PLAP 3500

I absolutely loved this course and would recommend it to anyone vaguely interested in the Supreme Court the judiciary. Rivero is a very friendly and organized professor who made the most of every lecture. He has a large knowledge base of the Supreme Court and would often include fun facts about the justices and additional background information that made the cases more complex and interesting. Merwa Koyash was also a compassionate and fair TA. The class was lecture-based with weekly discussion posts based on readings, which were graded for completion. The readings were usually light and fairly interesting, and Professor Rivero often made sure to give abbreviated Opinions so that we only read what was necessary. The major assignments were two short essays (5-6) pages and a final, in person, exam. I thought everything was fairly graded, and if you paid attention in class, you would likely do well on all of the assignments.

This class is amazing. I went in knowing a fair amount about the judiciary and wanting to strengthen that knowledge, but with no intentions of pursuing any study of it down the road. After this course, Prof Rivero has me considering law school. This course is a tremendous history of the Supreme Court, and Rivero is an excellent professor with a clear passion for the subject. The readings and lecture material are incredibly interesting; most of the course is spent covering various cases from the history of the Supreme Court, from the well-known to more obscure ones. The two short papers (5-6 pages) written throughout the semester were written without any research, which made us really grapple with the course material, but were very fun to work on. They were graded very fairly, as was the final exam, which was a good summary of the course. While discussion never produced any big insights, there was always plenty of energy; the material is very easy to engage with and yet is so complex and meaningful that there are bound to be so many different interpretations. It's a very good class to develop political thinking skills, and you get a nice dose of history in it too. I could not recommend this class enough: one of my favorites at UVA!

Albert is young and teaching for the first time, so there were some expected growing pains– I found lectures relatively boring, but still important to follow since lots of the info in lectures wasn't in readings (which are basically just Supreme Court cases). We went from Marbury v. Madison up thru modern cases (Dobbs, Rahimi, etc) in units covering the founding of SCOTUS, Civil Rights + Civil Liberties (econ regulations, Cold War stuff, race) and Modern Controversies (abortion, gun rights mainly). The class moved pretty slow imo and wasn't much more in depth than my high school Con Law class but wasn't super hard. Get Merwa as you TA if she's still doing it because she was AWESOME. Main components of grade are 2 papers and a final, and the papers are really easy and straightforward. Solid class if you want to do politics but definitely won't blow your mind– probably will get better with time as he refines the curriculum.

I really enjoyed this class! It can be intimidating being a first year taking a 3000s level class, however, I would recommend it (assuming the course stays the same since it is a special topic) to anyone in any year. Professor Rivero is an extremely kind person and an amazing lecturer and the class isn’t that challenging. Your grade consists of just 2 papers, a final, and discussion. He doesn’t make discussion a burden, and he’s always willing to help answer questions about papers and makes himself more available during office hours for those wanting to ask questions about the final. The final itself is not that tricky at all, if you come to lecture, pay attention, and take good notes, you’ll do great! The readings are also not that bad, you read abridged versions of Supreme Court cases, and during lecture, the main points are summarized and Prof Rivero talks about the context for the cases (like why did they come out the way they did) and the impact of them. Definitely do the readings as they’ll help on the paper, but really if you put in a very reasonable amount of effort, you’ll do great! This class is amazing and I learned so much.