Explore the impact of the First Amendment in this eLesson!

Did you use this eLesson in your classroom to discuss First Amendment rights?  How did your students react to the story?

Supreme Court Justices would serve for life during good behavior, in part to ensure their decisions were not subject to changing political winds. But because a judge’s responsibility is to impartially uphold the Constitution, federal law requires them to decline to take part in cases in which they may be unable to be impartial. This is known as recusal.

There have been calls for two sitting Justices — Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan — to recuse themselves from deciding the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act for claimed conflicts of interest. (Though the Affordable Health Care Act is not officially on the Supreme Court’s docket yet, the Court is widely expected to take it up.)

Explore the constitutional role of an independent judiciary, the federal law requiring their recusal in certain situations, and the calls for the two Justices to step aside.

What strategies did you use to engage your students with this lesson? What, if any, barriers did you face?

We work to prepare curriculum resources that tie constitutional principles to current events in ways that show young people why their rights matter, why the Constitution matters, and why our constitutional principles continue to be important.

This week’s expanded eLesson provides current events resources along with critical thinking questions to guide discussion of the death of Osama bin Laden in the context of American history and traditions, the Constitution, and the rule of law.

The lesson provides links to news stories and constitutional resources, along with critical thinking questions, to help students answer the question:

“The Constitution divides war-making power between the executive and legislative branches, ensuring that war would not be the result of a King’s personal pride or quest for power. If you were the President of the United States during the time of the September 11 attacks, how would you have sought to balance citizens’ natural desire for arbitrary power with respect for the rule of law?”

The resource will be sent to our eLesson subscribers, and is available here for free download. We hope you will be able to review it and decide how you can use it with your students. If you do, please tell us in the comments how it went. What is the most important lesson for students to take away from this historical event? Download the lesson: Constitutional Principles and the Death of Osama bin Laden.

Tension between state and federal power has increased with the recent U.S. District Court ruling that the entire Affordable Healthcare Act is unconstitutional. While two courts have upheld the Act’s constitutionality, this ruling highlights important questions regarding what the national government is and is not permitted to do. Have your students been discussing the controversy? Guide their discussion about the constitutional principles at play with this week’s Bill of Rights in the News eLesson on Healthcare, Federalism, and the Commerce Clause.

Try these strategies to help your students connect with the issues:

- Explore the idea of Federalism with your class in our Student Study Guide, Daily News Headlines, and Landmark Supreme Court Case listing.

- Did your state join the suit? Have students research whether their state joined the suit, and ask them if they agree or disagree with the position of their legislators.

- Join the conversation! Encourage students to comment on our blog post about the Healthcare Act news or on local news articles and voice their opinions about whether the individual mandate is constitutional.

The situation raises questions of press freedom in wartime and how technology has challenged the power of governments to keep information secret. Use these strategies to help your students understand the issues raised by the WikiLeaks case:

- Have students compare and contrast the facts of the Pentagon Papers case (New York Times v. U.S.) with the current WikiLeaks publication of secret documents.

- Play this conversation between Assange and a U.S. journalist, and have students vote in the accompanying poll about whether he violated the Espionage Act.

- Hold a mock trial presenting arguments on the question of whether Assange violated the Espionage Act.

If you are looking for additional materials, our Presidents and the Constitution, Volume I curriculum has a great lesson on President Wilson and the Espionage Act.

P.S. Thank you for your feedback! This week we created a separate Student Handout PDF (share it online with your students: http://bit.ly/WikiLeaksForStudents) and Teacher Answer Key for this lesson after hearing your comments from our web survey. Please let us know what else we can improve!

Share this clip from the Today Show with students and ask them for their reactions:

What do you think? Try some of these strategies to discuss airport security and the Fourth Amendment with your students:

1. Write the Fourth Amendment out on the board and brainstorm synonyms for “secure,” “unreasonable,” and “search”.
2. Have a fishbowl debate on the constitutionality of the searches.
3. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will hold a TSA oversight hearing Wednesday, November 17. Have students call or email their Senators expressing their opinions on the constitutionality of the new procedures. Students should write out bullet points of their key constitutional arguments to prepare.

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