Teaching Ideas for Chapter 4:
Civil Liberties and Public Policy
Special features entitled You Are the Judge are dispersed throughout this chapter. Each feature describes an actual case brought before the courts and asks students to evaluate the case and render a judgment about it. Interesting class discussions could be based on these cases, particularly if you ask students to try to evaluate the reasoning behind the decisions. Take an informal survey to see how your class would have voted, then turn to the end of the chapter and review the actual court decisions, which are collected in a feature entitled The Court Decides.
We know that people often support rights in theory, but their support may disappear when it comes time to put those rights into practice. Set aside part of one class period for students to list both supports and objections to extending rights to controversial and unpopular groups. You could "set the stage" by first introducing your class to one or two famous incidents, such as the demands of the American Nazi Party in 1977 to march through a Jewish neighborhood in Skokie, Illinois.
Former Attorney General Edwin Meese called for "disincorporation" of the Bill of Rights. As a library assignment, ask your class to determine when the "incorporation theory" was first used, and to locate two or three sources to both support and refute the theory.
There is a fine line between aid to parochial schools that is permissible and aid that is not. Divide the class into panels, and ask them to debate the merits and problems of government aid to church-related schools. Ask members of the panels to prepare for the debate by reading summaries of cases that are used in the textbook to illustrate the establishment clause of the Constitution.
A majority of the public has never favored the Court's decisions on school prayer. Assign short essays, in which each student would take one of the following positions: (1) The school prayer decisions demonstrate the Court's important role in protecting minority rights in the face of majority opinion; or (2) The school prayer decisions demonstrate how the Court has lost sight of the traditional values that were favored by the framers of the Constitution.
The most famous case in recent years involving prior restraint and national security rose out of the release of the Pentagon Papers. Ask your class to envision themselves as a jury in the trial of Daniel Ellsberg. Did his actions constitute theft of government property, or were his actions justifiable since he was giving information to the American people? How would they vote?
Although the Supreme Court has ruled that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, it has been difficult to determine precisely what is obscene. Ask your students to "try their hands" at writing a definition that could be used by a court or a censorship panel to distinguish obscenity from legally protected art.
The textbook points out that libel is a freedom of expression that involves competing values. If public debate is not free, there can be no democracy; but with free public debate, some reputations will be unfairly damaged. Ask your class to consider the way in which the courts distinguish between public persons and private persons, and ask them to evaluate whether it is fair (or appropriate) to use this distinction. How would they change the process to make it more equitable? Would the public lose its ability to evaluate candidates for public office if candidates could sue for libel or slander as readily as persons who are not in the public eye? What rights of privacy should public figures retain?
Reporters argue that freedom of the press guarantees them certain rights that other potential witnesses cannot claim, such as the right to protect confidential sources, even in criminal trials. Divide the class in sections, with one section assigned the task of defending the right of journalists to shield confidential sources and the other section assigned the task of showing that reporters have no more rights than other citizens. Each section should select a spokesperson to present the group's analysis.
Ask your class to consider the problem of crime control, both from the position of protecting individual liberties for "unsavory" people in order to protect rights for everyone, and from the perspective of protecting the rights of "society" and of victims.
One task that government must perform is to resolve conflicts between rights. Class participation can be animated if you will encourage your students to think about potential conflicts within the Bill of Rights, such as possible conflicts between public order and free speech. Ask your class to consider the nature of individual rights from the perspective of a victim's family and from the outlook of a defendant's family.
Ask students to find the facts of a current conflict over civil liberties, either using the Internet or the daily newspaper. What rights or values are in conflict? Ask students to explain how, and why, they would decide the case. Also encourage the students to follow the case over the course of the semester or quarter.