Law and the Political Process has enrollments between 60 and 70 students. In many ways, Law and the Political Process is socratically taught, with the use of panels, role plays, and movies to stimulate alternative forms of student engagement. The novel innovation in Law and the Political Process involves assessment; students may take their exams in groups of up to three students.

See resource page for course syllabus and procedures.

Evaluation

Students are given the entire examination period to work on the exam, whether they work as a group or individually. The exams are very difficult, testing students’ ability to think about the relationship between law and democratic institutions conceptually as well as doctrinally (using a more traditional issue spotter format). Usually, about 50 percent of the class exercises the option to write a group exam. There are four goals behind this option.

	to introduce the idea that there is a value to collaboration. Because the option is announced at the beginning of the semester, students have an incentive to get to know and work with other people in the class.
	to build skills for working interdependently that students will need if they decide to practice law.
	to connect the form of assessment to teaching goals, rather than simply to evaluate the knowledge students have gathered over the course of the semester. The goal is not to see how fast students think, but how effectively they connect the case analysis to actual problems.
	to equalize the opportunities for women (who have been found to do better on take home exams) to show what they have learned.