Courses

Prerequisites: PHYS S1202. May be taken before or concurrently with this course. Laboratory for PHYS 1202X. Assignments to laboratory sections are made after the first lecture. NOTE: Labs meet one day a week (Mon, Tues, Wed or Thurs) 1:00pm - 4:00pm only. There are no evening lab sections.

Prerequisites: PHYS S1202. May be taken before or concurrently with this course. Laboratory for PHYS 1202X. Assignments to laboratory sections are made after the first lecture. NOTE: Labs meet one day a week (Mon, Tues, Wed or Thurs) 1:00pm - 4:00pm only. There are no evening lab sections.

Prerequisites: PHYS S1202. May be taken before or concurrently with this course. Laboratory for PHYS 1202X. Assignments to laboratory sections are made after the first lecture. NOTE: Labs meet one day a week (Mon, Tues, Wed or Thurs) 1:00pm - 4:00pm only. There are no evening lab sections.

Prerequisites: PHYS S1202. May be taken before or concurrently with this course. Laboratory for PHYS 1202X. Assignments to laboratory sections are made after the first lecture. NOTE: Labs meet one day a week (Mon, Tues, Wed or Thurs) 1:00pm - 4:00pm only. There are no evening lab sections.

Lecture and discussion. Dynamics of political institutions and processes, chiefly of the national government. Emphasis on the actual exercise of political power by interest groups, elites, political parties, and public opinion.

This course provides a broad overview of the comparative politics subfield by focusing on important substantive questions about the world today. The course is organized around four questions. First, why can only some people depend upon the state to enforce order? Second, how can we account for the differences between autocracies and democracies? Third, what different institutional forms does democratic government take? Finally, are some institutions more likely than others to produce desirable social outcomes such as accountability, redistribution, and political stability?

This introductory course surveys key topics in the study of international politics, including the causes of war and peace; the efficacy of international law and human rights; the origins of international development and underdevelopment; the politics of global environmental protection; and the future of US-China relations. Throughout the course, we will focus on the interests of the many actors of world politics, including states, politicians, firms, bureaucracies, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations; the interactions between them; and the institutions in which they operate. By the end of the semester, students will be better equipped to systematically study international relations and make informed contributions to critical policy debates.

The goal of this course is to provide students with an overview of constitutive debates over the theory and practice of democracy along three major lines: democracy as a word (with a time-honored ancestry and a tortuous trajectory across the centuries); democracy as a constellation of principles and values; and democracy as an array of institutions and procedures that instantiate the word and pursue the foundational principles of popular sovereignty and democratic self-rule. In doing so, we will read the work of major representatives of historical and contemporary political thought who assessed democracy’s shortcomings and potential, examined the relationship between its theory and its practice, and offered prominent resources for thinking about democracy’s future in our present.   

 

This political science course provides an introduction to the politics of judges, courts, and law in the United States.  We will evaluate law and courts as political institutions and judges as political actors and policy-makers.

The topics we will study include what courts do; how different legal systems function; the operation of legal norms; the U.S. judicial system; the power of courts; constraints on judicial power; judicial review; the origin of judicial institutions; how and why Supreme Court justices make the decisions they do; case selection; conflict between the Court and the other branches of government; decision making and conflict within the judicial hierarchy; the place of courts in American political history; and judicial appointments.

We will explore some common but not necessarily true claims about how judges make decisions and the role of courts.  One set of myths sees judges as unbiased appliers of neutral law, finding law and never making it, with ideology, biography, and politics left at the courthouse door. Another set of myths sees the judiciary as the “least dangerous branch,” making law, not policy, without real power or influence.

Our thematic questions will be:  How much power and discretion do judges have in the U.S?  What drives their decision-making?