Write an essay addressing the following questions: (a) Prior to the Civil War and Reconstruction, why did the Court tend to apply the Bill of Rights only to the national government?
For this assignment, you will write one essay. Your goal is to demonstrate a good grasp of the relevant readings and course themes, and to analyze and evaluate these things in a coherent and insightful fashion. Your essay should be clear, well-argued, and firmly grounded in the relevant texts. You should offer competent citations to the course readings when appropriate (parenthetical citations with a page number are sufficient). Essays that fail to meet these criteria will be heavily penalized.
There is no need to employ any sources outside the readings assigned on the course syllabus. As long as you are employing course readings, there is no need for a works cited page.
Your typed essay must be 1500-2000 words long. Please double-space, use reasonable font and margins, and number your pages. Also, please provide a word count for your essay. Essays that fail to provide a word count, and/or do not fall within the word requirement, will be docked points. See the syllabus.
I’d advise a few things: (1) Try to offer a solid thesis statement for your essay; (2) Divide your essay into paragraphs with good transitions between ideas. Make sure that each sentence follows from the one that precedes it; (3) PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD.
Let me know if you have any questions. I’m happy to help.
The Essay Questions:
Please answer only one of the following two essay questions. If you answer more than one question, I will only grade your first response.
Q1. In Barron v. Baltimore (1833), the Supreme Court suggested that the first eight amendments in the Bill of Rights served only to limit the powers of the national government and did not apply to the state governments. By 1925, however, the Court suggested that the free speech and press protections of the first amendment did apply to the state governments. Write an essay addressing the following questions: (a) Prior to the Civil War and Reconstruction, why did the Court tend to apply the Bill of Rights only to the national government? (b) How exactly is it that, by the middle of the twentieth century, the Court had reasoned that many protections in the Bill of Rights protected individuals against abuses of power by the state governments? (c) Using the readings in the course thus far, identify and discuss a few cases which illustrate this changed understanding of the Bill of Rights.
–OR–
Q2. Commentators often struggle to agree on just why Lochner v. New York (1905) is a watershed moment in American constitutional law. Write an essay on this problem with an eye toward the following questions: (a) How exactly did Lochner represent a shift in the Court’s understanding of its own role in deferring (or not deferring) to legislatures in economic matters? Be sure to illustrate your argument with references to some example(s) prior to Lochner. (b) How does West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937) represent a shift away from the Lochner view? (c) How do Footnote Four in U.S. v. Carolene Products (1938) and West Virginia v. Barnette (1943) represent both a turning away from, and a continuation of, key assumptions or themes in Lochner?
Must use course reading
