I thought this item from Prof. John Greil at Texas was much worth passing along; he is still developing the syllabus, and comments and suggestions are welcome at john [dot] greil [at] law [dot] utexas [dot] edu:
Next fall semester, I'll be teaching a new course at Texas Law—Understanding Conservative Legal Thought. It's modeled largely off what Steve Sachs and Ernie Young did at Duke, as well as what Judge Katsas and Alida Kass are doing at George Washington. I want to give students a chance to grapple with the big legal debates happening right-of-center today, as well as teach students the skills to effectively advocate in front of today's judges.
The course will likely be seven 2-hour sessions, with (I'm hoping) some excellent guests joining us. In addition to the content, I'm really excited about the structure, where I aim to bring some of the seminar experience I had in Notre Dame's Great Books program (the Program of Liberal Studies) to the classroom. To that end, I plan to have students lead discussions and grade (partially) based on an oral exam.
I'd love to get feedback on the list, and I think your readership is the best place to get that feedback. [The readings largely include excerpts from the cited sources, not the entire works. -EV] I'm especially interested in pieces that work well with newcomers to the debates. The biggest problem (which is a good one to have!) is too much great stuff, and not enough time. I'm doing a one-credit course to get a feel of it, and hope to expand it the year after.
Session 1: What is a seminar?
- Vincent Lloyd, A Black Professor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell, Compact Magazine (Feb. 10, 2023)
- Paula Marantz Cohen, The Lost Art of Academic Conversation, The Chronicle of Higher Education (Mar. 14, 2023)
- Stephen E. Sachs, Institutions and Platforms, The Volokh Conspiracy (Oct. 26, 2020), https://reason.com/volokh/2020/10/26/institutions-and-platforms/
What is a Conservative?
- F. A. Hayek, Why I am Not a Conservative, in The Constitution of Liberty (Ronald Hamowy ed., 2011) (1960).
- William Baude, FedSoc is a They, not an It, Summary, Judgment (Nov. 21, 2019), https://www.summarycommajudgment.com/blog/fedsoc-is-a-they-not-an-it.
