Students will learn about historic Supreme Court cases and the process of bringing a case to the Supreme Court. They will read arguments and discover the importance of this third branch of government. Students will discover the changes these cases made in the lives of people. From the knowledge they gain, students can determine how the outcome may have affected their lives.
Supreme Court Cases On Display
The purpose of this lesson is to have students working in groups of two or three focus of one historic Supreme Court case. Students will understand the process of bringing a case to the Supreme Court, read arguments and discover the importance of this third branch of government. Students will discover the changes these cases made in the lives of people. Then students can determine how the outcome may have affected their lives.
Use Constituting America’s Constitution Archives on U.S. Supreme Court Cases and Justices to support this lesson.
U.S. Supreme Court Decisions and Justices Who Made Them
“Who cares what old people in black robes say?” As an educator you care. The challenge is how do you get your students excited about Article III of the Constitution. Constituting America has organized 90 Supreme Court cases of influential and history-changing decisions in its Constitution Archives. Need a judicial decision on what you are studying? Find it here. Need a Supreme Court ruling on a current event? Find it here. You get the picture. The material you seek is here. Your challenge, should you accept it, is make it come alive to your students.
The Powers of the President
In this lesson, students will view video clips to learn about the powers of the president and how they have grown and been used throughout our history. Students will use these video clips to respond to a writing prompt about the balance of powers between the three branches.
Marbury v. Madison
In this lesson, students will view video clips explaining the Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison. Students will analyze the significance of the case, the precedent it set and its legacy.
Checks and Balances
This lesson explore the principle of checks and balances by providing video clips with examples and explanations. As they view these real-world examples, students will complete a graphic organizer and use it to evaluate how effective our system of checks and balances is at limiting government.
Constitution Clips
C-SPAN’s Constitution Clips makes the U.S. Constitution come alive by providing teachers and students with video clips from C-SPAN’s Video Library of the Constitution in action.
From Suffragist Sashes to Antiwar Armbands
In a 19th Amendment video, produced by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for use in classrooms, courtrooms, and the distance-learning space, an unlikely connection is made between two rights activists from different eras. Suffragette Virginia Minor and Vietnam war protester Mary Beth Tinker were separated by 100 years, but their passions came together in the legal history of the nation and of St. Louis, where they each worked through the courts to make social change. Both cases were decided – with different outcomes – by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Bill of Rights in Action: The Kennewick Controversies
This case study asks students to delve in to the complicated issues surrounding repatriation and ownership of ancient human remains.
Habeas Corpus: The Guantanamo Cases
One of our oldest human rights, habeas corpus safeguards individual freedom by preventing unlawful or arbitrary imprisonment. This documentary examines habeas corpus and the separation of powers in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks as the Supreme Court tried to strike a balance between the president’s duty to protect the nation and the constitutional protection of civil liberties in four major Guantanamo Bay cases: Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Rasul v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush.
Closed captions available in English and Spanish.