Constitutional Law
This course introduces core principles of U.S. Constitutional law including its historical and philosophical underpinnings. Topics covered include federalism, separation of power, express and implied power, executive power, judicial review, police power, the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments, substantive due process, and equal protection.
How this course works
- Work through the activity
- Post by Friday, 11:59 PM
- Reply by Sunday, 11:59 PM
- 1Activity 1
Declaration of Independence
Ideals without action change nothing. America was built on the principles of natural rights, human dignity, self-government, and moral responsibility. The Declaration of…
- 2Activity 2
Constitutional Convention
Congress called the 1787 convention in Philadelphia for one purpose: revising the Articles of Confederation. The delegates wrote a new constitution instead, so…
- 3Activity 3
US Constitution
Readers looking for the ban on religious tests for federal office usually start in the First Amendment. It is in Article VI, in the paragraph about oaths. That gap…
- 4Activity 4
Power Divided
A law can be sensible, popular, and void anyway, because the wrong branch or the wrong government enacted it. Structure settles that question before anyone reaches the…
- 5Activity 5
Judicial Review
The Constitution never says that a court may refuse to enforce an act of Congress. Chief Justice Marshall said it anyway in 1803, in an opinion that denied Marbury the…
- 6Activity 6
Judicial Interpretation
In Heller, Justice Scalia and Justice Stevens read the same one-sentence amendment, worked through the same founding-era history, and reached opposite results. Neither…
- 7Activity 7
Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights did not always bind your state: for most of American history the first ten amendments limited Congress alone. A state could censor a newspaper, try a…
- 8Activity 8
First Amendment
Read straight through, the First Amendment's forty-five words sound absolute: Congress shall make no law. Courts have spent more than a century turning that sentence…
- 9Activity 9
Due Process
Two arguments about due process sound alike and are not. One says the state moved too fast: it cut off the benefits before the hearing. The other says the state may not…
- 10Activity 10
Criminal Procedure
Four of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights govern what the government may do between a first suspicion and a verdict. Anyone headed into law enforcement,…
- 11Activity 11
Equal Protection
Every law sorts people. Oklahoma once let women buy 3.2% beer at eighteen and made men wait until twenty-one, and San Francisco once refused laundry permits to two…
- 12Activity 12
Amendments
Congress sent the states a proposal on September 25, 1789. Three-fourths of them finished ratifying it on May 7, 1992, and it became the Twenty-Seventh Amendment. The…
- PProject
Constitution Now
Most coverage of a constitutional fight reports the score: who won, who lost, and which side is angry about it. The score goes stale in a week, while the question…