Voting and Elections: Case Studies

This course is designed to provide an overview of the use of international law in solving transnational environmental problems and shaping international behavior. We examine, as background, the nature and limitations of international law as a force for change. The course will then explore customary law, the relationship between soft and hard law, enforcement of international law, implementation mechanisms, and the effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements. Special attention is given to existing international environmental law frameworks addressing climate change, Arctic and Antarctic development, ozone depletion, biological diversity, forest loss, export of toxic chemicals, and the host of issues raised by the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development and subsequent environmental fora. Students will also consider the interface between international environmental law and other important international forces such as the Bretton Woods institutions, human rights frameworks, and international development entities. Students will be evaluated on the quality of their classroom comments and several analytical problem sets given during the term. Students will also be asked to complete a major research project examining the effectiveness of a treaty or a proposed international environmental legal arrangement.

Climate change is one of the biggest and most difficult challenges faced by contemporary societies. The challenge has multiple facets: environmental, social, political, economic – each with its own complexities. This course focuses primarily on the social, political and economic components of the climate problem, framed by the concept of climate justice. In the course students are introduced to basic conceptions of justice, the latest findings of climate science and possible impacts on regional scales, and the global politics of climate change, principally in the context of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Climate justice and its operationalization is the principal organizing theme for work over the term, addressing questions such as: how the costs of climate change impacts and efforts to address climate change could or should be distributed between rich and poor, global north and global south; and what are the possible means whereby those costs might be addressed through collective action at various levels: local, national, and global. Students will be evaluated based on regular quizzes, several short papers, class participation, and a final synthetic paper or project.

Climate change and biological diversity are prominent issues on the global political and environmental governance agendas and in public environmental consciousness. Each issue will be the focus of a major United Nations summit in 2026. At these meetings, Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UN CBD) and to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will carry on with implementation of these major international environmental treaties. Meanwhile, public narratives of the escalating and intersecting dual “crises” of climate change and biodiversity loss provide a broader context for questioning the role and effectiveness of intergovernmental treaty regimes in addressing these crises.

This course will take a comparative and critical look at these two multilateral treaty regimes on biological diversity and climate change. Students will study legal characteristics of each of the treaties, how problems are defined and addressed within each, mechanisms used for implementation, and the governmental and non-governmental actors involved in the work of treaty implementation. We will also look at how these two treaty bodies work together to address issues at the intersection of climate change and biological diversity. Finally, we will spend some time in the course reading a range of theoretical perspectives and pondering larger political and philosophical questions: Are our current intergovernmental institutions up to the challenge of addressing these immense planetary challenges? What are the potentials of and limits to intergovernmental spaces and collective action that might we discern? What role might there be for non-governmental actors and social movements to contest and construct more effective regimes? How does a study of these regimes help us imagine what a global politics of the terrestrial might look like?

Students will be evaluated based on their participation in class discussions, dedication to preparation for and participation at one of the meetings, and a final project related to one of the treaty regimes.

This class will be an intensive, immersive exploration of Congressional elections in the United States. It runs only in the Fall of midterm Congressional election years, using the current campaign as a lens through which to explore a wide array of issues related to Congressional elections specifically, as well as elections in the US generally. It is structured as a working lab that is supplemented with a series of discussion and lecture sessions. Regular discussion and lecture sessions will provide students with a crash course in interdisciplinary approaches to a range of issues related to the conduct of US Congressional elections. This may include examinations of the history of campaigns, campaign advertising and messaging, the structure of elections, the conduct of voting and voter access, campaign finance reform, empirical research on campaign effects and outcomes, polling and poll methodology, campaign organization and administrative structure, best practices for GOTV and targeted mobilization, etc. Students will combine into teams to conduct term long tracking projects focused on the upcoming US Congressional election. This may include battleground state profiling, campaign finance monitoring, litigation tracking, advertising and media placement, debate watches, candidate travel schedules, etc. A great deal of what will be covered will depend on the nature of the current campaign in that particular year and which issues are most salient. The remaining class sessions after the election will focus on debriefing the results as well as addressing any outstanding issues that linger beyond election day (e.g. disputes over election counts and the certification of results). Students will be evaluated on the basis of their engagement with class sessions and other class related activities, their work for their tracking projects, short-form response papers related to discussion topics, their debrief reports, and check-in meetings with the instructor. This class is open to a wide range of students with varied interests. Given the working lab nature of the class, it is flexible enough to accommodate both students who have had extensive experience with politics and campaigning in the US context, as well as students for whom this will be their first exposure to anything campaign related, and everyone else in between. However, all students, regardless of their background, should be prepared to adapt to a fluid and changing electoral landscape, especially in the days leading up to the election. This may necessitate scheduling evening sessions outside of normal class time, responding to unfolding events, and pivoting topics on short notice.

