Unit Web Activity Lesson Plans

Unit 1: Introduction to Law and the Legal System
Someone Ought to Do Something!

Overview

This lesson is designed to help students use the Internet to find and study advocacy groups. They will learn to appreciate the various viewpoints on an issue and will have the opportunity to become involved as an advocate for an issue, if they so choose.

Correlation to Textbook

This lesson correlates to Unit 1, Chapter 3: Advocacy in the Street Law textbook.

Correlation to the National Standards for Civics and Government

V.E.3. Forms of political participation: Students should be able to evaluate, take, and defend positions about the means that citizens should use to monitor and influence the formation and implementation of public policy.

Objectives

At the conclusion of this lesson, students will be able to:

1. Find advocacy groups on the Internet.
2. Research to determine with which advocacy groups they agree.
3. Define the term amicus brief.
4. Describe the process of joining an amicus brief to the Court.
5. Explain several ways to contact their national, state, and local elected representatives.
6. Apply the information they have gathered in this lesson to participate in citizen advocacy.

Before You Teach This Lesson

1. Before you take your students to the computer lab or assign this lesson for independent research, review it yourself to make sure that it suits your purposes and that all the links work.
2. The lesson points students in three different directions to provide examples of a variety of ways that they may become citizen advocates. Decide if you want to designate one path for your students to follow or if you want your students to choose one or more paths.
   
   
   • If you want an issues-based outcome, the first activity is the best option. Students may search for and link to advocacy groups on all sides of “hot” issues, including Abortion and Birth Control, Gun Control, Tobacco, Energy, the Environment, and the Death Penalty.
   • If you want your students to understand how advocacy groups and individuals use the justice system to advocate for their views, as well as the role that amicus briefs play in the court system, choose the second activity. It points students toward two liberal and two conservative groups that use the courts to advocate for citizens. It also uses the recent Supreme Court cases involving the University of Michigan law school and undergraduate admissions policies to familiarize students with amicus briefs.
   • Finally, if you want your students to contact their elected representatives to advocate on any issue, there are links provided to both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, as well as to all fifty state legislatures.

3. Teachers should note that it is difficult to locate who has submitted amicus briefs by using the Supreme Court’s Web site. Therefore, you may want to encourage the students to approach the problem from the direction of the advocacy groups, rather than tracking backward from the Supreme Court case.

Lesson Plan

1. Review the lesson outcomes with the students.
2. If a Resource Person is helping to co-teach this lesson, introduce him or her and explain how you will work together.
3. Assign students either to follow the path you selected or their own interests and then have them begin the lesson. Stress to them that if they are going to become citizen advocates, they must be knowledgeable about their subjects. If they are not, the people they are trying to influence will not take them seriously.
4. When students have completed their research, have them choose one of the options in the last activity, “Take Action.” Each action requires students to write a letter, either to you or to someone else. If the letters are addressed to a legislator or outside group, encourage students to mail them. They might get a favorable answer, and this will start the students on their paths toward citizen advocacy.

Suggestions for Using Resource People

• Contact the elected representatives for your school’s legislative district to co-teach this lesson and to speak about what impact constituent mail has on their work.
• Contact representatives from a local advocacy group to co-teach this lesson and to speak about how they advocate to government agencies. Some of the same links that the students follow in this lesson will lead you toward local chapters of the groups in your area.

Timing of Lesson

The timing of this lesson depends on which path you choose for your students to follow. You can complete this lesson in one 45-minute class period. If you want students to follow more than one path, you should allow extra time.