Final Assignment

Final Assignment
Due April 30, 2009

Civil Liberties

In class, you will be given the opportunity to select one from among the following subjects for your final paper. Each student will have a different subject. Once a subject has been selected by one student, it is not available to anyone else in the class. The subjects are:

Brown v. Board of Education Travis	Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton
Lawrence v. Texas Cody	Bush v. Gore Alex
Roe v. Wade Sydney	N. Y. Times Co. v. U. S. Michael
Griswold v. Connecticut	Miranda v. Arizona
Gideon v. Wainright & Betts v. Brady	Cantwell v. Connecticut Rachel
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan	Weeks v. US & Mapp v. Ohio
Hirabayashi, Korematsu, & Endo	Justice Thurgood Marshall
Furman v. Georgia & Gregg v. Georgia	Justice William Brennan
Miller v. California	Justice William O. Douglas
Reno v. ACLU & Ashcroft v. ACLU	Justice Louis D. Brandeis
Oregon v. Smith	Chief Justice Earl Warren
McCreary County v. ACLU Matt	Justice Hugo Black

Your assignment is to write an essay of at least eight to ten pages that discusses the Civil liberties aspects and implications of the Supreme Court decisions or of the careers and decisions authored by the Supreme Court Justices. You should provide sufficient background so that the decisions or opinions are placed in context and so that their civil liberties impacts can be understood and appreciated. You should explain how the decisions and opinions are related to other previous and subsequent Supreme Court decisions. Be sure that you stick to the issues of constitutionality and how they relate to civil liberties; do not stray off onto whether or not the decisions or opinions are ones with which you agree or disagree.

You should use as many scholarly materials as you can find that are appropriate and relevant. You may use materials from our class readings, from on-line legal reference services, from the law library, and from reputable periodicals. You must carefully cite all of your sources.

You are invited to discuss your plans for the paper, an outline, and/or a draft with me as you procede.

Your grade will depend on how well you have done your research and how well written, well reasoned, well refernced, and justified your discussion and conclusions are. This is your opportunity to show how much you have learned this semester and how well you can apply it in a significant essay on civil liberties.

Be sure to consult the “Helpful Hints” page on the course Web site.

You will be expected to make an oral presentation of your paper in class on either April 28 or April 30. The paper is due to me electronically by 5:30 PM on April 30. It is worth 100 points in total for both the oral and written versions combined.