Learning Constitutional Law

Welcome everyone to episode 6! This week, we jump into learning about the powers of Congress. We'll talk about features in Article I (like the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Speech and Debate Clause, and legislative vs. non-legislative powers) as well as those things not included in that article (like the nondelegation doctrine). As far as cases, this episode will walk through McCulloch v. Maryland, INS v. Chadha, Mistretta v. United States... and you'll also get a brief introduction to U.S. Term Limits Inc. v. Thornton and United States v. Comstock. At 50 minutes, this podcast is densely packed!

With our week 4 episode we begin to delve into the particulars of power, specifically the power of the courts and the Supreme Court. Most of this revolves around judicial review, but this episode will also detail the self-imposed limits that the court has implemented to limit its authority (e.g. the requirements of standing, justiciability, etc.). This episode will also walk through the first 3 examples of case briefs for Marbury v. Madison, Cooper v. Aaron, and Baker v. Carr.

In Episode 4, we'll get down to the processes of selection of individuals to join the Supreme Court, the processes used to choose which cases are decided, the decision-making procedures for cases that are selected... and then how we can break those decisions down for ourselves. This episode wraps with discussion of the layman's terms assignments as well, so don't miss out on those last 5 minutes!

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!

In this 3-minute podcast introduction, I share a few of my thoughts with you about this class and about the use of the podcasting tool to engage with the course material. Enjoy!

For our first podcast episode, we will examine the POS 420 syllabus, the course Canvas site, and get a bit about the creation/history of the Founders and Framers and the Constitution. This episode also includes just a bit about your instructor to give you a full introduction to this podcast. Welcome to the course!