Seminar Book Chapter — Requirements
Requirements — Seminar Book Chapter
Advanced Constitutional Law Seminar Book Project
Original scholarship, 10,000 words, by each student.
I. The Scholarly Standard
Thesis. Your thesis must satisfy the Volokh Requirements (explained separately). A descriptive survey (“courts have said various things about X”) does not.
Originality. The contribution must be yours: a doctrinal tension no one has resolved, a mechanism no one has named, a misreading of precedent no one has corrected, or a proposal no one has defended in print. If your thesis already exists in the literature, you must show what it missed.
Stakes. Answer, explicitly, “so what?” A reader who accepts your claim should have to change how they think, argue, or decide.
Best objection. You must identify the single strongest argument against your thesis, state it in its most persuasive form (not a strawman), and answer it. A paper that never confronts its best objection is incomplete regardless of polish.
No proving-too-much. Test your own reasoning: if your argument, taken seriously, would also invalidate settled doctrine you accept, say so and cabin it.
Doctrinal fidelity. Every constitutional claim rests on primary authority — the text, the precedent, the history — read accurately. Mischaracterizing a holding is disqualifying. Read the cases you cite; do not rely on secondary summaries.
II. Structure
Standard architecture unless you justify otherwise: Introduction stating the thesis and roadmap; a doctrinal/background Part establishing what the law now is; the analytical Parts advancing the argument; a Part addressing counterarguments; a short Conclusion that does not merely restate.
Each Part must earn its place. If a section could be cut without weakening the thesis, cut it.
The Introduction must be readable standing alone and must tell the reader the claim, the stakes, and the path.
III. Length and Prose
10,000 words, measured by Microsoft Word’s word-count function (Review ▸ Word Count), text excluding footnotes.
I stop reading at 10,000 words. Whatever falls past the 10,000th word — your best argument, your answer to the hardest objection, your conclusion — I will not see and will not credit. Budget accordingly. Word count is not a substitute for a completed argument; padding is penalized as heavily as thinness, because every padded sentence spends words you will need later.
Plain, direct prose. Prefer the concrete verb to the nominalization, the short sentence to the clause-choked one. Legal writing is not made rigorous by being made turgid.
Define terms of art on first use. Assume an intelligent reader who is not a specialist in your sub-field.
Minimize AI tropes and clichés. Prose that reads as machine-generated — the reflexive “it’s not X, it’s Y” antithesis, the throat-clearing “in today’s rapidly evolving landscape,” the tricolon padding, the hollow “delve,” “tapestry,” “underscore,” “multifaceted,” the paragraph that gestures at significance without stating a claim — will be marked down. This is not a failure to avoid; it’s an opportunity to write in your own voice, with your own diction, about a subject you actually understand. Use the tools if you like, but the sentences that reach me must be yours. The AI-Tell Scorer (https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/ccb94e06-2cf0-4e20-bd2c-509f2e9c8890) and the belcher-proof skill will be your friends here — run your draft through them before you hand it in.
IV. Citations and Footnotes
Bluebook, current edition, exactly. Every proposition that is not your own reasoning or common knowledge carries a citation. Every citation lives in a footnote.
Footnotes support; they do not smuggle in the argument. Do not park a paragraph of the thesis in a footnote to dodge the word limit.
String cites must be justified — cite the best authority, not every authority. Signals (see, cf., but see, contra) must be used correctly and deliberately.
Pincite everything. A citation to a case for a specific proposition without a page is not acceptable.
Quotations must be exact and fairly contextualized. Block quotations of 50+ words per Bluebook; the citation goes in the following footnote, never inside the block.
V. Format and Conversion — Governed by the Style Guide
Your file must comply in full with the seminar’s Preparing Your Article in Word style guide. The controlling principle there: let real Word features carry meaning, never look-alikes. The following are the requirements most often violated; the style guide governs in all respects and its Quick Checklist must be satisfied before submission.
One .docx file, current Word format, named Lastname_ShortTitle.docx.
Title block at the very top, before any heading: title in the Title style, author in the Subtitle style, optional acknowledgments as a single asterisk footnote (§15). Do not fake the title with large bold text.
Headings use real Heading 1–4 styles, properly nested, no skipped levels, unnumbered (LaTeX numbers automatically), with nothing but heading text in the paragraph (§§3, 14).
