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Each year Stanford offers hundreds of courses to deepen our understanding of democracy – and its alternatives – and how we can continue to reimagine and strengthen democratic values, practices, and institutions. 

And did you know that Stanford has dozens of educational pathways to expand your civic learning through its majors, minors, honors, and co-terms? Explore here!

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  • POLISCI 437C  |
    2025-2026
    Autumn
    Instructors:
    • Chapman, E.
    This course provides a survey of some of the major contributions to political thought in the past century. The course will place special emphasis on the development of theories of political authority and legitimacy in the context of the modern bureaucratic state, as well as the connection between authority and...
  • LAW 6018  |
    2025-2026
    Spring
    Instructors:
    • Engstrom, D.
    The American civil justice system sits at a crossroads. In three-quarters of the 20 million civil cases filed in state courts each year, at least one side lacks a lawyer. Beneath those cases sit tens of millions more legal problems that never make it to court. Many are significant, even...
  • LAW 7001A  |
    2025-2026
    Winter
    Instructors:
    • Engstrom, D.
    Law made by administrative agencies dominates the modern legal system and modern legal practice. This course examines the legal and practical foundations of the modern administrative state. Topics include rationales for delegation to administrative agencies; the legal framework (both constitutional and statutory) that governs agency decision-making; the proper role of...
  • GEP 347  |
    2025-2026
    Spring
    Instructors:
    • Hsiang, S.
    This is an advanced graduate workshop focused on quantitative interdisciplinary research analyzing global environmental policy. This class is responding to requests that I have heard for more advanced classes on environmental economics and policy that explore the frontier of research, serve as a convening/community space for advanced PhD students (2nd...
  • LAW 2401  |
    2025-2026
    This course will address significant areas of procedural law and design that go beyond the first- year civil procedure course, with special attention to aggregate and multiparty litigation (e.g., class actions and Multidistrict Litigation (MDL)). Contemporary litigation frequently involves multiple related actions, multiple parties, and multiple claims that may interact...
  • LAW 904  |
    2025-2026
    Winter
    Spring
    Autumn
    Instructors:
    • Tyler, R.
    • Horne, C.
    Students who have completed the Criminal Defense Clinic are eligible to apply for enrollment as returning students in Advanced Clinic. Advanced Clinic work may include: factual and legal analysis on Sixth Amendment violations of the right to a speedy trial, culminating in briefing and oral argument in the trial court...
  • COMM 176  |
    2025-2026
    Spring
    Instructors:
    • Migielicz, G.
    (Graduate students register for 276. COMM 176 is offered for 5 units, COMM 276 is offered for 4 units.) In-depth reporting and production using audio, images and video. Focus on an in-depth journalism project with appropriate uses of digital media: audio, photography, graphics, and video. Topics include advanced field techniques...
  • LAW 2408  |
    2025-2026
    This advanced course in structural constitutional law builds on concepts, doctrines, and themes developed in Federal Courts. Modern doctrines attempting to reconcile federalism, the supremacy of federal law, separation of powers, and the specific jurisdictional limitations of Article III judicial power raise complex questions about the nature and scope of...
  • LAW 910  |
    2025-2026
    Winter
    Spring
    Autumn
    Instructors:
    • Srikantiah, J.
    • Weissman-Ward, L.
    The Immigrants' Rights Advanced Clinic offers the opportunity for students who have already successfully completed the Immigrants' Rights Clinic to pursue: a specific immigrants' rights advocacy project; advanced individual client representation; and/or working with the clinic director to provide direction/guidance to those enrolled in the Clinic for the first time...
  • POLISCI 359  |
    2025-2026
    Winter
    Spring
    Autumn
    Instructors:
    • Bonica, A.
    • Acharya, A.
    • Cox, G.
    • Hainmueller, J.
    • Rivers, D.
    • Iyengar, S.
    • Grimmer, J.
    • Fouka, V.
    • Fearon, J.
    • Xu, Y.
    • Tomz, M.
    For PhD students. Directed reading in Political Science with a focus on political methodology. May be repeated for credit.
  • MS&E 394  |
    2025-2026
    Spring
    Instructors:
    • Weyant, J.
    Design and application of computational models and techniques for assessing climate and energy policy, and for predicting the impacts of climate change. Topics include 1) best practices in research design, model design and selection; 2) types of models available, taxonomy, core concepts, and limitations; 3) interpreting and presenting model results...
  • POLISCI 427  |
    2025-2026
    Spring
    This seminar concentrates on a critical evaluation of democratic vulnerabilities in our time, emphasis on critical. The focus is mass politics. Among the topics: democratic backsliding, varieties of value conflict, polarization, support for presidential overreach, and ideological asymmetries in illiberal politics.
  • LAW 4064  |
    2025-2026
    Spring
    Instructors:
    • Iftimie, A.
    This seminar explores the rapidly evolving intersection of AI and national security policy. Taught by Alex Iftimie, deputy general counsel at OpenAI and a former Department of Justice national security official, the course provides students with a grounding in the technical capabilities of frontier AI and the strategic and policy...
  • GSBGID 517  |
    2025-2026
    Winter
    Instructors:
    • Hall, A.
    • Yan, J.
    Artificial intelligence is more than a technological shift - t is a political and organizational one. This course examines how AI is reshaping power in business, government, and society. Each week we take up a big question about AI and power: How will people and firms actually use AI, and...
  • HISTORY 259E  |
    2025-2026
    Autumn
    Instructors:
    • Rakove, R.
    This class seeks to examine the modern American experience with limited wars, beginning with distant and yet pertinent cases, and culminating in the war in Iraq. Although this class will examine war as a consequence of foreign policy, it will not focus primarily on presidential decision making. Rather, it will...
  • AMSTUD 139C  |
    2025-2026
    Spring
    Instructors:
    • Fishkin, S.
    How have American writers tried to expose and illuminate racism and sexism through fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and poetry? How have they tried to focus our attention on discrimination and prejudice based on race, gender, ethnicity, class, religion and national origin? What writing strategies can break through apathy and ignorance...
  • POLISCI 420A  |
    2025-2026
    Winter
    Instructors:
    • Cox, G.
    Theories of American politics, focusing on Congress, the presidency, the bureaucracy, and the courts.
  • AMSTUD 123X  |
    2025-2026
    Spring
    Instructors:
    • Bonica, A.
    • Sturdivant, M.
    • Ramaswamy, A.
    • Jefferson, H.
    American democracy faces a series of unprecedented challenges. This course will identify the greatest areas of weakness in the American political system, make sense of the most pressing threats facing democracy, and contemplate how democracy can be strengthened. With this theme - in defense of democracy - in mind, we...
  • CLASSICS 81  |
    2025-2026
    Autumn
    Instructors:
    • Cresca, E.
    • Morris, I.
    Why do imperialists conquer people? Why do some people resist while others collaborate? This course tries to answer these questions by looking at some of the world's earliest empires. The main focus is on the expansion of the Assyrian and Persian Empires between 900 and 300 BC and the consequences...
  • OSPPARIS 27  |
    2025-2026
    Spring
    Instructors:
    • calefas-strebelle, a.
    • Herold, A.
    This course proposes to explore art and politics in France from the revolution to the present. Through a multimedia approach - including sculptures, paintings, prints, commemorative monuments, architecture, street art and photographs - we will retrace the changing forms that some of the most salient political messages have taken in...