Rights and Liberties

Hi everyone and my apologies for the late posting of this episode! For this first episode covering the main content of this course, we are going to delve into the First Amendment and in particular the religious components known as the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. Our discussion will center on key cases for each clause: Everson, Abington, and Lemon v. Kurtzman (as well as Zelmon v. Simmons-Harris) for Establishment and Barnette, Sherbert, Employment Division v. Smith, and

Hello Rights and Liberties Course Members! It's week 3 and so we have now moved into discussing the operating methods of the Supreme Court--the processes for justice selection, the processes for case selection, the processes for decision-making, and all the steps in between. Some critical concepts for this week: standing, ripeness, mootness, and justiciability. We're going to read through a few cases that relate to these topics and try to better know what is meant by standing and mootness. And just

Welcome back listeners to the third episode in our series on Rights and Liberties! In this episode, we will cover the 8 methods of interpretation presented in our textbook: textual analysis, precedent, Constitutional doctrine, logical reasoning, "living Constitution", foreign law and courts, consequentialism (aka pragmatism), and originalism. We'll also get a brief 'practice' session with these methods using the Kennedy v. Bremerton School district case from 2022. Interpretation here we come!

Hi all, and welcome to our second episode on Rights and Liberties! In this podcast, we're going to set up a bit of the history that leads into the creation of our rights, particularly the events just prior to the creation of the Constitution and eventually the Bill of Rights. Our history involves a lot of debate about those rights, from the perspectives of the Anti-Federalists and the Federalists. But it also involves the Second Founding after the Civil War which leads to the Fourteenth Amendment

Hello everyone and welcome to our podcast on Rights and Liberties! In this first episode, we will get an introduction to this course and in particular to the course Canvas site. Some of the most critical tools you will need to navigate this class are the Weekly Roadmap Pages which are discussed early on. We will spend about 15-20 minutes on that as well as the other parts of the Canvas site such as the Syllabus, Assignments, Grades, and Announcements. This episode wraps with a few tips to