PUBLIC LAW

  Professor John E. Finn

The study of law and politics has had a long and distinguished history in the Government Department. Our predecessors, for example, include such important scholars and teachers as Woodrow Wilson and Clement Vose, both of whom made major contributions to the study of law as an essentially political practice. Their legacy continues to inform the study of law at Wesleyan. We begin with the premise that the study of law is an integral part of an education not only in political science, but in the liberal arts more generally. We thus eschew the narrow pre-professionalism of  the typical pre-law program in favor of a wide variety of courses that situate law in the larger social,  cultural, political, and economic contexts in which it resides. Like most law schools, which take a similarly dim view of formal “pre-law” programs, we share Justice Frankfurter’s belief “That the best way to prepare for the law is to come to the study of law as a well-read person.”

Although the University does not  have a formal pre-law program, many of our students do go on to law school, and more than a few are admitted every year to the nation’s most prestigious law schools.  Professor Finn has a J.D. and can be an invaluable source of guidance in pursuing law school. There are also a wide variety of helpful resources and publications available through the Career Planning Center.

One member of the Department, Professor Finn, offers a variety of courses on law and politics.  In most years the Department offers courses for majors and non-majors in constitutional law and civil liberties. We typically offer also one or two introductory courses on the judicial process or the constitutional system, and one of three or four advanced seminars, which include such topics as  Jurisprudence, Comparative Constitutional Interpretation, and American Constitutional Theory. In addition, the Department offers a number of other courses, in all four of the Concentrations, that any serious student of the legal process should consider.