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Ok, my con law professor is awesome but I have no Idea how he can test the material as he presents it.

First, he presented long and detailed analysis of land mark cases in the early court. We spent three and a half weeks on Maarburry, another week on McCulloch. Second, he started in on the commerce clause and its cases. That's been at least a month. Supposedly, we're moving on to other material after break, next week. HTF can he test such material?

My thought is he might give us a fact pattern on judicial review and another on the commerce clause (and whatever the fuck comes next). How can he possibly test us on the extreme depth he presents in class.

Any insight is much appreciated.

Ask the prof for old exams that you can review.

Haha I was thinking this EXACT same thing today and my prof even makes his old exams with model answers available... and I'm still not sure.

I take comfort knowing im not the only one struggling to grasp how to handle a conlaw test...

Our fact pattern involved Due Process and Equal Protection violations.

Grad_Student wrote:Our fact pattern involved Due Process and Equal Protection violations.

Same.

And then an open ended question where you could throw all the history stuff, Marbury, Carolene products, Lochner, etc.

apper123 wrote:Haha I was thinking this EXACT same thing today and my prof even makes his old exams with model answers available... and I'm still not sure.

+1

I took my first con law practice exam yesterday and I have no clue if my answer provided the type of analysis my professor was looking for.

mistergoft wrote:

apper123 wrote:Haha I was thinking this EXACT same thing today and my prof even makes his old exams with model answers available... and I'm still not sure.

+1

I took my first con law practice exam yesterday and I have no clue if my answer provided the type of analysis my professor was looking for.

GUNNER ALERT!

teasing.

mikeytwoshoes wrote:Ok, my con law professor is awesome but I have no Idea how he can test the material as he presents it.

First, he presented long and detailed analysis of land mark cases in the early court. We spent three and a half weeks on Maarburry, another week on McCulloch. Second, he started in on the commerce clause and its cases. That's been at least a month. Supposedly, we're moving on to other material after break, next week. HTF can he test such material?

My thought is he might give us a fact pattern on judicial review and another on the commerce clause (and whatever the fuck comes next). How can he possibly test us on the extreme depth he presents in class.

Any insight is much appreciated.

Con law usually starts out very slow and drawn out to give students the depth needed to parse out how and why the system works the way it does. Con law is difficult in that you can't just teach one part of the constitution and move on to the next and have people understand it from scratch. Because so many of the doctrines and branches of government are interrelated it is one of those courses that sort of all comes together at the end. For this reason, professors spend an inordinate amount of time on judicial review, lochner, landmark cases etc. and then move into the doctrines and start to move a lot faster. The second half of the semester should clip along at a faster pace.

Our professor asked us doctrine specific questions...
Equal protection
Due process
Commerce Clause
Separation of Powers (sort of doctrinal)

And within those offered subparts to weave in some of the more historical implications that we spent so much time on at the beginning of the semester

After 1st semester, I started to feel sure of myself. After outlining and studying Conlaw, that has gone out the window...

Con Law? Essay, of course.

Ignatius J. Reilly wrote:Con Law? Essay, of course.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Mine was part multiple choice, part hypothetical, and part open-ended thematic essay.

I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it actually was. The pace did pick up at the end of the semester, and it started coming all together.

Apparently my prof likes to tie in all of the modalities the Supreme Court uses in deciding cases (originalist, prudential, textual, structural, etc) in evaluating most fact patterns. Anyone have experience with this?

dreman510 wrote:Apparently my prof likes to tie in all of the modalities the Supreme Court uses in deciding cases (originalist, prudential, textual, structural, etc) in evaluating most fact patterns. Anyone have experience with this?

lol yes, we spent the first 2 weeks on all the modalities. I know it was worth a few points so nothing to fret over, for me anyway.

dreman510 wrote:Apparently my prof likes to tie in all of the modalities the Supreme Court uses in deciding cases (originalist, prudential, textual, structural, etc) in evaluating most fact patterns. Anyone have experience with this?

My prof bases all our class discussions of every case on the modalities and these are the types of arguments he wants on the exam. In the exam instructions he even recommends organizing the answer by the type of argument(i.e. a heading for 'Textual', 'Structural', etc.). I'm a little worried..I still don't really understand what a 'structural' argument is exactly. I'd usually go to a hornbook and be enlightened, but I haven't been able to find anything that really discusses in depth how to go about making these types of modality arguments. Has anyone?

"Structural" refers to the structure of the government, meaning the interplay between branches and their powers and whatnot. I think. At least that's how my professor made it sound.

Funny how we spent maybe 2 hours on the whole structuralist, originalist, textualist, etc. thing. Haven't mentioned it since.

All hypos and essay questions.

I'm surprised you guys spent 3 weeks on Marbury. I think we spent 2 days on it total, but we also covered a lot more material midway through the semester than you guys have so far.

Anyone here use Siegels for practice questions at all? Or anything besides practice tests?

Like many of my exams this semester, my con law exam has strict word limits. Man that's annoying... especially since I'll need to cite cases for the exam.

Here is a former conlaw question that our professor gave our class as a review.

"Given Justice X's opinion in Youngstown, do you think he would agree with the court's opinion in Curtiss-Wright? Closely related, how do you think he would rule on the Constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution?

Write no more than 5 pages"


hth