CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

PENN LAW FACULTY

PENN LAW ADJUNCTS & LECTURERS

TOLL PUBLIC INTEREST CENTER PARTNERS AT PENN

PRO BONO PLACEMENTS

Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office
American Association of University Professors
American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey; Pennsylvania
Anti-Defamation League
Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP
CeaseFire PA
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
Center for Disability Law & Policy
Center for Individual Rights
Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights
City of Philadelphia Law Department – Appeals and Litigation; Telecommunications
Committee of Seventy
Community Legal Services, Inc.
Defender Association of Philadelphia – Appeals
Defender Association of Philadelphia – Police Corruption
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Inc. (FIRE)
General Counsel of the School District of Philadelphia
Institute for Justice
Kline & Specter
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights
Mann & Mitchell
Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project
Moldovsky & Moldovsky, LLC
National Programming for the National Constitution Center
New Jersey State Bar Association
Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office – Civil
Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission
Public Defender’s Office – Montgomery County, PA
Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia (PILCOP)
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN)
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Field Center for Children’s Policy & Research
The Rutherford Institute
U.S. Dept. of Justice – Counterterrorism Section
Washington Legal Foundation
Zionist Organization of America’s Center for Law & Justice

PENN LAW COURSES

We live in an administrative state, populated by thousands of governmental bodies that collectively exercise pervasive authority over the entire economy and the lives of every American. Unlike courts, which enjoy explicit constitutional independence, administrative agencies constitute a constitutionally ambiguous "fourth branch of government." Also unlike courts, most agencies have authority to wield a wide variety of regulatory powers other than adjudication, including rulemaking, licensing, advice-giving, and prosecution. "Administrative law" is the body of constitutional, statutory, Executive, and "common law" principles that constrain and thereby seek to legitimate the exercise of these powers. This course will be a critical examination of these principles. Topics include: the place of agencies in our tripartite structure of government, the choice between rulemaking and adjudication as devices for making policy, procedural requirements for the exercise of various administrative powers, and judicial review of administrative decisions.

This course will focus on topics not covered or covered slightly, in the first-year constitutional law course. There will be some, but hopefully not much, overlap with other advanced elective courses. Emphasis will be placed on important current issues and recent or pending cases. Among the topics, or subject areas, to be discussed: Civil liberties in the Age of Terrorism; immigration, citizenship and alien rights; congressional enforcement of the reconstruction amendments; new developments in racial equality (e.g., Michigan) sexuality and the constitution (e.g. Lawrence); religion and the First Amendment; the distribution of national power; commerce clause limitations on state power; congressional regulation of the political process.

This seminar will consider the law of intentional torts from the perspective of intergroup and intragroup conflict. Although many tort actions involve strangers, intentional tort actions very often arise from the repeated or continuous interaction between contending groups or communities distinguished by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, or class. Moreover, members of the groups or communities may be divided among themselves and resort to the tort law as well to resolve their internal differences. The goal of the course is to develop techniques for analyzing legal disputes with regard to the full context in which they arise, particularly as viewed from the perspective of groups or persons of subordinate status. Among the topics to be explored are the construction of women's consent to medical procedures (including sterilization, female genital surgery, and plastic surgery); consent to physical and emotional assault within the context of male bonding associations (teams, gangs, and fraternities); false imprisonment and worker exploitation; gentrification as a tort; and defamation, invasion of privacy and the maintenance of social stratification. Videos and ethnographic readings will be employed liberally.

In this seminar we will ask: When should legal liability turn on subjective bad intent? We will explore mental state requirements in private and public law, including: the principle of good faith in contract law and corporate fiduciary law; the distinction between intentional and non-intentional torts; scienter under the federal securities laws; mens rea in criminal law, and; impermissible purpose under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Each student will participate actively in each session, present a short paper in an assigned week, and submit a final paper on an approved topic on the last day of class.

This course is designed as a preliminary inquiry into the relationship of the state to dissident religious and anti-religious speech and activity from the colonial period to the present. The course will proceed chronologically from the early seventeenth century through the early twenty-first century. Subjects of inquiry range from witchcraft through civil rights, sedition to marriage. We will probe in some depth, and through a variety of media (including music and film, as well as written and spoken words), into changes and continuities over time in popular and legal conceptions of the most important values in American society, and whether those values can accommodate dissent. This course will take the import of words and other symbolic expression seriously, respecting the integrity of systems of belief while maintaining a high level of scholarly inquiry. The very nature of the subject matter, however, requires us to engage from time to time with material that may be offensive to students' religious beliefs. In addition, the connections of blasphemy to profanity and obscenity are persistent and undeniable, and students will encounter words and pictures that have been the subject of profound controversy.

