Civil Liberties and Rights PSCI 4771
Dr. Vanessa
Baird, Professor
Office
Ketchum 131D; Email Vanessa.Baird@.colorado.edu
Website http://sobek.colorado.edu/~bairdv/
Office
Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 3:30-5
(also by appointment)
The main purpose of this course is to introduce you to
classical and contemporary theories of civil rights and civil liberties and to
examine the role of the Supreme Court in defining the fundamental rights and
liberties of citizens in the
By the end of the semester you should have:
·
investigated the theoretical foundations of civil rights
and liberties, and the historical development of their application in the
·
developed a deeper understanding of the intersection
between law and politics.
·
improved your critical thinking skills.
·
engaged in several critical analyses of important
theoretical assumptions, claims, and arguments in particular aspects of civil
rights or civil liberties.
You are required to come to every class day, prepared by the reading for discussion. We will spend a great deal of time discussing
these issues in a seminar format, which means that everyone is expected to have
done all the reading and each person is responsible for sharing their unique
understanding of the topics. Each
person’s contribution is highly valued and necessary for a successful
seminar. For this reason, 25% of your
grade will be composed of a combination of attendance, homework assignments and
class participation. You can miss two
classes without any consequences for your grade. If you have to miss more than two classes for
any reason, then your attendance grade will suffer, regardless of the reason
for missing class.
There are two exams, (one in class and one out of class),
the first one worth 10 % of your grade, the second one worth 20% of your grade
and there will be one 12-15 page research paper (25%) and an oral presentation
of this paper, which is worth 5%. There is a written assignment due at the end
of four weeks that is worth 15% of your grade.
These papers, assignments and exams and their respective topics will be
discussed during the course of the semester.
There are many resources on the website (http://sobek.colorado.edu/~bairdv/) that can be used in preparing exams and the
final paper. There are files with
grading criteria, example midterms and final papers and presentations of
various hypothetical outlines for your final paper.
You are expected to keep a copy of your work in case
something is lost. Incompletes are
strongly discouraged by the College and are only given for non-academic
reasons.
Please
email me or come by my office at any time to discuss issues with the
class. I am usually there and I usually
answer emails from students within minutes of receiving them. I genuinely look forward to discussing issues
in the class with students. I encourage
you to use email or office visits for any issues related to the class. On the other hand, I do not check voice
mail.
In this class, we will be dealing
with a great number of sensitive issues.
I encourage feedback on my teaching style and the materials, both
anonymously by email and otherwise, for any reason at any time, as long as it
is respectful. Along those same lines, I
always encourage students to disagree with anything I say at any time, again,
as long as it is respectful. I expect
all students to treat each other with respect as well. If I feel that you have treated me or any
other student with disrespect, I will ask you to meet me in my office. If you continue at any other time to treat me
or other students with disrespect, I will ask you to leave the classroom. Potentially, this kind of behavior could
result in being dropped from the class.
If you have any questions about my policies, or the University’s policy
regarding classroom behavior, do not hesitate to bring it up in class or talk
to me about it in my office. The
University’s general Code of Conduct can be found at the following website: http://www.colorado.edu/studentaffairs/judicialaffairs/code.html and its code of conduct
guidelines for the classroom can be found at the following website: http://www.colorado.edu/facultyaffairs/deskref/part13.html#Classroom_Behavior_Policy_And_Procedures
Campus policy regarding religious observances requires
that faculty make every effort to reasonably and fairly deal with all students
who, because of religious obligations, have conflicts with scheduled exams,
assignments or required attendance. See full details at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/fac_relig.html
I
am required by law to report to university officials any sexual harassment that
I observe or that is reported to me. The
university’s sexual harassment policy can be found at the following
website. http://www.cusys.edu/~policies/Personnel/sexharass.html
All
the work you do in this course is expected to be your own. Absolutely no
cheating or plagiarism (using someone else’s words or ideas without proper
citation) will be tolerated. Any time
that you consult outside sources, you MUST cite those sources. If your consult outside sources without
citation, even if you are not citing the sources directly, this constitutes
cheating. Failure to put quotation marks
around direct quotations constitutes plagiarism and will always result in an F
for the class. Misattribution of sources
(citing certain quotations or ideas as coming from a source other than the one
that they come from) will result in a lower grade. Any cases of cheating or plagiarism will be
reported to the Office of the Dean of Students.
If you violate the Honors Code, you will fail the course. Please review the University’s policy
regarding academic integrity: http://www.colorado.edu/policies/acadinteg.html
The
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (
Epstein, Lee and Thomas Walker. Constitutional Law for a Changing
Note: Page numbers are listed next to
cases that you should know very well.
