and Fridays April 8 and 15, on all of the respective four days in the times 9:30-10:50 and 11:00-12:30, on Wednesdays in 2063 room, on Fridays in 3017 room at Jinonoce campus.
The course will be taught by foreign professor Nancy Maveety, PhD., of Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
This course provides a social issues perspective on American political culture, illustrating the interdependence of politics, law and society. How and under what circumstances can social movements and their rights campaigns reform the structure of power? Topics and readings assess this question against a backdrop of politically and legally contested values.