Jordan Carr Peterson
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Teaching
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
POLS 435: Criminal Law and Procedure (undergraduate)
This course introduces students to the American system of criminal law. This includes both an overview of the substantive criminal law and procedural rights of the criminally accused. constitutional rights afforded the criminally accused in the American legal system. Topics to be considered include justifications for criminalization of certain activities and behaviors; rationales for criminal sanctions; criticisms of incarceration and more extreme forms of punishment; and protections for the accused during both the course of investigation as well as prosecution of alleged crimes by the state. As such, students encounter topics in philosophy of crime and punishment, the constitutional standards governing police practices, and constitutional provisions that bear on prosecutorial choices during the course of criminal litigation.
During the procedural component, the course involves a rigorous examination of the role played by the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments in the American criminal justice system. The rights and liberties announced in these provisions — some of the most historically significant components of the U.S. Bill of Rights — include but are not limited to the right to due process of law; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures by the state; the right to counsel; the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination; and the right to a trial by jury.
POLS 442: Administrative Law & Regulatory Policy (undergraduate)
This course presents students with an overview of administrative governance in the American state and American law, as well as an assessment of the various normative perspectives (sympathetic and critical) on regulation in public life. The course provides an overview of the many institutions involved in the operation of administrative and regulatory processes in American government, including detailed examinations of the form, function, and structure of federal administrative agencies, as well as how agencies interact with other federal institutions such as Congress, the President, and the courts. In addition, students learn key doctrines in U.S. administrative law governing the discretion of agencies and how litigants may successfully challenge regulatory and adjudicatory decisions made by agency officials in federal court. The course concludes with a presentation of normative interpretations of agency authority in American government.
POLS 430: Constitutional Law, Government Powers (undergraduate)
This course presents students with a survey of United States Constitutional Law that approximates the experience of constitutional law curricular sequences taken by first-year law students. Students read case law that introduces them to the power and capacity of institutions in the U.S. government as well as the scope of economic liberties protected in the American state. In particular, students confront the manner in which courts have constructed the institutional capacity of the states, the Congress, the presidency, federal administrative agencies, and the judiciary itself; and consider critically the extent to which the U.S. Constitution permits for regulatory activity to constrain economic rights via constitutional provisions and legal doctrines such as the commerce clause, economic substantive due process, the takings clause, and public use/just compensation.
This course requires students to reexamine the conventional understanding of American government by emphasizing the degree to which institutional power in U.S. politics is the function of judicial activity. Further, the seminar format introduces students to examination via the Socratic method and thus incentivizes students to become careful thinkers who approach case analysis deliberately and choose their words judiciously.