Gideon v. Wainwright: Writing the History of a Supreme Court Case

This semester we will explore how history is written in two ways.

First, we will spend time each week studying a particular Supreme Court case (Gideon v. Wainwright) as history. We will look at what happened in the case and at the historical record the case left behind, and we will also consider how historians have interpreted the case and the participants.

Second, you will each pick another Supreme Court case and spend the semester writing a history of a particular aspect of that case, using a combination of primary and secondary sources. Ideally, the lessons you learn from studying the history of Gideon will help you as you write your own histories.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Possible paper topics

All --

My preference is that you chose your seminar paper case from among the following:

Criminal procedure cases

First Amendment cases (here, limit yourselves to one of the criminal cases).

If, after reading through these cases, you still want to do another case, you must get my permission to do so by the third class session.
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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Books for class

The following books are required, I've ordered them through Goerings:

Anthony Lewis, Gideon's Trumpet (Vintage, 1989) ISBN-10 0679723129
Mark Tushnet, editor, The Warren Court in Historical and Political Perspective (University of Virginia Press, 1996) ISBN-10 0813916651
Samuel Walker, Popular Justice (Oxford University Press, 2d ed, 1997) ISBN-10 0195074513
William Rehnquist, The Supreme Court (Vintage Press, rev'd ed., 2002) ISBN-10 0375708618

In addition, you might want to buy:

Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing History (Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 5th ed. 2007) ISBN-10 031244673X

Rampolla is recommended, but not required.
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