The fear of the “hidden” enemy that lurks behind the curtain, controlling events from the shadows, is a narrative topos that continually seems to raise its conspiratorial head in all kinds of spaces and venues: from politics to pop culture, movies, novels, music, political speeches, etc. Yet, there is also evidence to suggest that widespread acceptance of these conspiracy “theories” has the potential to cultivate and propagate inherently antidemocratic, divisive, and dangerous beliefs. Those who posit the existence of conspiracies, or at least certain ones, are often dismissed outright as irrational, without any consideration made as to the substance of their claims. Belief in conspiracies, or at least certain ones, is taken as a sign of faulty logic or reason. Yet, despite this, conspiratorial explanations of various phenomenon actually have a long and vibrant history of popular acceptance in US political culture (as well as in other parts of the world). Some have gone so far as to suggest that narratives of conspiracy, as alternative or resistant explanatory frames, are actually a necessary component of democratic political life. After all we know that conspiracies, political and otherwise, have existed in the past, and may exist again in the future. How do we make sense of this tension? If conspiracy theory as a mode of explanation is inherently “irrational,” what does this mean for its enduring presence in our political discourse? Is the only difference between a “reasonable” claim rooted in fear and what we consider the paranoid ramblings of “kooks” and “nutjobs” simply a matter of which one is “correct?” Is there a silver bullet theory or magic wand that would allow us to differentiate the supposed good from the bad? Is the very act of labeling something a conspiracy theory itself a form of political hegemony? Even if conspiracies might exist, is it better to live in a world in which we assume they don’t? What do we actually mean by conspiracy theory in the first place? This seminar will explore a variety of topics related directly to how threats of conspiracy become manifest in public discourse. Readings will focus on secondary research that examines the role of conspiracy theories in political and social life, both in the United States and abroad. We will also supplement this with primary “artifacts” such as pamphlets, social media postings, videos, speeches, etc. Along the way we will also use this as an opportunity to reflect on what inter and trans disciplinary research actually looks like. The study of conspiracy narratives is an ideal example that helps us think about how different fields attempt to make sense of a phenomenon. We will survey, compare, and attempt to synthesize research from a wide range of fields, disciplines and methodologies including those from historians, anthropologists, political scientists, legal scholars, literary critics, psychologists, and others. This is an advanced seminar and students should expect to encounter readings that are rooted in disciplinary perspectives they are not familiar with. Students will need to adapt to shifting perspectives in order to both the various texts in conversation with each other. Evaluation will be based on in-class discussion as well as individual student writing assignments. Students will produce several short length essay assignments during the term as well as a longer research paper at the end of the term. Weekly lab sessions will be used for screenings of primary material and students may also be responsible for at least one primary source presentation during these sessions. This class is open to students of all interests regardless of their experience with politics, government, or social theory.

This introductory class in constitutional law will have one fundamental objective: understanding the current and historical role of the US Supreme Court in the recognition of civil and associated rights. The rights we will examine will include reproductive rights, freedom of speech in both the general and academic contexts, marriage equality, the rights of individuals in the transgender community, and racial equality. In order to understand these specific issues of Supreme Court doctrine, the class will begin with a review of how our courts function, how the doctrine of judicial review developed, and how to read and understand decisions of the Supreme Court. The question looming over the course will be whether the Supreme Court is a distinctive legal institution, an anti-democratic policy making body, or both – and whether this question can be resolved independent of our views on the underlying issues. The course will conclude with a “moot court” exercise in which students will play the role of either Supreme Court justices or lawyers appearing before the Supreme Court. The topic of the exercise will be drawn from a case or cases currently pending before the Supreme Court.

Assessment will be based on evidence that the student has completed assignments and readings, meaningful participation in seminar discussions, the preparation and presentation to the class of a summary of a judicial opinion under discussion, two short quizzes, and performance in the moot court exercise.