Note:  We strongly recommend that participants arrive for the Summer Seminar having completed all Background and Primary Readings.  Readings marked with a ^ are found in the Seminar Notebook.

• Books:
  Alonzo Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers
  Rochelle Gurstein, The Repeal of Reticence

Day One: 

I. The Constitution and the "Social Question" (Prof. Moreno)

• Readings:
  ^Michael Les Benedict, “Laissez-Faire and Liberty”
  ^Michael Les Benedict, “Victorian Moralism and Civil Liberty in the Nineteenth- Century United States,” in The Constitution, Law, and American Life (Donald G. Nieman ed., 1992).
  ^Samuel P. Hays, The Response to Industrialism (first edition, University of Chicago Press, 1957).
  ^Peter Gay, “Fortifications for the Self,” in The Bourgeois Experience

Focus Questions:
In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Americans turned their attention to the astonishingly rapid socioeconomic transformation wrought by the industrial revolution.  Rural and small-town America became an urban nation and the greatest industrial power in the world.  The stress and strain of this radical had profound political and constitutional effects, as statesmen wrestled with what was called “the social question.”  In the last quarter of the late 19th century, the United States became even more legally and politically liberal or “laissez-faire,” with government’s role largely limited to economic promotion and distribution rather than regulation or redistribution.  The crisis of the 1890s, however, marked a shift toward a more ambivalent attitude in political economy, and a gradual shift toward intervention and statism in the “progressive era.”

What were the principal issues and institutions in late 19th century American politics?  What was the relationship between government and business?  What were the main limitations on government regulation?  What were the chief organizational responses to the urban and industrial revolutions?  How did the crisis of the 1890s alter American political development?

II. Historical Writing (M. Ruben)

Day Two: 

I. Progressivism (Prof. Moreno)

• Readings:
  ^Hays, The Response to Industrialism

Focus Questions:
The progressive movement was a mood among middle-class professionals that order needed to be imposed on the chaotic American free enterprise system.  Progressives addressed most of the same concerns as the Populists, but did so from a broader base, in a less angry, alienated, and apocalyptic way, for many progresses were themselves products of the economic system that they sought to reform.  Thus, the progressive movement was thoroughly ambivalent, and progressives frequently took opposite sides on many issues, and produced contradictory legislation with often unintended consequences.  But the one unifying theme of progressivism was statism:  at one level or another, progressives called for increased governmental power to deal with social problems.  It was in this period that the term “liberal” was inverted from its 19th century laissez-faire to its 20th century big-government definition.

What were the characteristics of the progressive movement?  How did the progressives’ understanding of the American Constitution differ from the founders’?  What were the sources of progressive constitutional thought?  How did Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson demonstrate a new view of federal and executive power?  How did the progressives expand government power?  How did the federal judiciary respond to progressive socioeconomic regulation?  What effect did World War One have on American government?  In what ways did the 1920s extend or reject progressivism?

II. The Progressives and the Idea s of the Founders (Prof. Pestritto)

• Readings:
  ^Frank Johnson Goodnow, “The American Conception of Liberty”

Focus Questions:
What was it that the Progressives were reacting to?  What principles did the Progressives think were outdated, or inadequate to deal with the circumstances of their day?  What did they think about the principles that informed the Constitution, and the individuals who wrote it?

What are the broad ideas that gave rise to the particular political arguments of Progressivism?  How did Progressivism relate to the idea of natural law or natural rights?  How did it relate to the philosophy of history, which was an emerging mode of thought in the 19th century?  How did the political theory of Progressivism relate to the “living” or organic conception of the Constitution?

How were Progressive ideas translated into proposals for reforming national political institutions?

Day Three:

I. The New Deal (Prof. Moreno)

• Readings:
  Alonzo Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers (Oxford, 1992), chs. 1-4.

Focus Questions:
In the New Deal era, the American people made a commitment to federal regulation of the economy and to American leadership in world affairs.  A relaxation of constitutional restraints on government power, particularly the deferential position of the Supreme Court, facilitated these changes.  Under the general welfare and interstate commerce powers, Congress became an all-purpose government that largely relegated the states to administrative subdivisions.  In both policymaking and quotidian operation of the government, Congress delegated vast powers to the president and the new bureaucracy.

What was the constitutional basis for New Deal legislation?  What constitutional problems did it pose?  What was the reaction of the Supreme Court and the outcome of Roosevelt’s confrontation with it?  How did the New deal affect American federalism?  How did World War II affect American constitutional principles?  How did the Cold War?  How were the states forced to comply with national standards regarding criminal procedure, moral legislation, and other matters?

II. Historical Writing (M. Ruben)

Day Four: 

I. The Constitution and the “Culture War” (Prof. Moreno)

• Readings:
  ^Alvin Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class
  ^David Potter, “The Roots of American Alienation” and “Rejection of American Society”
  ^Hamby, chs. 5-end

Focus Questions:
The most significant change in the second half of the twentieth century was the great cultural revolution that climaxed in the late 1960s.  An expanding set of dissident and marginalized groups and individuals who regarded themselves as victims—blacks and other ethnic minorities, women, students, the elderly, disabled, criminals, pacifists, environmentalists, and homosexuals—regarded themselves as victims, or advocates of the victimized an abused.  Their claims represented, at the least, a radical extension of the traditional American principles of liberty and equality and, in some cases, a revolt against deeply engrained religious, moral, and political norms.  Constitutionally, this revolt challenged the legitimacy of much of American political culture, as the New Deal liberal regime became reviled as “the establishment.”  The most remarkable feature of the era was the reassertion of judicial power, as the Supreme Court recovered from its Post-Court-packing deference and became a leader, and the most hotly contested institution, in the late twentieth century “culture wars.”

What “new classes” did the New Deal state empower?  How did the status of black Americans change from Reconstruction to World War II?  What was the basis of the Supreme Court’s Brown decision?  What problems did it present?  What effects did it have?  How did the relationship of religion and public life change after World War II?  What was the basis for the adoption of affirmative action in employment, education, and voting in the 1960-70s?  What were the sources of the Watergate crisis?  How did the Supreme Court contribute to late 20th century “culture war”?

II. Historical Writing (M. Ruben)

Day Five: 

I. Theories of Constitutional Interpretation (Prof. Whittington)

• Readings:
  ^Gillman, Graber, and Whittington, American Constitutionalism Volume 1, Ch. 1: “Introduction to Constitutionalism”

II. Reticence, Exposure, and the First Amendment (R. Gurstein)

• Readings:
  Rochelle Gurstein, The Repeal of Reticence, chs. 1, 2, 4, 11

Day Six

I. The Constitutional Sources of the Culture Wars

• Readings:
  ^Lochner v. New York
  ^Olmstead v. United States
  ^Katz v. United States
  ^Griswold v. Connecticut
  ^Roe v. Wade
  ^Planned Parenthood v. Casey
  ^Bowers v. Hardwick
  ^Lawrence v. Texas

Focus Questions
Does Justice Peckham avoid the charge (levied by Justice Holmes) in Lochner that he has set aside constitutional adjudication for policy-making, thereby destroying the distinction between “judge” and “legislator”?
What is the basis of the right to privacy announced in Griswold v. Connecticut? Why do Justices Black and Stewart deny the existence of such a right?  How does it differ from the “right of privacy” that the Court had fashioned based upon the Fourth Amendment?
How does the Court justify the right to procure an abortion in Roe v. Wade? What interests does it weigh in reaching its decision? What are the most important objections to the decision offered by Justices Rehnquist and White? Does Justice Blackmun’s attempt to find the “trimester” framework “embedded” in the Constitution leave him vulnerable to the charge that he is “legislating” rather than “interpreting” the Constitution? What is the other possible constitutional grounding for an abortion right, in Justice Stewart’s opinion?
How does the Court both save and modify Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey? How does the Court understand the doctrine of stare decisis and the role of the Court in American society? What criticisms of the Court's approach are offered by Justice Blackmun, Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justice Scalia?
Why does the Court decline to extend the right to privacy to protect homosexual conduct in Bowers v. Hardwick? Why does Justice Brennan disagree with the Court's view?
In Lawrence v. Texas, why does the Court depart from its earlier understanding in Bowers v. Hardwick? How does the state law at issue in this case differ from that involved in the Bowers case? How does Justice O'Connor approach the issues differently from the Court? Why is Justice Scalia unpersuaded by the reasoning of the Court?

II. District Adaptation

Day Seven:  Trip to the Whitney Museum

 Day Eight: 

“A Republic If You Can Keep It” (Prof. Poelvoorde)

• Readings:
  from Tocqueville, Democracy in America:
  ^Volume I, Part II, Chapter 10 excerpts
  ^Volume II, Part II, Ch.1, Part IV, Ch. 6
  ^Joseph Cropsey, “The United States as Regime and the Sources of the American Way of Life”

Focus Questions:

What are the “defects” of popular government that may cause the American regime to decay
and collapse–or transform into another form of regime? Which ones in your judgment pose
the greatest threat to the United States in the coming centuries?

Why do critics argue that the “activist” judicial expansion of privacy undermines the
constitutional separation of powers?  How do defenders of judicially-created rights respond?

II. The Intellectual Legacy of Stalinism in America (R. Radosh)

• Readings:
  ^William L. O’Neill: A Better World: The Great Schism: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals, “The Blacklist,” “The Question of Liberal Guilt,” and “Rewriting the Past”
  ^John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr , In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage, “See No Evil”, and “From Denial to Justification”
  ^Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh, Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony’s Long Romance with the Left, “Preface,” “HUAC Goes toHollywood,” “Elia Kazan,” and “Conclusion”