Virtually every constitutional argument reflects theoretical presuppositions. Before taking Constitutional Law, students will already have had exposure to constitutional issues in first-year courses in Property, Criminal Law, and Civil Procedure. The course offers a doctrinal overview, a sense of historical context, and an introduction to leading debates and perspectives. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the course is likely to pursue theoretical inquiry along two dimensions whose relation to each other is itself a matter of theoretical dispute. Positive theory seeks to identify the factors that characteristically drive the development of constitutional doctrine.
Normative theory aims to articulate the values that constitutional law ought to realize.
A number of advanced, upper-level courses in Constitutional Law aspire to deepen theoretical understanding in both a positive and a normative sense. The offerings vary from year to year but commonly include courses in the First Amendment, Privacy, Church and State, and Constitutional Law and Democratic Theory. For the most part, students should generally feel free to follow their own interests in sampling the rich field of offerings. The Federal Courts and Administrative Law courses are doctrinally important and help to illuminate the relationship between substantive doctrine and procedural and remedial frameworks. The Federal Courts course, which should be taken after the basic Constitutional Law course, emphasizes doctrine and constitutional theory relating to federalism, the separation of powers, and the law of constitutional remedies.