Got started late but has been very informative with lots of surprises I thought I knew more than I did.

I was expecting for more legal information to be delivered. I think it was to historically oriented

Great course and an excellent start in understanding Federal Government.

Pretty good course. A little disorganized, but overall very informative.

Interesting topic, but the course is not organized well. Sometime the professor gives us a good lecture with lots of interesting details, sometimes he's just rambling.

H

I was very disaappointed by this course, in fact a bit more so than by the "Unwritten" course that has run concurrently with this one. I was **very** put off by the professor's simply opening his book and trying to remember what he'd said there and then, in front of his audience, reduce it down to a videoed talk. He needed to put some effort and thought into understanding his topic from the point of view of an audience that is inevitably very, very different from the one he had in mind (if any, in particular) as he was writing the book. If he didn't have time for proper preparation, he should have found another medium for flogging his publications.

By and large, everyone who is from the US (I'm not) and who teaches about the US constitution emphasizes its uniqueness. Indeed, they have a point: it was the first (and, admirably, the shortest) modern written constitution. However, uniqueness isn't unique among nations; all nations are somehow unique. Undertanding a nation (including thir constitution) has to involve looking at both hum-drum normality as well as uniqueness. I felt that the course would have been more substantial if it had been built on the obvious fact that the US revolutionaries were "Englishmen fighting for an Englishman's rights." And, indeed, what they created had both the worst and the best traits that England's historical jurisprudence offered. Social stare decisis has been a major stumbling-block not only for common-law countries but as well for countries that follow other sorts of jurisprudence.

The course was embarrassingly bad.

Unfortunately there is no involvement academic staff so there is no assistance/support. The course is put out there and students are left to their own devices. The calibre of students is poor and informed discussions non-existent. A great pity because the content on occasion is interesting.

Professor is difficult to follow, often repeating himself and adds fluff that can often be a waste of time

I found the professor to be not only a poor and awkward speaker, who fumbled and rambled through the videos, but also overly romantic, jingoistic, and apologetic about the history surrounding the formulation of the United States. While the Constitution is obviously an important stepping stone along the way to the broader (yet imperfect) expression of democracy we enjoy today, that is no reason to glamorize it, its writers, or the circumstances of its ratification as above criticism; nor does it excuse the racism and sexism inherit in its ratification because of the "context" in which it was written.

This type of glorification and casual dismissal of foundational flaws in our founding document due to "context" only serves to propagate and justify further racism, sexism, and inequality, and is not up to the standards that I look for in a course about constitutional law. A token acknowledgment of these bedrock inequalities does not dismiss the continuing impacts that they are having on our country today; they are the fundamental cause of the inequalities that we see today.

I got maybe four videos in before I flipped off the screen. Despite his uncomfortable delivery, I don't question the professor's broader knowledge about the subject (I was actually willing to sit through the awk for several videos to glean the info.) I also don't want to infer that I watched the whole course before making a full assessment, but his editorializing on the subject this early on was too much for me to disregard, and was a strong indicator that I had to say no to the rest of the course.

I attempted to take this course because I really wanted to learn more about the US Constitution and how it applies to my daily life. I made it to week three before I could no longer keep listening to Professor Amar drone on and turn a 10 minute lecture into a 25 minute lecture with filler words, tangents and lack of structure. Professor Amar is very knowledgeable about the Constitution and I don't doubt his credentials or accomplishments. However, with out an outline, slides, notes, structure... something... anything... this class is just a talking head that is painfully hard to pay attention to. If you're an auditory learner and prefer the old school, pretentious, Ivy League lecture hall format this is the class for you.

The instructor just rambles on and on... there is no structure to the lectures.