This course explores the tensions, common interests and political ramifications of religious faith and religious activity in an ostensibly secular society. The course will focus on constitutional issues, including the establishment and free exercises clauses of the federal constitution, and state and federal statutes such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It will also address questions of broad social applicability, including but not limited to compulsory flag salutes, school prayer, religious accommodation for employees, polygamy and same-sex marriage, drugs, ritual slaughter of animals, government funding of religious activity, and Sabbath observance. The course will cover the history and theory of religious freedom in the United States, as well as the development of constitutional doctrine and caselaw.

Course Description and Objectives Recent constitutional reconstructions in Iraq and Afghanistan have called new attention to the problems of institutional design of political systems. In this course we will examine the design and implementation of national constitutions. In particular, we will address the following questions. What are the basic elements of constitutions? How do these elements differ across time, across region, and across regime type? What is the process by which states draft and implement constitutions? What models, theories, and writings have influenced the framers of constitutions? In the first half of the course, we will review the historical roots of constitutions and investigate their provisions and formal characteristics. We will also discuss the circumstances surrounding the drafting of several exemplary or noteworthy constitutions, from all regions of the world. We will then examine particular features of institutional design in depth. These will include judicial review, presidentialism vs. parliamentarism, federalism, and the relationship of the national legal system to international law. Students will be expected to write a number of short papers in response to weekly readings and to prepare a final seminar paper on a topic relevant to the course, selected in conjunction with the instructor.

A study of the resolution of cases connected to more than one jurisdiction: when different jurisdictions (states or nations) have adopted different substantive rules of law, which should govern? Major topics will include the more significant historical approaches (vested rights and interest analysis); the Second Restatement; the role of the U.S. Constitution in interstate conflicts; international conflicts; and domestic relations.

This course will focus upon constitutional law issues that arise during the investigation of a criminal case. Attention is given to Fourth Amendment limitations on police conduct; the scope of the exclusionary rule; the law of confessions, including Miranda v. Arizona and its progeny; lineups and other pre-trial identification procedures; the use of informants and secret agents; and the privilege against self-incrimination in the grand jury setting.

This course engages foundational issues in jurisprudence and constitutional theory, including the nature of law, the authority of the Constitution's text, interpretive methods (e.g., originalism versus nonoriginalism), the countermajoritarian difficulty, and the role of nonjudicial actors in constitutional decisionmaking.

A study of basic issues of federal constitutional law. Major topics will be: the role of courts in the interpretation of enforcement of the U.S. Constitution; the scope of federal legislative powers under the Constitution; federalism limitations placed on the powers of state and local governments; individual civil, political, and human rights under the U.S. Constitution, with the primary emphasis on the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The United States Constitution purports to restrain the actions of state and federal governments. When these restraints are transgressed, the injured parties and their representatives look to the federal courts for remedies. This course considers the legal doctrines that shape the courts' readiness to provide those remedies and the ways in which doctrines are likely to manifest themselves in the course of litigation. Topics include: the availability of damage actions, sovereign and official immunities, jurisdictional problems, abstention, Younger v. Harris and its emanations, standing and issues of institutional litigation. The format is Socratic.

This seminar will evaluate major theoretical works about the constitution, its meaning and interpretation. We shall begin with several of the most important essays in the Federalist Papers, regarded by many as America's foremost contribution to political theory. Among the other theorists whose work will be considered are Ames, Hand, Ely Michelman, Ackerman, Sunstein, MacKinnon, Bork, Dworkin, and Scalia.

This seminar changes every year to cover cases and legal issues that occur during the term and throughout the previous two years. Topics to be covered this semester will include the terrorism cases, the torture memos, gay marriage, the right to die, affirmative action, sentencing guidelines, the death penalty, election law controversies, and other topics that come up during the term. Students are required to complete close to 250 pages of reading each week and participate actively in the seminar. The final paper will be approximately 40 pages in length and will concern a topic dealing with law and politics. Drafts of the final paper must be submitted throughout the semester and the paper will be due at the last class session.

This course will furnish a basic introduction to the modern civil law systems of continental Europe. The course will focus on the three most influential systems (France, Germany, and Italy); these systems have provided much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America with the bedrock of their legal systems. Topics to be covered include: the civil codes; the structure of the court system; constitutional and administrative law; criminal process; and social welfare law.

