"HIST 363A Law, Constitution, & Society Gellman Fall 2024" by David Gellman
 

Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Fall 9-1-2024

Course Description

Guns, abortion, sex, speech, race, school prayer. Americans often turn their public policy debates into constitutional ones--hoping that imperfect men dead for two centuries will be able to resolve questions that defy consensus today. Clashing in the present, people on all sides of issues implicitly make claims about history. This course places the US Constitution in context—historical and global--clearing the air and muddying the waters. We will emphasize: the appeal of written constitutions; the compromises made in Philadelphia; intense debates over ratification; and the post-Civil War amendments that, in addressing the legacy of slavery, redirected the nation's constitutional trajectory. We will also consider select constitutional developments and controversies in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Students will research key U.S. Supreme Court cases to investigate how historians work with the law and how justices work with history. These projects will allow people to pursue issues of particular interest and will expand our collective field of constitutional vision.

Student Outcomes

Students will be able to: 1) conduct historical research and construct historical arguments 2) learn to evaluate how historians construct arguments that challenge or expand upon previous understandings and schools of thought; 3) express empathy across time, space, and identities by cultivating their historical imagination. 4) understand the U.S. Constitution, its amendments, and constitutional interpretation as the product of contingent historical processes 5) analyze through careful reading and evidence-based discussion how and when this constitutional system has succeeded and how and when it has failed to produce a framework of justice for an always diverse and ever-changing population.

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