https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/LEGS5314?type=COREThere are many bad reasons why we should care about US Constitutional Law. The biggest, the oldest, the most boldly aspirationalÂ… All these standard motivations for our fixations with "everything American" sound almost laughable in 2024. As this course is offered, Donald Trump - a dangerous populist who, four years ago, incited a violent insurrection after losing at the ballot box - may return to power. One cannot overestimate the importance of that very fact - but our American disillusionment runs deeper. To some extent, the change is narrative, not factual. We have always known about injustices and contradictions embedded in the American Republic. But, until recently, the dominant way of thinking about them was to frame them as unfortunate exceptions, temporary deviations from the remarkable experiment in constitutional self-governance. Recently, though, a group of courageous scholars has been increasingly vocal about busting these myths, while the facts "on the ground" give a lot of credence to their reinterpretation. Perhaps racism, violence, cutthroat capitalism, and authoritarianism are not asterisks in the American story, but the main tale? In the constitutional domain, this grim vision is corroborated by the breathtaking revolution taking place at the Supreme Court. After three judicial appointments made by Donald Trump - two of which seriously violated established constitutional customs - the Court is busy radically altering almost every major area of constitutional law. Much of what I learned about the topic during my time at Yale Law School is no longer relevant. Yet, to my exasperation, major casebooks barely recognize this ongoing constitutional revolution: recent landmark cases are (sometimes) added to the collections, but the narrative is still centered around bygone progressive achievements of the New Deal and the Civil Rights era - the very achievements that the current Court is busy eviscerating. One of my key goals is to avoid a situation where, in a decade, you will see our course the way I see mine: as an exercise of liberal wishful thinking. From those crises, however, a new reason to study US Constitutional Law emerges. If the US is becoming, by and large, a failed democratic state, isn't it interesting to see how and why key US institutions have not delivered the ideals proclaimed in the world's oldest constitution? As I will try to show, the relation between ideals and lies has changed over time. At times, the Supreme Court and other constitutional actors seemed to be bringing America closer to the country's remarkable promise. But these idealistic periods have, unfortunately, been followed by regressive counterrevolutions, in which the constitutional institutions have been used to ruthlessly reinforce structures of oppression. I will argue that today, we witness precisely one of these counterrevolutionary cycles. Is this constant tension between ideals and lies somehow a product of the US constitutional design?