SYLLABUS
LAW AND THE POLITICAL SYSTEM: POLITICAL SCIENCE 346
SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY - SPRING 2013
Dr. Michael McCall
Class Time: T/Th 12:30-1:45 in AH 3177
Office: AH 4148 Email: mmccall@mail.sdsu.edu
Phone: 594-5457 Office Hours: T/Th 9:30-10:50
Course Description: The law often reflects the morals and values of a given society. As a society,
however, morals and values remain in flux. While some beliefs tend to stay constant over time, many of
our conceptualizations of right and wrong evolve over time. Changes in technology additionally force us
to reevaluate our value structure. For example, although medical research may make it possible to clone
humans in the very near future, society, through its politicians, must determine if cloning is acceptable. If
cloning is acceptable, we must decide the legal status of cloned individuals, the government’s
responsibility towards these individuals, and the basic civil rights and liberties these persons possess. The
law must accommodate change. In this class, we study the changes in the law to reflect the morals and
politics of society.
The course in divided into two basic sections. For the first 1/3 of the class, we will study the judicial
process in America. Before we can understand the role of politics within the legal system, we must first
understand the legal system itself. The next 2/3 of the class will be devoted to understanding both the law
and politics surrounding selected social issues. We then evaluate the effectiveness of the court system in
dealing with social issues and implementing social change. I hope you take from this class an
understanding that law and politics are thoroughly intertwined.
Required Text: Please purchase this text as soon as possible.
Samuels, Suzanne. 2006. Law, Politics, and Society. Houghton Mifflin Press.
I will also post additional readings (and some cases you can download from Lexis/Nexis) as the semester
progresses.
Course Requirements:
Exams. There are three non-cumulative examinations. Each exam is worth up to 100 points toward your
final grade. All examinations are mixed format with some short and some longer answers to open-ended
questions.
Debate Portfolio. You will respond to prompts requiring you to master the principle arguments of a legal
debate of your choice (with my approval). I will post detailed guidelines for your responses on the second
Tuesday of the semester. Your response portfolio is worth up to a total of 120 points.
Attendance/participation. Much of what we do in the last half or more of the semester is to scrutinize
and engage in leading legal issues and debates in contemporary America. The success of the course, in
many respects, depends on your preparedness and willingness to engage in these discussions. Your
participation in this course is worth up to 30 points.
Thus,
3 Exams
300
Portfolio
120
Participation
TOTAL
30
450
Evaluation and Grading: Grades are assigned on a straight, decile scale. That is, earning 90% or above
(405 points or more) guarantees you some version of an A, 80%-89% receives some version of a B, and
so on.
Missed Examinations Tests: Make-up exams are provided only in documented instances of an
acceptable excuse. Make-up exams are almost inherently more difficult than the schedule exam version.
This is not to punish you, but rather is the result of carefully crafting the original exam to cover the most
important aspects of the relevant material; make-up exams, by their design, forces other—o ften more
difficult or nuanced—topics to be covered. Exams and portfolio response missed, without a legitimate
reason, will be scored as a 0.
Student Learning Objectives: In addition to learning the basics of the American legal system, this class
is intended to help you think critically about concepts like democracy, freedom, liberty, law, justice and
representative government. You should be able to analyze the structure of government and explain how
the institutions of government can be instrumental in limiting policy outcomes and how these limitations
affect the law. Class lectures will cover not only United States’ legal policy, but also compare American
laws to those of other nations and thus, student will have the opportunity to compare and contrast the US
system with those of other nations and should learn to place US policies in a global perspective. Class
will involve not only a discussion of the reading assignments, but also extensions to current event
examples in order to place the law in context and thus the course is further intended to help students apply
scholarly readings to everyday events.
Course Website: There is a course website for this course on Blackboard. In addition to posting some
course materials, I will use Blackboard’s email function to send announcements to the class. Thus, I
strongly encouraged you to create a blackboard account if you do not already have one (just go to the
SDSU homepage, follow the link to blackboard, and follow the instructions for creating an account). If
you already have a blackboard account, be sure that your email address used to create the account is still
current.
Cheating and Plagiarism: SDSU’s academic senate defines plagiarism as:
“2.2 Plagiarism shall be defined as the act of incorporating ideas, words, or specific substance of another,
whether purchased, borrowed, or otherwise obtained, and submitting same to the University as one’s own
work to fulfill academic requirements without giving credit to the appropriate source. Plagiarism shall
include but not be limited to (a) submitting work, either in part or in whole, completed by another; (b)
omitting footnotes for ideas, statements, facts, or conclusions that belong to another; (c) omitting
quotation marks when quoting directly from another, whether it be a paragraph, sentence, or part thereof;
(d) close and lengthy paraphrasing of the writings of another; (e) submitting another person’s artistic
works, such as musical compositions, photographs, paintings, drawings, or sculptures; and (f) submitting
as one’s own work papers purchased from research companies.
My take on this is very simple - if you cheat, you will fail my course. You will fail the entire course - not
just the assignment on which you cheated. You may not turn in any work for this class that was submitted
for another class, or that you intend to use in another class. If you submit work from other classes as work
for this class, I will also consider that cheating and will fail you for the semester. Finally, cheating on
examinations will result in immediate course failure. You may not, during examinations, use cell phones,
use notes, keep calculators out, use the book, or receive help from a nearby colleague.
Syllabus Changes: This syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor to accommodate
instructional and/or student needs. It is the student's responsible to keep abreast of such changes.
JUDICIAL PROCESS
Jan. 17: Introduction
Jan 22, 24: Defining Law; Read: Samuels, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2
Jan 29, 31: Foundations of Law; Read: Samuels, Chapter 3
Feb. 5, 7: Structure of the American Court System; Read: Samuels, Chapter 6
Feb 12, 14: Structure of the American Court System; Read: Samuels, Chapter 7
Feb 19, 21: Legal Participants; Read Samuels, Chapter 8 and Chapter 9
Feb. 26: Wrap up and review
February 28, Thursday: Examination 1
ISSUES IN LAW: CONTROL
Mar. 5, 7: Police and the Criminal Process, Samuels, Chapter 10
Mar. 12, 14: Religion and Law; Hate Speech, R.A.V. v. St. Paul
Mar. 19, 21: Issues in Criminal Justice, Mapp v. Ohio, Gideon v. Wainwright, Miranda v.
Arizona
Mar. 26, 28: Criminal Justice II. McClesky v. Kemp, DC v. Heller (2008) SKIM, Kennedy v.
Louisiana
Portfolio Part I Due Thursday March 28
April 1-5: SPRING BREAK -- ENJOY!
April 9: Wrap-up and Review
Thursday, April 11: EXAMINATION II
ISSUES IN LAW: DISCRIMINATION, PRIVACY
April 16, 18: Law, Race, and Ethnicity, Samuels Chapter 11, Chapter 13
Brown v. Board of Education I (1954), Brown v. Board of Education II (1955)
April 23, 25: Law and Gender, Sexual Orientation, Samuels, Chapter 12 and TBA
April 30, May 2: Privacy, Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas
April 30: Portfolio Part II Due
May 7: Review
Final as per the university schedule