Constitution Supercedes Citizen’s Right

Overview

This course is intended to teach you how to think about what constitutions do and how they do it. At one level, constitutions provide the structure for politics by creating political positions and defining the authorities that accrue to the holders of those positions. They also lay out the limits and constraints on those authorities, sometimes and in some cases to better effect than others. At another level, constitutions define: the nature of the state and its relationship to citizens; qualifications for citizenship and citizens’ rights and duties; and (in more or less detail) the nature and quality of citizen representation and input into policy making. More generally, constitutions define both political actors and the relationships between them.

Constitutions are political documents. What a given constitution contains depends on the intent of its writers and the politics of putting it into effect. We will focus in this course principally on those elements of constitutions that structure relationships between political actors and define the outlines of politics and policy making, with an eye to understanding why and to what ends actors seek specific constitutional provisions. In the process, we will look at some of the reasons that constitutions fail and ask whether or to what extent constitutional failures in history have been inevitable.

Item Percent of

total grade

Initial Iraq paper* 10

Short topic papers, 5 points each: 40

Rights

Commitment

Regional authority

Government system

Legislature

Electoral rules

Judiciary

Commerce

Group project and presentation* 5

Participation, 5 points each: 15

presentation attendance

peer paper evaluation*

discussions, etc

Final paper* 30

first draft*, 5 points

final draft*, 25 points

Requirements and grading

Your final grade will depend on your grades for the items in the table at right. Items marked with an asterisk (*) are required: failure to complete a requirement without a valid excuse is grounds for a failing grade for the entire course. Each student must write eight short (1-2 pages) topic papers, one five-page paper, one in-class peer-evaluation paper, and one ten- to fifteen-page final paper. Each student also must participate in a group project culminating in an in-class presentation at the end of the semester. Class attendance is not normally required or graded, except for presentations and the in-class peer paper evaluations, but students are encouraged to attend, and attendance can impact a student’s final grade.

Initial Iraq paper (10 points possible): Due at the beginning of the sixth week (October 5), the initial Iraq paper should comprise a 5-page analysis of the principal problems facing anyone who wants create a constitutional framework for Iraq. You should not dwell on issues of invasion and occupation, except to the extent that these have created or exacerbated purely Iraqi problems that constitution makers must deal with. In this paper you should seek to answer the question “what are the main problems in Iraq that any constitution needs to address in order to create a stable, functioning political system?” You should also, if space allows, briefly suggest constitutional measures that you think would deal with the problems you have identified.

Short topic papers (5 points possible each paper, for a possible total of 40 points): Each student must write eight short (one to two pages, single-page papers preferred) topic papers, due almost every Tuesday from week 4 through week 13, inclusive. Due dates and topics are specified in the Course Outline. Each topic paper should do four things: a) state why the topic is (or is not) important for constitutional consideration; b) outline the most important possibilities for variation with regard to the topic; c) sketch how, why, and to what extent different variations lead to different outcomes; and d) discuss issues of enforcement (and enforceability) and, if relevant, legitimacy. Structure your paper so that it is easy for your reader to tell that you have done these four things.

Final paper (30 points possible in total, of which: 5 points