|US Constitutional History and Law|
|US CONST HIS/L|
|CLASS CODE:||POLSC 380||CREDITS: 3|
|DIVISION:||LANGUAGE & LETTERS|
|DEPARTMENT:||HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, POLITICAL SCIENCE|
|GENERAL EDUCATION:||This course does not fulfill a General Education requirement.|
|DESCRIPTION:||Foundations of constitutionalism, the development of the federal system, the principles of judicial review, nationalism and sectionalism, commerce, due process, equal protection and civil rights.|
|TAUGHT:||Summer 2004, Winter 2006, Summer 2006|
|CONTENT AND TOPICS:||Republicanism and the ideological origins of the American Revolution and Constitution; Creating the Constitution; the early Republic and interpreting the Constitution; slavery; common law and civil law; commerce and law; reform and law; changes in family law; civil rights; gender and the law.|
|GOALS AND OBJECTIVES:||Explore selected historical themes in the history of American Law and the Constitution.
Read and understand key relevant historical documents, including the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, selected Supreme Court decisions, and others.
Introduce students to key interpretive models used by historians to understand the history of American Constitution and law.
Assist students in using interpretive tools-including the concepts of law, political power, class, gender, modernization to understand appropriate historical themes.
Develop critical thinking skills in order to effectively weigh and use the above-mentioned tools and models.
Develop communciation skills in order to effectively communciate learned material.
|REQUIREMENTS:||Students will be required to read 1,000+ pages, write a 10 page paper, give an oral presentation using Power Point, and know the basic work of 25 significant scholars in the field.
|PREREQUISITES:||No prerequisites, but students are encouraged to have AmHer 170, Hist 201-202 and Hist 300. All students in 300 level courses will be expected to know how to research, write, and document a basic historical essay.|
|EFFECTIVE DATE:||January 2003|