As Barack Obama's rise to power inspires a flood of books, scholars hope the publishing trend will yield serious analysis. Barack Obama's rise from Illinois politics to the U.S. presidency has inspired authors to produce a flood of books chronicling the 44th commander in chief's life story and political career. Obama's political odyssey invites…

Maintains that constitutional law is the cornerstone of an undergraduate public law curriculum. Asserts that there is a welcome trend toward teaching the subject over a two-semester sequence, instead of only one. Describes course content and teaching strategies used in a college constitutional law course. (CFR)

By studying constitutional law, students learn about the relationship between democratic theory and practice, one of the main concerns of liberal education. The mind is enlarged when it must apply ethical standards and political ideas to real human problems. How a political science professor teaches constitutional law is discussed. (RM)

In 1871, Christopher Columbus Langdell, a prominent jurist who had joined the law faculty at Harvard University, hit on the idea of compiling thick, imposing "casebooks" with hundreds of appeals-court rulings on particular areas of law--contracts, constitutional law, torts, and others. Today, the hefty tomes and related works have become the…

This dissertation is a "public forum" legal case study on the federal court case "Madison v. Wolf" (2005) involving a conflict over the exercise of First Amendment speech rights on the Auraria Higher Education Center (AHEC) campus in Denver, Colorado. The dissertation involves the content analysis of the "Mason v.…

CNN commentator Bill Bennett's invocation of "professorial" was the latest among a string of comments about Barack Obama, who used to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago. On September 13, the "New York Times" columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote, "Obama may be a bit professorial, but at least he is trying to unite the country to…

Challenging basic principles of constitutional law, advocates of intelligent design are undermining educators' ability to teach evolution in their science classrooms. Because US Supreme Court rulings now prohibit creationist accounts of the origin of life in schools, arguments favoring divine intervention, known as intelligent design, have emerged…

A Chinese student of American constitutional law looks at problems and prospects in the application of the American constitutional experience in China and encourages more comparative study of consitutional law. (MSE)

Senior high girls and boys from two single-sex schools undertook a study of a Supreme Court case that provided insight not only into constitutional law and history but also into how men and women can work together and relate in other ways than dating. (DS)

Two issues are discussed: (1) reasons for raising global and international human rights issues in constitutional law, civil rights, and administrative law courses in United States law schools; and (2) barriers to globalization of courses and ways to overcome them. (MSE)

This paper discusses the distinction between the Constitution and constitutional law. The Constitution is the fundamental law of the United States. It creates the institutions of government, enumerates the powers of these institutions, and delineates areas government may not enter. The Constitution is the instrument by which the consent of the…

The author suggests that a major failure of most law schools and traditional undergraduate constitutional law courses is that they omit an adequate analysis of the political nature of the judicial process. Political influences on a variety of court cases are discussed. (LBH)

Education is oftentimes understood as a deeply ethical practice for the development of the person. Alternatively, education is construed as a state-enforced apparatus for inculcation of specific codes, conventions, beliefs, and norms about social and political practices. Though holding both of these beliefs about education is not necessarily…

A survey of the teaching of constitutional law used questionnaires sent to the dean of every law school approved by the Association of American Law Schools or the American Bar Association. Responses describe the basic course, advanced courses and seminars, teachers, goals, and examinations. (MLW)

Federal constitutional law currently permits choice programs that include religious schools only if they provide parents with "genuine and independent choice"; as the leading federal case demonstrates, whether this test is satisfied is an interesting and difficult empirical question. State doctrine regarding establishment of religion can be…