Judicial Decisionmaking
Prof. Friedman
Spring 2014
Class Information and First Class Assignment
Our class meets on Mondays and Wednesdays at 9:00 am - 11:00 am, in Room
214 of Furman Hall. (Furman Hall, for those of you not in the law school, sits on Sullivan
Street at 3rd
Street.) Our first class will be Wednesday January 22.
The text for this class is a book that I am currently writing with a distinguished
group of law professors and political scientists: Tom Clark (Emory Politics); Maggie
Lemos (Duke Law); Andrew Martin (Wash U Politics and Law); Ted Ruger (Penn Law).
We have been working on it for some time, and hope to publish it within the next couple
of years. Among other things, I will be looking for your feedback on the text.
I have posted the first chapter of the book on NYU Classes. This chapter was
written to introduce you to the various topics and themes we will cover throughout the
semester. As you will see, it is centered around the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v.
Board of Education, and its race cases before and after.
I am very uncertain of the pace of teaching this material, as I have never taught it
before. My estimate is that it will take us at least a couple of classes to cover the first
chapter.
For the first class, please read pp. 1-36 of the first chapter of the book.
Although the class is primarily law students, there are a few undergraduates and
graduate students. I have asked my TA for the class, Dan Nowicki (dsn248@nyu.edu), to
hold a session in the first week or two of the semester for the non-law students, in order
to talk about reading and briefing law cases, and to provide some fundamentals on the
U.S. Legal System.
I am excited to be teaching this course, and look very forward to meeting with
you.
Best regards,
Barry Friedman