POL S 364 A: The Supreme Court and American Political Development

Course Introduction: This class will examine the development of the Supreme Court and its role as a political institution through a careful examination of several critical historical junctures. With one exception, we will not be reading Supreme Court case law. Rather, we will be reading an analyzing political science and legal scholarship about the Court, the source of its power, and its impact on American politics. The central paradox the course seeks to asses is how an inherently fragile institution, lacking the powers of coercion or taxation, has come to become so powerful. Why have the other branches found judicial power useful? What happens when there is a major power struggle between the branches? We will study periods of constitutional crisis, most notably during the Jefferson and Roosevelt administrations. We will examine the entrenchment of the Supreme Court's authority after the Civil War and the crest of the Court as a symbol of racial egalitarianism in the mid-20th century. We will conclude by looking at the struggles over judicial nominations during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, which represent the highly polarized nomination process in place today. We will conclude with one of the culminations of this process, the most widely-discussed Supreme Court case of this century, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, viewing it in the context of how judicial power functions and is shaped by the political process.