Dr. Tracy Lightcap
Professor of Political Science
tlightcap@lagrange.edu
706-880-8226

I am Tracy Lightcap, Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science here at LaGrange College. I received my Ph.D. from Emory University (1980) and I have taught at LaGrange College since 1991. I teach courses on law and the courts and on other aspects of the American polity. I share teaching the required courses in our major with my colleague, Dr. John Tures. I also chair the task force overseeing the College’s core course on the American experience and I teach our freshman Cornerstone course as well. My major fields of interest and scholarship are American political institutions, judicial politics and public law, comparative judicial systems and judicial administration, and, most recently, the influence of informal institutions on policymaking. In the last few years I’ve published papers concerning judicial reform efforts in Costa Rica, factors affecting the consolidation of American state judicial systems, and the evaluation of multidisciplinary general education programs. My present work involves a study of the emergence of torture as an interrogation technique in the War on Terror. I have linked some of these studies below. You’ll also find my vita and syllabi for my current classes here as well.

Syllabi for My Classes

• POLS 1101 - U. S. Government (Spring 2007) (.pdf)
• POLS 3312 - Public Administration and Public Policy (Spring 2007) (.pdf)
• POLS 3315 - American Constitutional Law: Civil Rights and Liberties (Spring 2007) (.pdf)
• POLS 4430 - Senior Seminar in Political Science (Spring 2007) (.pdf)

My Curriculum Vita (.pdf)

Some Recent Papers

• Issue Environments and Institutionalization: Structural Change in U.S. State Judicial Systems: 1975 - 1995 (.pdf)
• Taming the Hydra: A Trianugulation Approach to Assessing an Interdisciplinary Core Curriculum (.pdf)
• From the Lubyanka to Abu Ghraib: Political Time, Political Crisis, Informal Institutions, and the Adoption of “Alternative Procedures” of Interrogation in the United States and the Soviet Union (.pdf)
• Crucial and Routine Decisions: Why the Attitudinal Model of Supreme Court Decisionmaking Works the Way It Does (.pdf)