A couple of thoughts.
1) Korematsu didn't "permit the Japanese internment." (a) Korematsu said nothing at about detention. (b) Korematsu didn't concern "internment," a lawful form of detention of enemy aliens. This misdescription is so common w/lawprofs who should know better!
1) Korematsu didn't "permit the Japanese internment." (a) Korematsu said nothing at about detention. (b) Korematsu didn't concern "internment," a lawful form of detention of enemy aliens. This misdescription is so common w/lawprofs who should know better!
https://twitter.com/NewYorker/status/1402327577415532554
2. In my view, starting a core 1st-year law school course w/Dred Scott is like starting a core 1st-year medical school course w/a case of gross surgical malpractice. I understand the instinct to do it (& the article summarizes it well), but I find it pedagogically ill-conceived.
These students are beginners. We owe them some familiarity with the rudiments of constitutional analysis before hitting them w/a moral & analytical monstrosity like Dred Scott. Show them the *construction* tools before deconstructing. Aren't more students likelier to have
a shot at grokking CJ Taney's twisted project with, say, a prior glimpse of various techniques of deriving constitutional meaning? Of the basic model of our federal structure?
I'm not saying not to teach Dred Scott. I'm just saying, don't hit them with it on day one. Starting
I'm not saying not to teach Dred Scott. I'm just saying, don't hit them with it on day one. Starting
with Dred Scott is more performative, it seems to me, than it is pedagogically sound in a first-year course.
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