Fall 2025
Professor(s):
Seth Chandler (FACULTY)
Credits: 3
Course Areas: Constitutional Law
Time: 10:30a-12:00p TTH Location: 207
Course Outline: In this writing seminar, students will have the opportunity to deepen their understanding of constitutional law, exploring both standard and frequently overlooked areas within the field. The course emphasizes rigorous analytical thinking and meticulous writing. It also introduces students to the effective use of modern AI tools for research and editing purposes. Participants will be required to develop a law-review quality paper on a doctrinal topic negotiated during the seminar, with the goal of enhancing both their understanding of constitutional law and their writing skills. The instructor prefers topics drawn from contemporary debates though historical perspectives are also fair game. The curriculum covers established areas such as federalism, the post-Civil War amendments, and the Bill of Rights, while also expanding to include topics often omitted from standard courses, such as Indian law, immigration law, territories, and voting rights. The instructor welcomes students with diverse ideologies and backgrounds and sees class as providing a forum for the safe and respectful exploration of ideas.
Course Syllabus: Syllabus
Course Notes: (Face-to-Face w/ some SDE) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is face-to-face. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available. The instructor is planning for a small number of the 27 class sessions, less than a third, to be conducted via synchronous distance education (SDE). See the instructor’s syllabus for more details.
Prerequisites:
First Day Assignments:
Final Exam Schedule:
This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:
Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: Yes
Experiential Course Type: No
Bar Course: No
DistanceEd ABA: No
Pass-Fail Student Election: Unavailable (Instructor Preference)
Course Materials
Book(s) Required
Course Materials: Academic Legal Writing by Eugene Volokh (ISBN: 9781634598880)