Description
Please make sure to do your responses in order, and number them so that we know which question you are answering. Please do NOT include the text of the questions in the file you submit, only the question numbers of the questions as you answer them. Each of the 10 questions is worth up to 10 points, so the whole essay is worth 100 points total. Your response should be single-spaced and should require no more than 4 pages at maximum. You should need most of the 4 pages to write a good and sufficiently detailed response to each of the questions, but please do not exceed 4 pages total. Please do make sure to indicate when you are quoting from any source, whether from in the class resources or outside them, and make sure to provide full citations for any sources you use that are not included in the class syllabus. Usually, it is a bad idea to use any extracurricular sources because it is at the expense of the sources from class that you should be citing.
1. Please compare the Taft and Roosevelt positions in regard to presidential authority. Which do you think is the more prevalent today?
2. What relevance does Corwins Higher Law theory hold for judicial review, judicial activism, constitutional flexibility, and the power of the robe in general?
3. Is judicial restraint always practiced by conservatives, and judicial activism by Supreme Court liberals, or is the liberal/conservative divide different from the activism/restraint dimension? Explain.
4. How did John Marshall in his Marbury v. Madison opinion simultaneously assert the authority of the Supreme Court and avoid a showdown with the president?
5. Why did Erwin Chemerinsky argue that direct democracy should be ruled inherently unconstitutional by the Supreme Court? Should there at least be a check and balance on its use, as he recommends?
6. Please compare the constitutional amendment process of the United States with the simple majority vote by which California and other states allow their constitutions to be altered. What are the costs and benefits of an easily changed organic law versus one that is almost impossible to alter?
7. Please analyze the way in which difference between the vesting clauses and the oaths prescribed for the executive and the legislative branches have become the basis for the claim that presidents hold additional powers over those expressly authorized under the Constitution.
8. Although the Framers of our Constitution preferred to limit government, the elastic clause has been read flexibly and the inherent powers of the United States as a sovereign state have been interpreted broadly. Discuss.
9. Please analyze the liberal perspective on Supreme Court interpretation from such writers as Erwin Chemerinsky, Michael Kammen, Adam Gopnik, Peter Irons or Roscoe Pound.
10. Please analyze the conservative perspective on Supreme Court interpretation from such writers as Forrest McDonald, Antonin Scalia, Theodore Lowi, Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas.
