Classical Studies
CLST-310-401, Cross Listed with: GAFL-510-401
Ancient and Modern Constitutionmaking
MW-2:00-3:30
John J. Mulhern
BFS Sector II
What actually was it that the Greeks were thinking of when they used the word politeia— an expression that we often translate by “constitution”? What do their thoughts suggest about prospects for constitutionmaking today? This course builds on contemporary scholarship to reconstruct what we may call the constitutional tradition as it develops in the main ancient texts, which are read in English translations. The ancient texts are taken from Herodotus, Xenophon, the Pseudo-Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato, the author of the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution, Aristotle himself, Polybius, Cicero, Augustine, and the codifiers of Roman law.
The course traces this tradition through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and the great thinkers of the Seventeenth Century, following linguistic and other clues that carry one up to Madison and put the product of the U.S. Constitutional Convention in a somewhat new light; and it continues through Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century constitutionmaking into today’s consitutionmaking efforts in Eastern Europe. The course is conducted interactively as a group tutorial. The professor offers a prelecture to the class each week on the text that they will read next to help them understand its historical, literary, and political context. In the next class, the students read short papers on the text, and these papers are discussed by other students and by the professor. The professor then provides a summary lecture on the text just completed and a prelecture on the reading set for the next class. At the end, the students have reconstructed the constitutional tradition for themselves from the sources.