This article provides background on the voir dire (jury selection) process, explaining its importance to the outcome of a trial. Offers a simulation experience which has students take the role of lawyers interviewing 29 prospective jurors for an alcohol-related traffic accident involving a 20-year-old driver. Profiles for prospective jurors and…

Herbert Storing taught students at the University of Chicago about the Constitution by using a textual rather than the usual thematic basis. Students read, discussed, and analyzed the entire Constitution. This textual approach serves to undermine the dominant belief that the Constitution is only what the judges say it is. (RM)

Investigates the history of the FBI's attempts to secure authorization to track dissident political activities through the power of executive directives. (RK)

Provides historical information on religious freedom within the United States and the meaning of constitutional order. Discusses how different religious minority groups, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, and the Native Americans, used strategies of balance to abide by the constitutional order. (CMK)

Considers how the Bill of Rights originated and has evolved. Reviews the political views of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison and the nature of their support for the Bill of Rights. Explains nineteenth-century classical liberalism and its revolutionary view that political power inhered in the individual rather than in property ownership. (CH)

This teaching guide provides methods for integrating the study of law and citizenship into chronologically based U.S. History courses for elementary students. Correlated with the Illinois State Goals for Learning and the Learning Outcomes of the Chicago Public Schools as well as with national standards projects, the lessons encourage critical…

Article III of the U.S. Constitution called for a federal judiciary that would dispense and administer justice in accordance with the principles on which the United States was founded. There was considerable ambivalence among the Founding Fathers as to what was the appropriate role for the judiciary, an ambivalence that has continued to the…

Providing a link between constitutional scholars and the planners of school and public programs observing the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution, this series of the Bicentennial Chronicles features articles that provide a link between scholars of the Constitution and the people who will be planning programs for the public and for the…

Changing political, social, economic, and intellectual conditions over the past two hundred years have demanded innovation and adjustment of legal doctrine, thus giving the United States Constitution a character which the framers of the document could not have predicted. Historically, one must not only understand developments since 1787 but also…

Even though the first citizens of the United States were skeptical about singular authority, the Constitution gave the president independent authority and strong powers. But as chief executive, he would be responsible to the people for the exercise of those powers. The modern presidency is a product of 200 years of growth and experience, yet much…

Current debates about the Constitution fall into the three following categories: (1) reappraisals of consitutional origins; (2) disagreements on hermeneutical principles used in contemporary applications; and (3) discussions of contemporary events whose consequences for law and political stability could not have been foreseen by the Constitution's…

Discusses the history of the following movements' attitudes towards the Constitution: (1) abolition; (2) feminism; (3) trade unions; (4) socialism and communism; and (5) civil rights and anti-war. Maintains that the tensions in these movements' towards the Constitution represent basic contradictions in the document itself. (PS)

Presents a lesson in multiple parts designed to explain the importance of standardized weights and measures and to demonstrate how governmental activities have changed standards and influenced commerce. (JDH)

Contains three essays on civic responsibility and the two-year college's role in civic education. Includes "Warren Burger and the Power of the Constitution," an interview with Burger by Dale Parnell; "Educating for Citizenship," by Herbert M. Atherton; and "Sustaining the Nation's Commitment to Civic Responsibility,"…

A course on the Constitution should help students see that the Constitution is not a document that provides solutions to problems, but a document that helps individuals come to a fuller understanding of contemporary problems by exposing them to the intellectual foundations and historical dimensions of the issues. (RM)