Printable Class Information for Fall 2026 | 7397 WRS Advanced Topics in Constitutional Law - CHANDLER - 26004

7397 WRS Advanced Topics in Constitutional Law - CHANDLER- 26004

Course Outline: Constitutional law is evolving in real time, and so is the way we research and write about it. This writing seminar teaches you to produce serious legal scholarship using the full power of modern AI — Claude, Midpage, Gemini, NotebookLM — not as shortcuts, but as genuine collaborators in the research and writing process. If you want to learn to write like it's 2021, this is not your course.

You will develop an original thesis on a constitutional law topic, draft and defend it through multiple rounds of peer critique, and refine it into a polished paper. Qualifying papers will, as last year, be compiled into a published anthology — giving you a real publication before you graduate, something that distinguishes you from many other students.

Beyond your paper, you'll build reading packets for your classmates using AI-powered tools, lead class discussions on live constitutional controversies, and learn to synthesize complex legal materials into accessible formats including websites, podcasts, and visual presentations.
Professor Chandler works closely with every student at each stage, from topic selection through final defense. The class is deliberately kept discussion-intensive and reading-moderate, because the emphasis is on doing — writing, presenting, arguing, and building — not passively absorbing. Vigorous participation isn't optional; it's the engine that makes the course work.

Course Notes: (Face-to-Face w/ some SDE) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is face-to-face. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available. The instructor is planning for a small number of the 27 class sessions, less than a third, to be conducted via synchronous distance education (SDE). See the instructor’s syllabus for more details.

Seth J. Chandler, The Unstudied Constitution: Cases, Materials, and Problems on the Forgotten Clauses, Structures, and Doctrines of American Constitutional Law (Provided electronically)
AI Subscriptions: Students must have access to the following AI tools. Exact subscription requirements will be updated before the semester begins, but plan on:
• Claude (Anthropic) — paid subscription required
• Midpage AI — for legal research and citation verification
• Gemini Advanced (Google) — free for university students
• NotebookLM (Google) — free