Great Equal Protection Cases
Within 30 years of its enactment in 1868, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment was emasculated by the Supreme Court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. It was then another 60 years before Brown v. Board of Education held that "separate educational facilities (based on race) are inherently unequal." Since Brown, the Court has forged an impressive analytical framework for testing whether allegedly discriminatory laws violate Equal Protection. In this course, we shall examine leading decisions that apply this framework in cases involving discrimination based on race, gender, age, and wealth, as well as in three areas in which the Court has issued landmark rulings in the past decade: voting rights, gay marriage, and affirmative action. Those who take this course will gain a respectable command of the case law interpreting one of our Constitution's most important provisions.
Carcieri, Martin
Martin D. Carcieri has taught courses in Constitutional Law and Political Theory as a Professor of Political Science, San Francisco State University. He holds a J.D. from UC Hastings and a Ph.D. in Political Science from UC Santa Barbara. He has earned four teaching awards and has published twenty-five journal articles and book chapters. His work has appeared in top journals in four disciplines, and has been cited to the U.S. Supreme Court in five landmark cases in the 21st century. His most recent book is Applying Rawls in the 21st Century: Race, Gender, the Drug War, and the Right to Die.