Friday, Feb. 8 Winona State University faculty member taught a class hosted by the Winona State Senior University.

Political science professor, Matthew Bosworth, taught the “U.S. Supreme Court Today,” a class that focuses on current cases and issues that the U.S. Supreme Court is faced with.

The Senior University is a program offered by the Winona State University Retiree Center. Programs are taught by Winona State faculty, retirees and community experts. The Senior University offers a series of short courses in many different areas, such as art history and biology.

Jessica Kauphusman, the director of the Retiree Center, commented on those who attend events such as this.

“In the past, most of the participants were WSU retirees, and we still have a lot of Winona State retirees both teaching and taking our courses, but the classes have also caught on with the adult learners in the Winona community,” Kauphusman said.

Bosworth has taught two previous Senior University courses about the constitution and the Supreme Court. Friday’s class was his third.

All of his courses are related to each other but have a different focus: his first was about general constitutional law and the second about the First Amendment.

When asked how he had gotten involved in the Senior University, Bosworth said that there were two factors to it.

“My inspiration was my mother-in-law, who had taken senior classes at the University of Maine and really enjoyed it.”

He was also approached by a retired professor from the philosophy department who asked if he would be interested in teaching a class.

Friday’s course focused on cases that have been presented to the Supreme Court this term. This course had 24 participants, which another student said was one of the bigger classes he had been a part of.

Throughout the course, Bosworth focused on one main case: the ongoing Mueller investigation, but discussed a multitude of other cases to help the class better understand the case and different terms.

Some of the terms that Bosworth went into detail on that could be related to the class discussions were subpoenas, unitary executive, executive privilege, independent counsel law, Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act, civil forfeiture and double jeopardy.

A few court cases that drew quite a bit of discussion between the students and Bosworth were Humphrey’s Executor (1935), Morrison v. Olson (1988), D.C. v. Heller (2005), Timbs v. Indiana and Gamble v. the United States.

Friday’s course was 67-year-old Steve Larson’s first time attending one of Bosworth’s classes.

“This class focuses on today’s cases and I’m really interested in what is going on today,” Larson said. “These classes aren’t nearly long enough – two hours is long enough for any class – but there isn’t enough for all four sections.”