First Assignment
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Property Regulation in the Early Republic
Choose one of the following two assignments. Your paper is due in Class 8. You may submit the paper in class one day before the due date, or by email attachment. If you send the paper by attachment, you must keep a backup paper copy and be ready to submit that if there are any computer difficulties. Extensions will be granted only for good reasons explained well in advance; computer malfunctions are never an acceptable excuse for a late submission. Adherence to standards of academic honesty is required. You may use any citation system that you wish (MLA parenthetical reference style, Chicago Manual of Style, legal citation), as long as your references are clear and complete.
Option One: Case Brief. Write a brief and analysis on one of the four cases that we studied for Class 5. You should write this as a 2-3 pp. narrative summary of the case, but you will want to use the case brief handout as a way to guide your thinking and writing. Your brief should address the facts of the case, the legal and constitutional issues at stake, the Court’s holding, and its rationale. In addition, you should include your own argument as to why you believe that the case you are writing about was rightly or wrongly decided. You may use strictly constitutional reasons for your point, or you may place the case in the context of broader social and historical developments of the early republic.
Option Two: Response Paper. Do the four cases that we have studied for Class 5 offer a coherent vision of the role of the state in protecting and regulating property rights? What is that vision? If you choose to answer this question, you should write a 2-3 pp. response paper that focuses on explaining what holds the cases together (or not), drawing from the cases selectively rather than summarizing all four of them. You may use strictly constitutional reasons for your essay, or you may place the cases in the context of broader social and historical developments of the early republic.
Second Assignment
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The Strange Career of the Fourteenth Amendment
Choose one of the following three assignments. Your paper should be five to six pages long (with standard font and margins) and is due one day after Class 15. You may submit the paper in class one day before the due date, or by email attachment. If you send the paper by attachment, you must keep a backup paper copy and be ready to submit that if there are any computer difficulties. Extensions will be granted only for good reasons explained well in advance; computer malfunctions are never an acceptable excuse for a late submission. Adherence to standards of academic honesty is required. You may use any citation system that you wish (MLA parenthetical reference style, Chicago Manual of Style, legal citation), as long as your references are clear and complete.
Option One: Did the Supreme Court misinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment in the cases from Slaughterhouse to the turn of the century? Why or why not? You may construct a historical argument that draws on the history of the Fourteenth Amendment, Reconstruction, and postwar American history, or you may choose to focus on the cases themselves.
Option Two: Was Muller v. Oregon (1908) a victory for women? Why or why not?
Option Three: If you would like to write a paper that involves more in-depth historical research into one of the cases that we have studied in the last two or three weeks, you can do that as well, as long as you consult with me in advance. Examples could include the history of slaughterhouses in New Orleans in the 1870s; laws regulating railroad travel in the 1890s; court decisions about Chinese immigrants, and so on.
Third Assignment
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Choose one of the following three assignments. Your paper is due in Class 23. You may submit the paper in class one day before the due date, or by email attachment. If you send the paper by attachment, you must keep a backup paper copy and be ready to submit that if there are any computer difficulties. Extensions will be granted only for good reasons explained well in advance; computer malfunctions are never an acceptable excuse for a late submission. Adherence to standards of academic honesty is required; please exercise special care with sources found on the worldwide web. You may use any citation system that you wish (MLA parenthetical reference style, Chicago Manual of Style, legal citation), as long as your references are clear and complete.
1. Rewriting Brown. In a recent book entitled What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said (New York University Press, 2001), leading law professors shared their versions of the Brown decision. Now it’s your chance. If you were a Justice in 1954, what would your decision say? You should address the issues presented by the Fourteenth Amendment and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Among the questions to consider: will you overturn Plessy or merely state that it does not apply in this case? Was Plessy wrongly decided in 1896 or have changing times made it no longer applicable? What difference does the history of the Fourteenth Amendment (and the intentions of its framers) make for your decision? What will you say about enforcement of the decision? Note: if you choose this paper, you should read the full text of Brown (available on the class website or at 347 U.S. 483 [1954]) and you may use any additional authorities (especially Kelly and Horwitz) that you wish. You may also need to go back to the readings about Plessy to write your decision.
2. Amicus Brief. On May 7, 2003, the Ninth Circuit United States Court of Appeals will hear oral argument in the case of Oregon v. Ashcroft, which considers a challenge to Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. Write a brief as amicus curiæ (a friend of the Court) in which you advise the Court on the law’s constitutionality. You may wish to draw on broad historical trends as well as specific constitutional claims in your argument. Note: if you choose this paper, check out the class website, which has links to materials surrounding Oregon v. Ashcroft.
3. Design Your Own Topic. As before, if you would like to write a paper that involves more in-depth historical research into one of the cases that we have studied in the last two or three weeks, you can do that as well, as long as you consult with me in advance. Examples could include the free-speech rights of Nazis or Klansmen, the experience of Jehovah’s Witnesses or other religious minorities in the courts, tensions between the rights of the accused and victims’ rights, or broad issues raised by the work of the Warren Court.
Fourth Assignment
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Choose one of the following three assignments. Your paper (5-6 pages) is due in Class 28. You may submit the paper in class one day before the due date, or by email attachment. If you send the paper by attachment, you must keep a backup paper copy and be ready to submit that if there are any computer difficulties. Extensions will be granted only for good reasons explained well in advance; computer malfunctions are never an acceptable excuse for a late submission. Adherence to standards of academic honesty is required; please exercise special care with sources found on the worldwide web. You may use any citation system that you wish (MLA parenthetical reference style, Chicago Manual of Style, legal citation), as long as your references are clear and complete.
1. Suspect Classifications. Much of the law surrounding equality (including the Fourteenth Amendment itself) was conceptualized around the idea of race. Has the application of concepts like heightened scrutiny and suspect classifications to gender and/or sexual orientation been successful? Or are gender and/or sexual orientation social categories that are fundamentally different from race? You can write about either gender, sexual orientation, or both. Choose two or three cases to explore your argument, focusing primarily on the period after World War II (although you might choose to contrast an earlier case with a later one).
2. Men Behaving Badly. If Mr. Jones taunts Mr. Smith in a way that makes a hostile work environment for Mr. Smith, is this a form of discrimination “on the basis of sex” actionable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? To write this essay, you will want to read the Margaret Talbot essay, as well as some of the related cases that she cites. You may choose one of her cases as the focus of your essay, or you may stick to the purely hypothetical. (You may also decide for yourself whether Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith are heterosexual or not, and whether that makes any difference to your argument.)
3. Design Your Own Topic. As before, if you would like to write a paper that involves more in-depth historical research into one of the cases that we have studied in the last two or three weeks, you can do that as well, as long as you consult with me in advance. Examples could include affirmative action, sexual harassment, gay rights–or topics that we will cover next week, like new federalism or post-September 11th civil liberties issues.
