Today’s New York Times has a piece by Jesse Wegman on “The Crisis in Teaching Constitutional Law” that reflects the kinds of sentiments I’ve heard at conferences, lunch tables, and especially on social media—that it is hard to teach constitutional law today because the Supreme Court is doing such lawless stuff.
“Teaching constitutional law today is an enterprise in teaching students what law isn’t,” Leah Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan law school, told me.
Rebecca Brown, at the University of Southern California, has been teaching constitutional law for 35 years. “While I was working on my syllabus for this course, I literally burst into tears,” she told me. “I couldn’t figure out how any of this makes sense. Why do we respect it? Why do we do any of it? I’m feeling very depleted by having to teach it.”
At least she’s still trying. Larry Kramer, a widely respected legal scholar and historian who was my…