You should be familiar with other cases in the reading as we will
discuss them in class, but you should read the listed cases several times. It is expected that you should have read all
the reading by Tuesday and the reading assignment for Thursday is to read the
assignment again.
|
Week |
Topics |
Assignments |
|
Week 1 |
Introduction
to the Supreme Court and Decision Making; Statements
of Summary, Interpretation, Causation, Normative, Falsifiability |
Chapters 1, 2 and 3 (skim) Second
day of class: quiz on the syllabus |
|
Week 2 |
Religious
Exercise I |
99-138 (Cantwell, Sherbert, Yoder, |
|
Week 3 |
Religious
Exercise II |
First
exam on statement assumptions: January 27th in class. |
|
Week 4 |
Religious
Establishment: The Lemon Test |
138-160, 167-185 (Everson, Lemon,
Zelman, Edwards) |
|
Week 5 |
|
Three
page assignment due in class, answering the question: In
what manner and to what extent are the Bring
copy to class. |
|
Week 6 |
Freedom of Speech: War Time |
210-244 (Schenck, Abrams, Discussion
of final paper |
|
Week 7 |
Freedom
of Speech: Symbolic Speech |
244-268
(O’Brien, Tinker and |
|
Week 8 |
The
Balancing Act |
268-295;
307-312, 319-326, 365-372 (Hill, RAV, Wisconsin v Mitchell; Rumsfeld, Boy
Scouts v Dale, Pentagon Papers, Ashcroft) Paper topics and bibliography due March
19th in class. |
|
Week 10 |
Privacy:
The Early Years |
412-433 (Griswold, Roe) 452-460 (Bowers,
Lawrence, Cruzan) |
|
Week 11 |
Second
exam |
Exam
question: In what manner and to what extent is the underlying logic in |
|
Week 12 |
Equal
Protection: Historical Context |
626-642 (Scott (on website) Plessy,
Sweatt, Brown) |
|
Week 13 |
State
action |
647- 660 (Loving, Shelley, |
|
Week 14 |
Gender
Discrimination |
660-684 (Reed, Frontiero, |
|
Week 15 |
Other
Forms of Discrimination |
687-706
(Romer, Rodriguez, Saenz) |
|
Week 16 |
Final
Paper Presentations |
Oral
presentations Each
student will give a three minute oral presentation on their final paper,
laying out the basic arguments and counterarguments in their analysis. |
Last
day to turn in draft of final paper to get early comments: April 20th;
5:00pm by email.
Final
paper Due: Monday, May 4th, 5:00 pm, by email
Pick
any topic within the area of civil liberties or civil rights. Here is a list of topics.
|
Criminal
Justice |
HIV/AIDS |
Racial Equality |
|
Death Penalty |
Immigrants Rights |
Religious Liberty |
|
Disability Rights |
Int'l Civil Liberties |
Reproductive Rights |
|
Drug Policy |
Lesbian & Gay Rights |
Rights of the Poor |
|
Free Speech |
National Security |
Student Rights |
|
Women's Rights |
Prisons |
Voting Rights |
|
Safe and Free: Patriot Act |
Privacy & Technology |
|
Then,
do research on Lexis Nexus. Go to the CU
Library website ŕ Find articles ŕ Lexis Nexus (Academic) ŕ Legal. You should use your
law review articles to come up with a more specific topic and argument within
your topic. Responding to arguments in
these law review articles is an essential part of the paper. Never treat arguments in law reviews as if
they are true. Generally, that means
that you cannot end a paragraph with a quotation from these articles – you must
always evaluate them. They are going to
cite court cases as evidence – use those citations as clues about which cases
are likely to be relevant for your argument.
Do you agree or disagree with their interpretation of the logic in the case?
Is there an alternative interpretation?
Take a stand on the most persuasive interpretation. Then, think about what consequences that has
for your main argument. You must have two outside sources,
including legal articles and amicus briefs.
Your
argument will most likely deal with whether something in particular –a
hypothetical policy or law or future Supreme Court decision or scenario would
be consistent with the constitution and the Supreme Court’s precedent in this
area.
Every
paper starts out as follows.
I.A.1 Your first sentence is your argument. ____ is inconsistent/consistent with ____.
I.A You may need to spend the first
paragraph defining terms (probably terms just used in your thesis statement or
statement of argument). You might also
spend the first paragraph summarizing the kind of evidence or arguments will be
used to defend your argument.
Alternatively, you may need to spend the first paragraph listing the
potential counterarguments that you will need to consider. Take care to avoid
causal statements, normative statements and all irrelevant statements.
