Master of Arts in Liberal Studies
Rory Quirk

Rory F. Quirk joined the Liberal Studies faculty in 1999. His courses range across three Liberal Studies curricular fields (American Studies, The Theory and Practice of American Democracy, Social and Public Policy) and cover a spectrum of Constitutional Law issues. The Court, the Constitution, and the Shaping of the American Nation traces the development of the U.S. Constitution and the American Nation through analysis of key Supreme Court cases, from the rise of the Marshall Court (Marbury v. Madison, Gibbons, McCulloch), through the coming of the Civil War (Dred Scott), the Court Packing of 1937, the second American Reconstruction (Brown v. the Board and its progeny), to the present (Hollingsworth, Windsor, the Affordable Care Act). Scorpions in the Constitutional Bottle: Uncivil Speech, Civil Society examines the constitutional line between protected First Amendment speech (no matter how nettlesome), and speech that so frays the social contract and so imperils a democratic society that it loses constitutional protection. The course examines the provenance of the First Amendment Speech Clause, and focuses on leading SCOTUS speech cases (Near, New York Times v. Sullivan, the Pentagon Papers) to the present. Caesar, God and the Constitution: Church-State Tensions and Religious Freedom in American Society examines the Establishment and the Free Exercise Clauses of the Constitution, tracing the evolution of religious freedom and religious orthodoxy from colonial times to the present. Through historical analysis and case study of the leading SCOTUS cases, this course examines the interplay between chuch and state, religion and the Constitution, and the role of the Court in sorting it all out. Following graduation from Georgetown in 1965, he enlisted in the Army, graduated from Infantry Officer Candidate School and the British Jungle Warfare School, and served with the Ninth Infantry Division in Vietnam, Following graduation from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he worked at The Washington Post. Following graduation from Georgetown Law, he has worked as a lawyer in private practice and with the government. He is the author of Wars and Peace: The Memoir of an American Family (Presidio). Adjunct Professor of Liberal Studies. J.D. Georgetown M.S. Columbia M.A. Georgetown A.B. Georgetown