Michael Dorf has a very funny article over at FindLaw called "The Five-Minute Law School" and here is an excerpt in which he tells 1Ls all they need to know about Con Law:
"In many constitutional law courses, the professor spends about half the semester setting forth the pros and cons of "judicial review," the power of American courts to declare laws unconstitutional. This is fun, to be sure, but not very important as a practical matter, because the issue has been settled since 1803: American courts have this power, and no one's taking it away from them anytime soon.
Most of the rest of constitutional law is a matter of name-calling. Conservatives denounce liberals for judicial activism on abortion, gay rights, and church-state separation, while liberals denounce conservatives for judicial activism on affirmative action, states' rights, and election law. Your job as an aspiring constitutional lawyer is to figure out where you stand on these issues, and then accuse those who disagree with you of being either judicial activists or hypocrites."
Well worth a read, especially for those of us who teach in the first year.
Rick Duncan
Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered." --The Prisoner
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