Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor Super

J.D. Seminar 637 | 3 credit hours

Although numerous courses in law school discuss state law, few courses discuss in much detail the governmental organs that make and enforce that law. State constitutions often include separation of powers provisions and declarations of rights that will be familiar to students of the federal Constitution, but in other respects their functions and roles are quite different. State legislatures are by no means mini-Congresses, and local governments are anything but mini-states. States’ interactions with localities implicate some of the same issues as federal-state relations, but those issues often get resolved in very different ways. Both the aspirations and the fears shaping those relationships are fundamentally different for both institutional and historical reasons. Local government law confronts one vital problem largely absent from federal constitutional law: deciding which political, social, and economic communities merit official recognition. We will consider both geographic and functional fragmentation.

The course will address and seek to reconcile the multiple visions and functions of local government in the U.S. political system. These include roles as local representatives of state governments, as distinct political, social, and economic communities, and as devices for organizing economic activity. We also will examine the various constitutional and statutory arrangements designed to prevent state and local governments from trammeling on one another’s proper domains.

Several seats in the seminar will be available to students seeking to satisfy the WR requirement. Other students will be required to submit a term paper, for which they should have a written description of their topic approved by mid-October. They may, but need not, submit an outline or a preliminary draft of the paper. Evaluation for all students will be based on the papers submitted and on the student’s engaged, thoughtful participation in the seminar.

Students may not receive credit for both this seminar and Local Government Law.

This seminar requires a paper. J.D. students must register for the 3 credit section of the seminar if they wish to write a paper fulfilling the Upperclass Legal Writing Requirement. The paper requirements of the 2 credit section will not fulfill the J.D. Upperclass Legal Writing Requirement.