Footnotes are genuine inserted Word footnotes (References ▸ Insert Footnote), auto-numbered, never nested, no endnotes, no hand-built notes (§4).
Emphasis is semantic: italics for case names and emphasis, never underlining, never bold-as-heading (§5).
Block quotes use the Quote style; lists use Word’s list buttons; tables are plain grids — no hand-indenting, hand-typed markers, or merged cells (§§6–8). Flag any genuinely complex table before building it.
Special characters are real Unicode: § ¶ en dash (123–24) em dash ellipsis — never a capital S for §, never look-alikes (§10).
Unlink all fields before submitting. Zotero/EndNote/Word citation fields, cross-references, and any auto-generated TOC or bibliography must be converted to static text (Ctrl+Shift+F9); this project keeps everything in footnotes (§13). Proofread after unlinking.
Cross-references to your own sections: by name where possible; other students’ chapters by author and title, never by page or section number (§14).
Clean file: accept/reject all tracked changes, delete all comments, remove hidden text, turn off Track Changes, spell-check, and reopen the saved file to confirm it is not corrupt (§16).
VI. Grounds for Rejection or Reduced Credit
A thesis that fails the Volokh Requirements, or that is merely descriptive.
A mischaracterized holding or a citation that does not support the proposition it follows.
The best counterargument ignored.
VII. Draft Milestones — What Is Relaxed and When
The requirements above describe the final submission. Earlier drafts relax some of them so you can concentrate on the argument before polishing the apparatus. Nothing is relaxed on the thesis or the reasoning — those must be real from the first draft.
First Draft (~6,500 words)
Length target ~6,500 words, measured the same way (§10). This is a working draft; the argument should be substantially there even if compressed.
Thesis, structure, and reasoning are not relaxed. The Volokh-compliant thesis (§1), the stakes (§3), engagement with the best objection (§4), and doctrinal fidelity (§6) must all be present. A first draft that defers the argument to “later” is not a first draft.
Footnotes need not be perfectly Bluebooked. Every proposition that needs support must still be cited well enough for a reader to find the source and check it, but you need not have every signal, pincite, and abbreviation in final form yet. Substance over form at this stage.
Formatting requirements (§§20–29) are recommendations, not requirements, for the first draft. Following them now saves you work later, but they will not be enforced.
The AI-tell and clarity standards (§14) still apply. Bring your own voice from the start; it is far harder to retrofit.
Second Draft
The second draft must comply with every requirement for the final submission — full length (§10), complete and correct Bluebook footnotes (§§15–19), full style-guide and formatting compliance (§§20–29), and the AI-tell standard (§14). Treat it as final in every respect.
The only changes between the second draft and the final submission should be your responses to critiques — mine and the class’s. If the second draft is done right, the final is a revision pass, not a rebuild. A second draft that leaves the citations or formatting “for the final” has missed the point of the milestone.
Article Template
A complete model article on Marbury v. Madison demonstrating everything the style guide and the requirements above demand: the Title/Subtitle block, real Heading styles, genuine Word footnotes, semantic italics, Quote-style block quotations, plain tables, and correct special characters. Write your chapter in a copy of this file — replace the content, keep the machinery. It is also linked from the Materials page.
E-Packet Guide
What is an E-Packet?
Each student will be assigned one or two class days for which they must create an E-Packet and lead discussion. Students who are not "E-Packet" for a day should interact with the E-Packet in advance so they are prepared to discuss both the problem and the constitutional (or social/political) issues it raises.
Required contents
1. A NotebookLM Notebook containing:
(a) Sources — Supreme Court decisions, edited statutes, and other material relevant to the
topic. Cases you provide should be briefed using the /case-briefer skill and added as a Source.
(b) Studio artifacts, each customized to address the issues you think most important:
- A Deep Dive and Debate of default lengths
- A detailed Slide Deck
- A medium-difficulty Quiz with fewer questions
- An Explainer video and a Short Video
(c) The problem described below, added as a Source to the Notebook.
2. A contemporary problem
An interesting and challenging contemporary problem based on the materials in the NotebookLM, which the class will work through under your guidance and with the professor's help. You should have an answer prepared and should do legal research using all tools at your disposal.
Optional
The E-Packet may also contain a link to a website you have created using Gemini (with Canvas) or otherwise. The professor will show you how to do this.
Timing
Professor E-Packets will be ready at least four days in advance of class. Student E-Packets should follow the same standard. E-Packet creation is worth 20% of your grade.