Pretend
that you are a lawyer who is about to make this argument in front of the
Supreme Court. Only use evidence that
you believe would be relevant for Supreme Court justices. They don’t care what you think about your
topic. They don’t care about your
values. They care about making legal
arguments when it comes down to writing an opinion in the case – help prepare
the reader (a Supreme Court justice) to write a majority opinion on this
case. Try to use evidence that might
persuade a justice that you think may be unsympathetic to your argument – prove
to them why they are wrong about what they think is consistent with previous
Supreme Court decisions. Your other goal
is to teach them that looking at these cases more closely, they will reach your
conclusion. Remember not to pick
argument for which there is no other side to the argument. You must pick an argument for which there
exists a counterargument. The grade of your paper is directly
correlated with the strength of your counterarguments and your ability to
refute good strong counterarguments.
There
are several potential outlines that could emanate from an argument.
Potential Paper Outline
1: You
could outline your entire paper around counterarguments.
Section
Heading 1
II.A. Counterargument 1
II.B. Refutation of Counterargument 1
Section
Heading 2
III.A. Counterargument 2
III.B. Refutation of Counterargument 1
And
so on…
Potential Paper Outline
2: Or
you may need to lay out arguments before you lay out counterarguments:
Section
Heading 1
II.A. Argument 1
II.B. Counterargument 1
II.C. Refutation of Counterargument 1
Section
Heading 2
III.A. Argument 2
III.B. Counterargument 2
III.C. Refutation of Counterargument 2
And
so on.
Potential Paper Outline
3: Or,
if your arguments need some space, you may need to outline your arguments first
and then outline your counterarguments and then the refutations.
Section
Heading 1
II Argument 1
Section
Heading 2
III. Argument 2
Section
Heading 3
IV. Counterargument 1
Section
Heading 4
V. Counterargument 2
Section
Heading 5
VI. Refutation of Counterargument 1
Section
Heading 6
VII. Refutation of Counterargument 2
Terms of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (PCSI 4771) Professor Baird, Spring
2009
This
class has been designated a critical thinking class. For this reason, the enrollment is capped at
25 students and there is a heavy writing, reading and critical thinking
requirement. The purpose of this class
is to use the context of the Supreme Court’s treatment of civil liberties and
civil rights to engage in critical legal analysis. Every paper and exam will require you to
engage in legal interpretive analysis in which you will make an argument about
the underlying logical implications of Supreme Court opinions. In other words, you will be making non-obvious
and insightful arguments about what the justices mean with the particular words
they choose in their opinions. Instead
of noticing what is on the surface, you will be evaluating the underlying
logical implications of what they are saying. Noticing something non-obvious and insightful will
require you to read the relevant readings anywhere from 10 to 25 times.
These
are extremely difficult assignments and you likely have no experience with this
kind of analysis. I have identified
certain pitfalls in engaging in legal interpretive analysis. One is that students tend to summarize
factual information in their papers – saying obvious facts about the case for
which there is no counterargument.
Another is that students tend to allow their own ideological biases
(normative arguments) into the analysis.
Another pitfall is that students tend to engage in unsubstantiated
causal analysis. To allow students to
overcome these pitfalls, there will be a test early in the semester in which
students will be required to differentiate among the various kinds of
statements (10% of your grade). We will
also be having weekly one page written assignments in which every student will
be required to identify some statement or set of statements from the reading
and offer two alternative (logically distinguishable) interpretations of that
text. These assignments will continue until every student in the class is
able to engage in interpretive analysis successfully. Until every student is able to do this
assignment successfully, these weekly assignments will be a part of your
participation grade. Afterwards, coming
to class prepared is all that you will need to do to get a perfect grade in
participation (25% of your grade). You get two free days of being absent,
regardless of the reason, and no more than that, regardless of the reason. The only exception I make is religious
holidays that are set out in advance.
In other words, death in the family, and car accidents are part of your
two day free absences. You can miss up
to four classes and still receive an A for participation.
In the
third week, there is a three page paper due, counting for 15% of your
grade. This paper can be thought of as
the first midterm exam. The second
midterm exam (5-7 pages) is due in the eleventh week and is worth 20% of your
grade. The last paper is due at the end
of the semester (10-12 pages) and will be worth 25% of your grade. An oral presentation of this paper (about three
minutes) will be worth 5% of your grade.
This paper has the same requirements as the midterm except that you will
use at least two outside sources (such as law review articles) in this
paper.
The
requirement of these papers is to engage in interpretive analysis in which you
make an argument, and then evaluate and refute counterarguments. If your paper has normative or causal
arguments or simply summarizes information from the cases, then you will not receive any credit for your paper. If your paper has an argument based on
interpretive analysis but does not consider and refute counterarguments, then
the highest grade you can expect is a D.
If you plagiarize, I will turn in the evidence to the Honors Council and
you will receive an F for the entire class.
I read drafts of papers that are
handed in ahead of time. I have explicit
grading criteria, as well as many examples of successful papers on my website: http://sobek.colorado.edu/~bairdv/teaching