I enjoy teaching a great deal. I guess I better. My father was a teacher, my sister Kim was a teacher and is now a principal in New Haven, my sister Wendy owns and operates a day care, three of my aunts were teachers, as was one of my uncles. My best friend, Ed Mongillo, is a Special Education teacher. I guess I just went into the family business.

I always carry a red pen with me. You can never tell when something will need grading or correcting. This gets me in trouble sometimes. Teaching is wonderful. It is great having a captive audience everyday. If you want to get in good with the professor, laugh at his/her jokes. As my students will tell you, I have not fallen victim to the rampant grade inflation that is rapidly sweeping the nation's universities and colleges. 

Most of my teaching deals with the judicial branch and particularly the Supreme Court. I teach a number of the so-called pre-law courses. you can access more information on law school and getting prepared for it.

If the title of the course is underlined and highlighted, click to see the syllabus for the course.

I teach the following undergraduate courses:

Introduction to American Government: your basic intro to American politics and government. The class size has ranged from 9 the first time I taught it as a graduate student to 425, on occasion. It was hard to learn everyone's name.

Judicial Process: basically, the course looks at the process and the people who make it up. We examine the role that courts play in American life. We look at courts at all levels.

Constitutional Law: this course deals with government power, separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism.

Civil Liberties (Constitutional Law II): this course deals with civil liberties and civil rights. It concentrates on the First Amendment (expression and religion), criminal procedure, and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. Hurry and take it before it gets moved to the Hisotry Department.

Judicial Decision Making: this is a course I created as a simulation of the U.S. Supreme Court. Students portray the nine justices and nine litigants, like the ACLU, the NAACP, the Washington Legal Foundation, and the Solicitor General. The litigants file briefs and argue the cases, if they are accepted. The justices decide which cases to accept, hear oral arguments, and decide the cases. It is a lot of work, but the students do not seem to mind.
 

I also teach the following graduate courses:

Intermediate Techniques in Policy Research: this is the second course of a three course method sequence. It deals primarily with bivariate and multiple regression.

Proseminar in American Politics: this is the overview of behavior and institutions.

Proseminar in Public Law: this is the overview of public law, focusing on appellate case screening and decision making, some elements of law and society, and impact and implementation of judicial decisions.

Law, Courts, and Public Policy: this course investigates some aspects of judicial policy and process in more detail.
 

Here I am with Astronaut Sally Ride, the first woman to go into space (you remember the commercial). This is at the Founder's Dinner where I was recognized (but not by Sally) for winning the Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence.