This course is an intensive study of the highest court in the federal judiciary, focusing on the place of the Supreme Court in the American constitutional order. Areas of study may include the relationship between the Court and the other branches of the federal government as well as the states; the Court's power of judicial review; and judicial politics and statesmanship. We will examine these kinds of issues by investigating how the Court has interpreted the Constitution in some of its most historic decisions.
Instructors: Jeffrey Sikkenga is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ashland University, and is co-editor of History of American Political Thought. James R. Stoner is Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University. He is the author of Common Law Liberty: Rethinking American Constitutionalism and Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke, Hobbes, and the Origins of American Constitutionalism.