Bleg: The con is on (Signifying Nothing: how does saying nothing at all become so loud?)

Tuesday, 1 June 2004

Bleg: The con is on

It’s just been confirmed that I’ll be teaching Constitutional Law in the fall—specifically, the first half of the typical political science “Institutional Relations / Rights and Liberties” sequence. Since I’m not a lawyer or an institutionalist, this leaves me a tad out of my depth; I’ve been on the receiving end of Rights and Liberties, but the rest of my background in law and the courts is in judicial behavior.

Assuming I use the case method (given that these are primarily law-school-bound students, I think I should stick with orthodoxy), I’ve got a couple of possible textbooks in mind: Mason and Stephenson (used by John Winkle at Ole Miss) or Rossum and Tarr. Since I’m not sure we plan to offer Rights and Liberties in the spring, and since I’m not sure that I’ll be teaching it even if we do, I’m leaning toward a single-volume text (which indicates Rossum and Tarr over Mason and Stephenson). I also thought of dragging out the first volume companion to the overweight West book I used as an wee grad student for Rights and Liberties, but it may be too expansive—and expensive—for a junior-level undergraduate seminar consisting primarily of political science majors and pre-law types.

Any suggestions, endorsements, or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Update: I received a vote via email for Epstein and Walker, which has the advantage (IMHO) of having been written by political scientists.

2 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

1. Len Cleavelin wrote @ Tue, 1 Jun 2004, 10:15 am CDT:

As someone with a law degree, I’d my (IMHO) informed opinion is that the correlation between possession of a law degree and “real” understanding of Constitutional Law isn’t that great. Don’t let your lack of a J.D. faze you.

I’ve toyed with the idea of opening up membership on the Supreme Court to a highly qualified non-lawyer Ph.D. political scientist (say one token seat, as it were); the Constitution doesn’t require that Supreme Court justices be lawyers, after all. Probably there’s some federal statute that would forbid it, however, and of course the ABA would probably scream bloody murder. Which is a pity; I think the law is much too important a thing to be left entirely to the lawyers.

BTW, have you given thought to getting a law degree? I know, you probably need more schooling like you need a hole in your head, but it might open up some additional academic employment possibilities (in law schools as well as poli. sci. departments, for example). One of the best faculty members at Northwestern Law during my undistinguished tenure there was a J.D./Ph.D. (Victor Rosenblum; specialized in Administrative Law in the Law School, and IIRC had a joint appointment in the poli.sci. department as well).

2. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Tue, 1 Jun 2004, 5:19 pm CDT:

Since my substantive interests (mass political behavior, public opinion, and political psychology) in political science don’t really intersect with the law, I’m not sure adding a J.D. would be much help for me, at least in terms of scholarship.

Of course, some of the more famous Supreme Court justices, even into the 20th century, didn’t have law degrees, and some weren’t even lawyers; none spring to mind immediately, though.

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