Part One - The Structure of Government · Module 1
Introduction to Constitutional Law and the Power of Judicial Review
Why does a court get to say what the Constitution means? Marbury builds the power from nothing; two centuries later, Trump v. United States shows what the Court can do with it. This module sets the three-question template — right, remedy, jurisdiction — that runs through the whole course.
Topics
The Constitution as text and as a plan of government. How to read a constitutional opinion; the right / remedy / jurisdiction template. The source and scope of judicial review. Review of state court judgments. Criminal prosecution of a former President; official-act immunity.
Reading list
7 of 7 readings published
- Opinion (edited) Marbury v. Madison 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803)
- Opinion (edited) Martin v. Hunter's Lessee 14 U.S. (1 Wheat.) 304 (1816)
- Note Cohens v. Virginia 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264 (1821)
- Opinion (edited) Trump v. United States 603 U.S. 593 (2024)
- Note Trump v. CASA, Inc. 606 U.S. 831 (2025)
- Note Washington v. Trump No. 25-807 (9th Cir.) (2025)
- Opinion (edited) Trump v. Barbara 609 U.S. ___ (2026)
Also assigned
The Constitution of the United States; The Federalist No. 78 (Hamilton), "The Judiciary Department"; Neal Ramee, Logic and Legal Reasoning: A Guide for Law Students; Jesse Richardson et al., Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies; Introduction to the Opinion of the Court in the Health Care Case (National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius). — read here: No. 78 — also here: Logic and Legal Reasoning · Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies
Classroom visuals
Discussion
When Congress Loses a Case and Rewrites the Rule on Canvas — sign in required
This module in Canvas
Modules · Quizzes · Discussion boards · Files and recordings
How to read this list
A case named without a marker is assigned as an opinion and is to be read in its entirety. Opinion (edited) means the Professor has cut it for length; the text on this site is the assigned text. Note means the case is not assigned as an opinion at all — its holding, its facts to the extent they matter, and its place in the doctrinal line are given in a note written for this course, and you are responsible for that note exactly as you are responsible for an assigned opinion. Most modules close with a Current case, a recent decision chosen because it shows the doctrine you have just read being applied at its live edge; current cases are assigned as opinions. You are responsible for all assigned required materials, including the notes, questions, problems and commentary that accompany the cases, whether or not we discuss them in class.
Notes
Cohens v. Virginia
19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264 (1821)Virginia convicted the Cohen brothers of selling District of Columbia lottery tickets and insisted that no federal court could review a state criminal judgment — especially one in which the state itself was a party. Marshall, C.J., disagreed on every front: the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction reaches state-court judgments whenever a case arises under the Constitution or federal law, criminal as much as civil, and the Eleventh Amendment poses no obstacle when the state hauled the defendant in itself. Then, having established the power, the Court affirmed the convictions on the merits — the lottery statute was local legislation for the District, not a license to sell tickets nationwide. The sequence is the lesson: Martin claimed appellate supremacy over state civil judgments; Cohens completes the structure and shows Marshall’s signature move of asserting the power while giving the immediate winner nothing. If you can explain why Virginia’s sovereignty argument would, if accepted, have made the Constitution “a solemn mockery” in Marshall’s eyes, you understand what Module 1 is about.
Trump v. CASA, Inc.
606 U.S. 831 (2025) · WestlawWhen President Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship drew immediate constitutional challenges, district courts responded the way district courts had grown accustomed to responding: with universal injunctions blocking enforcement against everyone, everywhere. The Court, 6–3 (Barrett, J.), held that universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority Congress conferred in the Judiciary Act of 1789 — federal courts sit to give the plaintiffs complete relief, not to superintend the Executive nationwide. The majority said nothing about whether the underlying order is constitutional; nobody briefed that question. Sotomayor, J., dissenting, accused the government of gamesmanship — seeking to narrow the remedy while never defending the order’s legality; Jackson, J., separately warned of executive overreach, drawing Barrett’s retort that the dissent embraced “an imperial Judiciary.” Within days, litigants regrouped through Rule 23 class actions and obtained classwide relief. For Module 1 the case is a remedies-side lesson in Marbury’s architecture: the power to say what the law is turns out to be inseparable from the fight over for whom a court may say it.
Washington v. Trump
No. 25-807 (9th Cir.) (2025)Read this one immediately after Trump v. CASA, Inc., because it is the first serious answer to the question CASA left open: if universal injunctions are gone, what exactly is left? Four States — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — challenged the same birthright-citizenship executive order, and the Ninth Circuit (Gould, J., joined by Hawkins, J.; Bumatay, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) gave them everything. On standing, the court refused to treat the States as parens patriae stand-ins for their residents and instead located a plain pocketbook injury: children stripped of citizenship become ineligible for federally reimbursed Medicaid, CHIP and Title IV-E foster care, and the States must rebuild their eligibility-verification systems either way. On the merits it held the order likely unconstitutional, reading “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” as subjection to United States law rather than as a requirement of allegiance or domicile, and resting on Wong Kim Ark, the common-law jus soli background, and 125 years of contrary executive practice. Then the move that matters for this module: it kept the injunction nationwide anyway, on the ground that CASA permits relief beyond the parties when nothing narrower gives the plaintiffs complete relief — and because people move between States, a Washington-only injunction would leave Washington’s verification problem exactly where it was. The Supreme Court resolved the merits of the birthright-citizenship question the following Term in Trump v. Barbara (June 30, 2026), holding that children born here to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens; it did not disturb this reasoning about remedy. So the live question this case leaves you is not who won. It is whether the “complete relief” exception, applied to State plaintiffs in a mobile country, is a narrow carve-out or a re-entrance for the very practice CASA abolished.