Class Information
Fall 2026
7397 WRS Topics in Const Law - DOW- 25997
Professor(s):
David Dow (FACULTY)
Credits: 3
Course Areas: Constitutional and Criminal Law
Time: 1:00p-2:30p MW Location:
Course Outline: This class will examine three or four areas of constitutional doctrine is deep detail. Readings will include both caselaw and legal and historical scholarship, drawn from academic journals as well as books. The areas to be studied may include any of the following: First Amendment freedom of speech; First Amendment religion clauses; implications of the Thirteenth Amendment; Congress's power to regulate commerce (including the so-called dormant commerce clause); modes of constitutional interpretation; judicial review (including the obligation of the states and coordinate branches of the federal government to regard Supreme Court decisions as authoritative), as well as Congress's power to regulate federal jurisdiction; the power to regulate elections; gerrymandering and adjacent issues of representation.
Students will write two papers in a single area of coverage. One will be a detailed annotated bibliography; the other will be an original analytic argument. The aggregate word count for the two papers will be approximately 5,000 words. In addition class participation will count for up to 25% of the final grade.
Course Syllabus:
Course Notes: (Dual Mode) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed as face to face, but this applies for the second two-thirds of the course. For the face to face 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. Due to exigencies in the schedule of the instructor, during the first several weeks of the course the instruction mode will be Synchronous Online.
Quota=12.
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)
