Review:
Portney is ok, I guess. His lectures go slowly, and he more or less reads right off his powerpoint slides. He does what he can to keep class lively (jokes at the beginning of every class, intelligent guest lectures, some class participation), but he isn't that lively a guy. The other real problem is that Portney is liberal on judicial issues, gives his liberal position on nearly everything, and makes no effort to explain the other side (although it usually isn't difficult to figure out what it would be). On the other hand, I did learn in his class, and there was a fair amount of interesting material presented in an easy to follow way. The material had a nice flow to the order or topics that kept me remembering even the stuff that happened at the beginning of class.

Workload:
So easy. So. I mean, I've yet to take an easier political science class. The book is basically optional. There is nothing graded except for the midterm and the final, which are both shortish for exams (5-7 pages). I did NO work during the semester, wrote a good final paper and squeaked an A-. Overall, I liked the class. Even though Portney isn't that interesting to listen to, I learned and class was easy.

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