Dept Sem:Constitutions AncMod

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This is an exploratory seminar in political theory and jurisprudence. We consider the question: “What is a constitution, and how might we conceptualize it?” In considering this question, we will also consider others, both normative and empirical: What purposes should (or do) constitutions serve? How are they (or should they) be crafted, maintained, enforced or changed? How do they (or should they) incorporate cultural differences and/or protect cosmopolitan or universalist conceptions of human/individual rights? How are they to be interpreted and by whom? Of course, none of these are new questions, and the literature exploring them is large, and of variable quality. A principal focus of the course will be the contemporary American constitution, but our approach will be comparative across both time and political (national) context. We will read Aristotle and Polybius to consider both ancient Greek and Roman considerations of this important and politically contested concept. We will consider competing understandings of how constitutions ought to be crafted in the early modern period: Locke and Montesquieu; Rousseau’s Social Contract and The Government of Poland; selections from Hamilton’s and Madison’s contributions to The Federalist Papers. The second half of the course turns first to some case examples of actual constitution making and/or struggles to both re-constitute and to re-constitutionalize societies in the Middle East, such as Egypt; in Eastern Europe (Georgia) and perhaps in the larger political/economic context of the European Union (WTO). The final weeks of the course will turn then to interpretive debates on the nature and substance of the American Constitution among thinkers such as Ronald Dworkin, Antonin Scalia, Cass Sunstein and Jeremy Waldron. We will read selected books and articles and selected Supreme Court cases. Hanna Pitkin has argued: “[T]o understand what a constitution is, one must look not for some crystalline core or essence of unambiguous meaning but precisely at the ambiguities, the specific oppositions that this specific concept helps us to hold in tension.” Without making claims for either the truth or persuasiveness of this claim, it is perhaps an interesting place to begin. Requirements: submission of short reading notes (2-3 pages) or reading questions, in selected weeks in preparation for the seminar; a seminar paper due at the completion of the course. Government Honor Students Only