A new college-level course, on “The Supreme Court and American Politics,” went online this month with scores of students from around the world already signed up. The course, prepared by Lyle Denniston, a contributor to Constitution Daily for the past seven years, is free. While arranged as an eight-week course, it is entirely self-paced, and will remain online for the next year.
The course is sponsored by the University of Baltimore and by the edX organization, a developer of “Massive Open Online Courses.” It is an outgrowth of several lectures that Denniston and Law School faculty delivered at the University’s Law School on the same topic late in 2016. Denniston has been a visiting professor at the Law School.
The aim of the course is to trace, from origins deep in English legal history and American colonial history up through the Senate’s recent consideration of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, the role of the Court in safeguarding the right of political representation in the American Republic. Along with selected readings, the course involves a series of videotaped lectures by Denniston and Law School dean Ronald Weich and Law School professors Garrett Epps and Gilda Daniels.
The first week is divided into two segments, serving as a survey of all of the issues that are explored more deeply in the following seven weeks. Each segment of the course includes quizzes to gauge the student’s progress, and there is a final exam. There is no time limit for those who wish to take the course through its conclusion, and every step is self-paced.
While focusing primarily on political representation and the development of the right to vote, the course also provides a basic review of the Supreme Court’s history from the Founding forward, along with a review of the nature of the American legal process as a whole.
Dean Weich is a former staff member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who was personally involved in the judicial confirmation process; he has also served in all three branches of the federal government. He joins Denniston for several lectures on the selection of nominees to the Supreme Court. Professor Epps teaches constitutional law, and he appears with Denniston for several lectures on the Court’s history and on the legal process in general. Professor Daniels is an expert on voting rights law and is a former staff member in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division; she and Denniston appear in the final two weeks’ lectures, focusing on the development of the “one-person, one-vote” doctrine and on compromises of that equality principle, with a special focus on the practice of racial and partisan gerrymandering.
Anyone may sign up for the course without paying any fee. A onetime modest fee is charged for students wishing to have access to several “bonus” features. Access to the course is through edX.org and the title of the course. The course is monitored by the University of Baltimore staff.
