Week 9 — Build a Court: Review, Independence, and the Majority — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Introduction to Political Science Free sample edition

Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI. An instructor who prefers it publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one, as the note at its top says.

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 8 of the term — design the courts of a made-up country, sort its court rules into power, conditions, and door, and explain to someone where American judicial review actually comes from.

This week you learned what courts do, how judicial review differs from judicial independence and from jurisdiction, where Marbury v. Madison (1803) placed the American power, how diffuse and concentrated review differ, and why the counter-majoritarian debate has strong cases on both sides. Week 6 named a court setting an act aside as one of the checks and balances, Week 8 gave you the three-layer read, and Week 1 gave you the empirical/normative distinction; this assignment puts all three to work on a court system you design. In this assignment you work two short counting problems, interpret each one, and explain where judicial review comes from to someone who has never studied the courts. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Political Analysis Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will design the court system of a made-up country, then write and sort a set of rules about its courts. Treat every country as illustrative: none of them is real, and no real person, sitting judge, or current officeholder belongs in any of them.

Work these two problems, showing how you got each count:

Your made-up country's constitutional court has 21 judges, and a ruling that strikes down a statute needs two thirds of the judges: the number of judges times 2, divided by 3. How many judges must agree?
You write rules for your made-up country's courts: 2 rules about judicial review, 3 rules about judicial independence, and 1 rule about jurisdiction. How many rules do you write?

Beside each count, add the interpretation that makes it political science:

Problem 1, your court. Choose diffuse review or concentrated review for your country and say who may bring a law before the court, including whether the court may rule in the abstract. Say which kinds of law your two-thirds rule protects from being struck down too easily, and why that threshold matters in your design. Then defend your choice with at least one premise labelled empirical and one labelled normative, state the strongest case for the other side of the counter-majoritarian debate as its defenders would put it (precommitment and minority protection, or the counter-majoritarian and juristocracy worries), and give your reply.
Problem 2, your rules. Write the six rules. Each judicial independence rule must show one support: secure tenure, insulated selection, or compliance. Label every rule review, independence, or jurisdiction, and name the layer (design, practice, or verdict) of one rule and of one claim someone might make about it. Then match the three pinned cases this course uses, Marbury v. Madison (1803), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), to power, scope, and equality.

Explain it to a non-expert

A roommate tells you, "The Supreme Court can strike down laws because Article III says so in plain words." Write a 3–5 sentence message to that roommate that explains, in everyday words, where American judicial review comes from, uses Marbury v. Madison as the example, and names one limit of what the text of Article III can tell you on its own. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a volunteer at a community garden explaining to a newcomer why plots are assigned by lottery. Model answer: "We hand out plots by drawing names because more people want one than we have space for. The lottery is not about who has gardened longest; it gives every member the same chance. If you miss out this round, the waiting list goes first next time. The limit is that the lottery decides who gets a plot, not which plot, so the sunny corner still goes to whoever asks first."

Use that pattern for your message to the roommate, with your own wording and evidence.

Show how you got each count. A reader should be able to reproduce both counts from the values above without guessing which values or steps you used.

After you finish, reread your work and revise at least one design choice, rule label, or explanation. Then add a short reflection (3–4 sentences) on one of two options of equal weight, your choice: (a) which design choice or rule label you changed and why the new version is better; or (b) which rule you first labelled as judicial review when it described a condition of independence, and how you caught it.

Deliverables

Submit a single design file containing:

the two counts, each with the values and the operation shown;
your court design (its architecture, who may bring a law before the court and whether it may rule in the abstract, what the two-thirds rule protects, a defense with premises labelled by kind, the strongest case for the other side of the counter-majoritarian debate, and your reply);
your six sorted rules (each labelled, each independence rule showing its support, with the layer named for one rule and one claim about it) and your case match;
your message to the roommate; and
your revision note with the reflection option you chose.

Keep it to roughly two pages. Clear and accurate beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your work as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about four minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled diagram of your court system with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the counts, the court design, the rules, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. Quote only the pinned Article III and Marbury fragments, exactly, state Bickel's argument in your own words, and name no court case beyond the three this course pins. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's design, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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