Course Section | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

This offering meets 2 hours per week, but is worth 3 points of credit. The additional point of credit reflects the instructor's certification that the course assignments require student engagement and responsibilities beyond that found in a two hour lecture course.

This course will deal with the Constitutional law that governs relations of church and state in the United States. It will cover aspects of the free exercise and nonestablishment of religion, including areas of overlap and tension between the two clauses. It will consider what counts as religion for Constitutional purposes and the relationship between religious and other associations. The materials for general reading will be primarily cases. Participants will be expected to read academic commentary in areas of special interest for them.

Members of the seminar will do a paper for which they get major writing credit, and which will be the main source of evaluation (secondarily, evaluation will be on discussion in the seminar and comments on other papers). The second half of the semester will be devoted to discussion of your papers, with brief written responses by other seminar members.

Major Writing Credit will be granted to students who complete the written work as required by the instructor.