Political Science 797RL - ST-Rights,Liberties&AmConstutn

This course examines the critical role that the Supreme Court has played in shaping the landscape of rights and liberties in the United States over time. We begin with a discussion about the power and potential of textual rights protections. Then, we examine the historic rise of an organizational structure that supported legal mobilization to protect individual rights in the United States, and learn about why certain rights were protected before others. Then, we will look thematically at the topics of: religious freedom, speech, guns, rights of the criminally accused, and gender and sexuality discrimination, reading and analyzing many of the Court?s landmark decisions. We will close the semester by looking at some of the most recent constitutional controversies involving personal freedom.

This course is open to Political Science Graduate students only.