Why impose a course on constitutional law on our students?

[DavidEBernstein at aol.com]

I always tell my students that when they are sworn in to the bar they will  
take an oath to uphold the Constitution, they should have some idea of what 
they  are swearing to uphold and some theory as to what it means, and that they  
shouldn't confuse the latest pronouncement of five Justices with "the  
Constitution."
 
In a message dated 7/9/2007 3:56:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
SLevinson at law.utexas.edu writes:

This  comes under the category of shameless self-promotion.  Our
colleague  Malla Pollack has founded a new (online) law review, the
American Justice  L. Rev., and the first issue includes a piece of mine,
"REFLECTIONS ON THE  ROLE OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IN THE LAW SCHOOL
CURRICULUM."  It can be  found at   

http://www.ajsl.us/review/Pollack%20LevinsonforPUBLICATION.pdf

To  make a longish story short, I argue that there's no good reason to
require  constitutional law (as is done at most law schools, save for the
University  of Chicago) in terms, e.g., of preparing students for the
bar--we don't  teach lots of subjects that are covered on the bar--or
preparing students  to practice law--most of our students will never have
a constitutional law  case in their entire careers, though they are
likely to have lots of cases  in subjects that we don't require, e.g.,
family law.  So, if there is  a justification for requiring
constitutional law, as I think there is, it  is to prepare them to be
good citizens and civic leaders.  But it  should be obvious that
preparation for that role does not require that our  students learn the
latest three- and four-part tests or most other  contemporary doctrine.
Not surprisingly, I argue that it does require an  historical overview of
American constitutional development (which can be  taught, normatively,
as a story either of decline or progress, or neutrally  as the way that
the Constitution, for better or worse, has actually  developed over the
past 220 years) and paying far more attention that we  now pay to what I
have come to call the "hard-wired Constitution."   Indeed, not to put too
fine a point on it, I think that the legal academy  is criminally
negligent in failing to teach our students about what are in  fact the
most important parts of the Constitution (which, of course, are  never
litigated and most of which raise few questions of "interpretation"  the
way legal academics define such questions).  

Obviously, I  would be delighted to read any responses, on- or off-line,
to my arguments,  which are, just as obviously, meant to stir up a debate
(and not only to  promote sales of my book and adoption of our casebook
:)  )

sandy


 



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