The rule of law

In all my years in the classroom, "the rule of law" was a concept that I knew I failed to properly teach. I always felt like it was fascinating, a fundamental, key component of our American democracy, but my students never joined me in my rhapsodic enthusiasm. They just gave me blank stares whenever I mentioned it.

In my 19 years and five months in the classroom, I taught US Government, US History I, US History II, AP History I, AP History II, AP World History, Popular Music in American History, Comparative World Religions, and 8th grade Civics. No matter when "the rule of law" came up, I would feign a weak attempt, see my students' eyes glaze over, quickly change course, and then console myself by thinking that some other teacher later in their educational careers could pick up the thread where I had dropped it.

The current state of our American experiment is calling me to try, yet again, to figure out how to teach people about this fundamental concept.

If you google "Rule of Law," you'll find exemplary lessons from the National Constitution Center, Facing History and Ourselves, and iCivics. Each of them is, I'm sure, well-researched, well-structured, and entirely too abstract.

I mean, who doesn't love a good John Locke quote: “Men being...by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this condition and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bondsof civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one among another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties and a greater security against any that are not in it. ...When any number of men have so consented to make one community of government, they are thereby incorporated and make one body politic wherein the majority have a right to act and govern the rest.”-John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government (1681)

I'll tell you: high school kids.

You know what high school kids like, in a school setting? Among other things, fairness. They don't want their lives to be affected by the whims and wackiness of others, even though they are not yet at an age when they can be autonomous. They are desperate to be more independent, and they have a hair trigger when they perceive situations to be unfair.

So, that's where the rule of law lesson must begin.

Step One: Tell the kids that you're going to implement a new component of your grading policy. You've been thinking about it and you'd like to give them more opportunities for extra credit. Divide them into groups and tell them that they should brainstorm what the rules should be around this new opportunity. (Re: grouping. You can engineer the groups a little bit. That'll depend on the make up of the group as well as the categories you choose to include in the lesson.)

Step Two: Give each group some notecards and ask them to write their 'rules' on the cards. Give them five-seven minutes to brain storm and then collect the cards. They don't have to put their names/group # on them.

Step Three: Read the suggestions out loud or write them on the board. Don't use a document camera because you need to shuffle in the cards you designed. If the kids see your cards, they'll balk. Give each group time to debate them to determine if they are fair. After a sufficient amount of time for discussion, ask the kids to vote. They don't have to vote by group. They can vote individually. (This is where you can play with the groups a bit if you choose.)

The kids' suggestions may surprise you, and I would let their ideas breathe. But, your ideas should include the following "Rules for Extra Credit:"

1. The points will be awarded randomly.

2. The points will be awarded based on height. (You could substitute gender or some other biological characteristic, but be careful. You can couch it in historical terms, the girls all get extra points because they couldn't vote for 150 years of American history, for example, but you need to know your students and your school culture to know what will be appropriate.)

3. Everyone will get extra points on their birthday, with no provision made for the people with summer birthdays or those whose birthdays fall on the weekends.

4. Extra questions will be added to each test, and the topics will be related to some particular niche of popular culture: the NBA, The Bachelor, Jam Bands, the Kardashians. Pick a topic you know some of your students like, but some do not.

5. Choose some behavior that you would like to see change in class: no earphones, everyone has a writing utensil, everyone copies down the homework/Do Now within two minutes of starting class. Whatever it is, make sure it's something that every kid can accomplish by choosing to do so. If you choose the one about a writing utensil, make sure you have a bunch of pencils on your desk so kids can grab them if they need them.

6. Whatever else you think would work.

Step Four: By the end of the activity, the kids should have chosen the 'rule' that is most fair, most equitable, and most directly correlated to behavior/choice and least directly correlated to whim, accidents of birth, or accruals of privilege. You can flesh this out a bit. Establish this new rule as the "LAW."

Step Five: Figure out how the kids can guarantee that you will award them the extra points. (And, of course you have to be willing to award them.) To whom will they appeal if you don't award them points that they have earned?

Step Six: Optional: I once led a school where teachers took points off of kids' averages for tardiness and absences. Not cuts, mind you. Straight up absences. Your kid gets the flu, she loses five points off her average for the marking period. The students didn't complain because they were afraid of retaliation, which tells you a lot about the culture of those classrooms. You can present this as a hypothetical - and I hope it's a hypothetical in your school - and ask the kids to whom they would appeal if you started doing that nonsense.

Step Seven: Marbury v. Madison, that old chestnut. Folks paint Marbury v. Madison as a critical Supreme Court case because it established judicial review. But, I think it's more important as a guide to when the court knows it's beat. Yes, John Marshall fell back on judicial review to invalidate the Judiciary Act of 1789, but the part he invalidated had assigned enforcement power to the courts. Marshall knew he couldn't enforce the appointment of the midnight judges. He didn't have an army. If he had issued an order that Jefferson and Madison ignored, the courts were toast. So, he demurred. You have to wonder, in today's debates about executive privilege, are the courts bowing to those who wish to hide evidence and block testimony because they have no way of enforcing their rulings? If we agree to the rule of law, we agree that judicial decisions must be honored. If we ignore the courts, what good is the rule of law?

You can pursue this, if you wish, by refusing to award extra credit points for a day or two and seeing what happens. I don't know if you'd want to, though, because you will engender ill will, and you'll come off looking like a jerk. Best not to risk it.

#rule of law #900lessons #whyitmatters #321 #marburyvmadison