SAGE

Lee Epstein, the Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and co-director of the Center for Empirical Research in the Law there, says that while no high court sits out the debates raging around it, the level of polarization on the court itself is not routine. "As a function of our polarized environment, the court is now divided with all the liberals or Democrats, and all the conservatives, or Republicans, and that's very unusual," she observes. "Normally there may be some liberal Republicans, or some conservative Democrats, and it wouldn't so neatly fall into those red and blue boxes based on ideology." And looking forward? "I think as our times grow more polarized, our courts are going to reflect that since these justices must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. I think the public very well understands that, and that's why we have fights over confirmation now—if all judges were the same, it wouldn't matter who was on the courts." As a professor and successful author, Epstein often focuses on one particular public: students. Epstein herself became interested in constitutional law as an undergrad, when she took a course from Thomas G. Walker, currently the Goodrich C. White Professor of Political Science at Emory University. That student-teacher connection proved fortuitous; she and Walker have since collaborated on several books, including the CQ Press textbook series Constitutional Law for a Changing America: Institutional Powers and Constraints, the tenth edition of which has just The recent partisan brawling over the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court reminds us that no federal institution—not even one expected to somehow sit above the fray—can avoid the ravages of polarization. come out—see page 11. (While ten editions is a testament to any textbook, as independent validation the Law and Courts section of the American Political Science Association awarded the series its award for teaching and mentoring.) Given her own epiphany as an undergraduate, Epstein says she and Walker have stuck to the original game plan they set out with in the early 1990s with the first edition of Institutional Powers and Constraints and its sister volume Rights, Liberties, and Justice: "to make constitutional law interesting for students." When they started writing the book, "all the con law books looked the same. They had a brown or green cover. They were just text—the cases, some narrative— and they looked pretty much like law books. Our vision was to try and make Eyes on the Bigger Picture: Teaching Constitutional Law CQ Press best-selling author Lee Epstein shares insights on how to get students to think about constitutional law without bogging down in partisan politics. Constitutional Law 4

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