SI 14′ New Law? Vanilla Yogurt for Breakfast at 7:00am EVERYDAY, EVERYONE

“You are a successful educator if on the last day of class the students can do this [carry on the conversation] without you.” – Primus

Speaker Bio
Richard Primus, J.D. Professor of Law

Prof. Richard Primus teaches the law, theory, and history of the U.S. Constitution at the University of Michigan Law School.  His scholarship has been cited in opinions of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.  In 2008, he won the first-ever Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies for his work on the relationship between history and constitutional interpretation. The students of The University of Michigan Law School have given Prof. Primus their highest award for excellence in teaching on four separate occasions. Prof. Primus works with constitutional law on the state level as well as the federal. He has helped state governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private businesses solve practical problems involving state-level constitutional law, both in Michigan and in other states. Prof. Primus graduated from Harvard College in 1992 with an AB, summa cum laude, in social studies. He then earned a DPhil in politics at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and the Jowett Senior Scholar at Balliol College. After studying law at Yale, Prof. Primus clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi on the Second Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He then practiced law at the Washington, D.C., office of Jenner & Block before joining the Michigan faculty.

Richard Primus, J.D. – A Socratic Dialogue: Thinking about the Constitution at Cardinal Stritch Summer Institute 2014

THE LESSON.

The constitution has a magical power – it can prevent the making of a law. What is the thing (constitution) itself? What does the word constitution mean?

The word constitution has several different meanings, all related to each other.
Root (verb): constitute – to put something together and know how it’s put together
If you know the constitution of a thing, you can know what it can and cannot do.
The constitution explains what the Government does.
Many families have a constitution – governing norms (bedtime, roles, rules). A system for running operation.

Why would you want your country to have a constitution?
Protects our rights against THE government (99% true), Justice, Union, Civil Peace, etc.

Did you know??? …this about the constitution – the 2nd page is all complaints about England.

English Political Theory Recap: 1776 British Constitution – civil war (support of legislature (Parliament) vs. support of King). People Win, Cut off the King’s head. 11 years pass and there is no King in England and the people miss the Royal Family. Ask the Son to come back. The Parliament runs the show and make the decisions that are then deemed the will of the King.

Sovereignty – Highest power that no one can challenge
Who is the Sovereign Power in the United States?  Congress? President? People? Nobody (sovereignty doesn’t work that way). Consider: who did the constituting and who can change the rules of the game? In the 18th century this was unlike Britain. Only Parliament decides when parliament goes to far.  United States: Limited power in the government.

Pre-commitment Strategy (prism, one of many frames) – Example: Book 12 Lines 36-54 and Lines 177-200   Odysseus and the Sirens
Odysseus needs a strategy to not fall victim to the sirens. He knows the problem and he can make a pre-commitment strategy to navigate this one problem (which is fairly simple). Odysseus has the authority over the people on the ship because he was the captain.
The constitution writers did not know the future and couldn’t possible foresee all of the future problems. The people that wrote the US Constitution in the 18th Century knew they would not be as equipped to solve?
What authority do the people that wrote the constitution have over us? They were not democratically elected in the means we use today. We (the people) had no say in this. The constitution was not made by our present self for our future self. Did this authority have a right to bind us?
Limitations: We didn’t decide and the people that did couldn’t foresee the future.

The right of revolution – to start over again. If the people deem the government as unjust. The Declaration of Independence says this, but the constitution doesn’t.

Article 5 – In order to amend the constitution you need a vote of 2/3 of the US senate and 3/4 of the states (38/50).
This is a mechanism for change. Getting the passing votes of above is almost impossible.

Constitutional law is the law of what the government can do and how, relationships, and thought process.

THE DEBRIEF.
Teachers always have goals at the beginning of classes (substance and method). The method transcends the substance.
What were his lesson (conversation) goals?

Method (more important): thinking actively all the time as we go along (there is a rhythm).  He wants every student to come to class thinking there is a good chance I will need to talk today.  Push students to think about things in different ways. To see problems we didn’t previously know where there.

Course Goals: To make the teacher unnecessary (by the end the students should be pushing themselves). They will start reading and hear his voice in their heads and think about what questions he may ask. The more the students learn to ask the questions by and of themselves the better and more prepared they are. A teacher needs to model learning. Show how we learn. Let the students know they aren’t the only person asking questions – I am doing it to. We want the thinking process to be physical. Want the students to imitate that process even after they leave the room.  Also need to show the students you are working hard and you are having fun. Thinking for a living is hard. Sometimes it requires silence and time. The best teachers are comfortable saying, “I don’t know” because it allows the students to push back and they can see learning is a continuous cycle. Students need to know: I have high expectations and am rooting for their success. I want the student to hit it out of the park, and they need know I want them to hit it out of the park. Emphasize the part in a response that was right and show clearly the part that isn’t right – need to do both. Most teachers only emphasize the part that is right – the results will not be as high.

Students often mistake the educational environment as a place where they need to show what they know. Instead the mindset needs to be shifted to here is your space and opportunity to make a mistake.  This is the last safe space like that. Try it out – let’s talk about it. If you tell me you don’t know something – we will work with it. How sure are you? Dogmatic people don’t learn things – be open to thinking differently and questioning of one’s own view. You want to know your weaknesses or limitations before anyone else will. This gives you an opportunity to think of alternatives, improve it, more respectful of other people. Which weaknesses are tolerable? All people’s views have weaknesses. All thoughts are just a framework for conversations. The idea they are presently astounding have weaknesses.

What does the student learn on the first day of class?  How this class works. The constitution of the class. The class on the first day must be like the classes that are going to come. What this means… he walks into class, and calls on a student and asks a question. Students form judgments on how a class will be within minutes and this view is sticky (hard to change).

Need to know exactly which skills you want to teach them. Pick one or two – they have the rest of their lives to learn the rest.

A good Socratic teacher hears the first response, sees the six ways in which it isn’t quite right and identifies the thing in it that is the beginning of the path to a better answer and sticks with the student long enough that they make a meaningful contribution. The bad Socratic teacher dismisses the answer and shakes their confidence. It’s more difficult to teach students that think they already know – harder to “unteach”. You want your students to believe, this is a space where I will get smarter”

First question I ask in every class: an answer the teacher is absolutely sure the student knows the answer to. Did you have breakfast? Follow with two or three questions that he/she MUST know the answer to. What did you eat for breakfast? And… at about what time did you eat this?  Do you eat this every day?

Substance: Public Leadership,

Socratic method – at first students don’t like it, and that’s because usually faculty don’t use this method correctly.

Self Socratic – so I believe this, but then I think that. This is what we want our students to be able to do. The use of questions to increase awareness and understanding.

Respect students by treating their educational endeavor with challenge to grow capacities.