| Abstrakt: |
The first meeting of Politics 514 for fall semester 1964 was scheduled for Thursday afternoon, September 24, coincidentally the 209th anniversary of the birth of Chief Justice John Marshall. As an exceedingly green first-year student in the Graduate School, I made my way to "A" level (one floor below the first floor) of Princeton University's Firestone Library a few minutes before two o'clock. A short distance from the stairwell, I found the Politics Department seminar room and took a seat at the table. Promptly on the hour, Professor Alpheus Thomas Mason entered the room, greeted the dozen beginning and continuing students present, and occupied a chair with his back to the window. There followed an hour's discourse from this celebrated judicial biographer on what awaited us during the Term: an adventure in American constitutional law. Without notes and with the captivating voice of an orator, he drew from the words of James Madison, JamesWilson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Marshall so extensively and with such familiarity that I wondered whether, during nearly four decades of teaching, he had somehow divined a way to commune directly with the founding generation. After he made clear his expectations and explained how the course would proceed, I then grasped why this seminar, although deservedly praised as one of the best taught in the Graduate School, was rarely heavily enrolled: He expected each student, each week, to write a research paper of nine to twelve pages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
