POLS 025. Politics By Other Means? The Supreme Court and the Federal Judiciary in Politics

Considers who built judicial review over time, how they did it, and why.  Specific topics include the judicial politics of civil rights and civil liberties, party and presidential strategies for controlling - or delegating -- policy outcomes through the federal courts, Supreme Court adaptation to political crisis and pressures, how judges maintain impartiality and jurisprudential identities, changing elite and popular conceptions of the Constitution and of the Court's role in politics and society, how lawyers organize to shift the Court's direction, the terms of access to judicial review, the role of 'repeat players' in litigation and whether these players produce real poitical change, the politics of nominations, and the role of public opinion in sustaining the federal judiciary's legitimacy.
Previous coursework in political science may be helpful.
Social Sciences.
1 credit.
Catalog chapter: Political Science  
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/political-science


Access the class schedule to search for sections.



Print-Friendly Page (opens a new window)
Close Window