RELC 4044

Portmann is the man! He is one of those professors who seems to know a little bit about everything, so he could move from a legal discussion to a linguistic one to a literary one to a political one all in sixty seconds. The course itself basically covers 5 or so major U.S. Supreme Court cases each week, and Portmann arranges them into groupings by theme. He also adds a couple relevant journal articles, and then in class each week you simply discuss and debate the readings for two hours. Grade comes from one presentation, reading quizzes, and a 20-page final paper (due to COVID, we got rid of the reading quizzes and replaced the final paper with a live in-class debate). #tCF2020

Professor is incredibly nice and understanding, and he was really lenient with assignments and grading due to COVID. Class depends on the people you have in it because it is completely discussion based. The reading is really cool, but make sure that you enjoy the people in your class.