Discussion of the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech, press and assembly during the second half of the twentieth century occupied a central place in the Supreme Court's practice of judicial review. As the century closed, the "information age" brought new urgency to some elements of the discussion, and threatens to transform others. This seminar will examine the development of the federal doctrines protecting freedom of expression, and the ways in which these doctrines are likely to occupy the courts in the next decade. Discussion will include problems of incitement and threats, conspiracy, compelled speech, anonymity, libel, obscenity, emotionally abusive speech, intellectual property, privacy, access to public fora and media structure. The first nine weeks will consist of discussion of class materials presented by the instructor; the last four weeks will consist of presentation of papers by students.

This course will introduce the basic theories and legal principles underlying equal employment opportunity law in the United States. The course will focus on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Americans With Disabilities Act: the fundamental federal statutes prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, gender, religion, age and disability. Topics will include current developments in the law of affirmative action, sexual harassment and retaliation, and an employer's duty to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees in the work place.

This course will explore selected theoretical and doctrinal aspects of the field known as federal Indian law. We will study the historical, conceptual and legal roots of tribal sovereignty; the development of federal doctrines concerning the powers of tribal governments; and the current state of federal law concerning tribal legislative, executive and judicial authority. Attention will be given to the division of authority among tribal, federal, and state governments, as well as to questions concerning possible tensions between governmental powers and individual rights. We will consider a number of current issues, which may include land claims; gaming; family law; economic development; religious and cultural rights; and natural resources. The course is open both to Penn Law students and to students enrolled in other Schools at Penn.

This course will acquaint students with speech and religion clauses of the First Amendment. We will cover freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, free exercise of religion and the Establishment Clause.

This course will acquaint students with speech and religion clauses of the First Amendment. We will cover freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, free exercise of religion and the Establishment Clause.

This course will study legal material as expressive of, and as supportive of, differing concepts of equality and its role as a social value, rather than as simply part of a course of doctrinal development or a system of analytical reasoning. Its premise is that differences in those concepts are often not recognized, and the contestability and bases of one's approach to equality issues are often not acknowledged. Substantively, the course will include aspects of legal regulation affecting the status of racial, religious and ethnic "minorities," women, gay and lesbian people, and people perceived as disabled, as well as the interaction between the law and inequality in the distribution of wealth and income. It will do this in part by examining "antidiscrimination," "equal protection," or "poverty" law, but will focus also on issues of equality implicit in such mainstream first-year subjects as Procedure and Contracts. To add the course after it begins, you must have attended classes from the first day.

This seminar will investigate the legal and political philosophy of James Wilson. Wilson, one of six people to have signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, was a major intellectual figure of the founding era, and perhaps its most distinguished legal philosopher; his lectures on law of 1790-92 inaugurated the law department of the University of Pennsylvania. We shall examine his influence on the drafting of the Constitution, looking closely at his role in the convention debates of 1787. We shall next briefly examine the Constitution he wrote for Pennsylvania in 1790, and then read his lectures on law for the light they shed on the legal philosophy of the founding era. No technical training in philosophy will be presupposed for this seminar.

This will be a survey caselaw based course. For example, will consider content regulation of the media (defamation and indecency), rights of journalists, structural regulation of media. There will be some over-lap with First Amendment/Free Speech course, but not enough to prevent taking both.

Privacy law is an emerging legal specialty with old, established roots in common law and the constitution. This course examines some of the cases, constitutional provisions, and state and federal statutes that together comprise the privacy law of the United States. The fundamental concern of the course will be the concept of privacy in its diverse -- and sometimes controversial -- uses by legislatures, courts, and the right-claiming public. The course will consider the actual and ideal role of law in protecting commonly ascribed rights of privacy and private choice. The course will cover privacy in relation to journalism, the internet, finance, government surveillance, health care, families, and sexuality.

An investigation of the development and current understanding of the doctrine of substantive due process, i.e., the principle that the Due Process Clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments place substantive limits on governmental action. Topics will include the pre-14th Amendment understanding of Due Process, Lochner-era economic substantive due process, modern individual liberty-oriented substantive due process, and the intended relevance of the privileges and Immunities Clause.

This seminar will examine a select group of Supreme Court cases dating back to the 1790s and coming up to the Court's current term. Each member of the seminar will select a justice, or a member of the Supreme Court bar of some significance, past or present, and will (a) report orally in class, and (b) write a concise essay, about the justice or lawyer.