Academics Areas of Study

Constitutional Law

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The U.S. Constitution creates, empowers, and or recognizes the key institutions of American government, while also imposing limits on the ways in which those institutions may exercise their powers.

The old but fairly terse text itself and very substantial body of case law developed by the U.S. Supreme Court touch on virtually every area of American public life, including abortion, capital punishment, elections, federalism, gun control, freedom of speech and the press, health care, immigration, impeachment, racial justice, religious freedom, war, and gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity discrimination.

In their constitutional law courses, scholarship, public commentary, and legal advocacy, Cornell Law faculty bring to bear insights drawn from economics, history, philosophy, political science, and the crucible of litigation. In addition to the required survey course, Cornell Law students can study in greater depth such issues as campaign finance, free speech, church-state separation, and foreign constitutional systems. Clinics and practicum—in areas like the death penalty, the First Amendment, and LGBTQ+ advocacy give students the opportunity to learn by doing, in some cases by representing clients for whom the stakes are literally life or death.

This colloquium examines current and classic topics in advanced constitutional law and constitutional theory. Roughly half of the sessions will feature presentations of works in progress by constitutional scholars. During the other sessions, assigned readings will mostly consist of canonical works in the field. For class meetings in which no faculty presentation occurs, responsibility for presenting the assigned reading will rotate among students in the colloquium. Each student will produce a research paper on a topic approved by the instructors.
What has it meant in the past and what does it mean today to be an American? What are the benefits and responsibilities entailed by membership in the polity, and to what extent have these benefits presupposed formal American nationality? This seminar will use the law of citizenship to explore the historical and philosophical linkages in the U.S. between full inclusion and judgments about property ownership, race, gender, and immigration. In the process, we will also assess how distinct ideologies (ranging from republican self-government to the national security discourse) have altered accounts of political participation, economic independence, and external threat. These topics will be addressed by a close reading of landmark cases (including Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Minor v. Happersett, United States v. Wong Kim Ark) as well as seminal books in the political history and theory of U.S. citizenship.