For a complete list of course offerings in Constitutional Law, including full descriptions and faculty who will be teaching the offerings in 2008-2009, refer to the online Curriculum Guide.
The U.S. Constitution performs two main functions: first, it creates and empowers the principal organs of the federal government; and second, it imposes limits on the actions that may be taken by the federal government, the states, and the subdivisions of the latter. Advanced courses in constitutional law provide students opportunities to study various aspects of these functions in depth. Although it is conventional to divid the study of constitutional law into "structural" and "rights" issues, the two domains intertwine. Thus, nominally structural courses such as the Constitution and Foreign Affairs and Federal Courts typically consider how the Constitution allocates power in the context of individual claims of right. Likewise, although the "rights" courses work out the entailments of constitutional language that guarantees "equal protection" and forbids deprivations of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," they do so in substantial party by asking the further question of which institutions of American democracy are best suited to provide answers. Many of the course and seminar offerings locate questions of American constitutional law in the context of a broader international debate about human rights and other issues.
