This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom...with the hope of a socially-distanced, voluntary get together at the end of the semester!
This seminar will be divided into courts of nine students each. Each court will take up the same selection of important and interesting cases pending before the Supreme Court in this term. You will act as a justice of the Supreme Court, deliberate with your fellow justices on the basis of the actual briefs and records before the Court, and decide each case. In the course of the semester, you will be expected to write at least two major opinions (for the court, concurring, or dissenting), and two brief opinions (concurring or dissenting separately). You and your colleagues on your court will be the center of conversation and judgment. My role will be secondary, as a sounding board, gadfly and consultant on your work. This is an exciting and demanding seminar, at a moment of great stress within, and attention to, the Supreme Court and its cases.
Sager, Lawrence