Teaching the law

As we raise our children to become informed and active citizens, I think it's important they have an understanding of how the legal system works. They should become familiar with the rights and responsibilities they have under current law, and know how laws operate and are created. This knowledge will help them evaluate their rights and responsibilities, and give them some guidance as they inevitably wonder how to change the system.

Professor Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, in a an influential (but a bit dense) work in 1919, analyzed how laws operate. His description attempted to resolve the ambiguity around the term "rights" (as used by different, other philosophers) by presenting laws as a realization of 8 foundational concepts (right, no-right, duty, privilege, power, disability, immunity, liability), used as both opposites and correlatives. A Unified Theory of Law by lawyer John Bosco, available at the amazing Connexions knowledge repository, takes Hohfeld's Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning and distills it to a simpler structure, which can hopefully be more easily understood by middle and high school students. The core of the concept is the "Periodic Table of the Law", which takes the three independent variables of legal construction and demonstrates the nine components of the three possible types of law.

Another site called Our Courts is designed to present legal concepts to middle school students through interactive games and instructions for classroom volunteers. The site was developed by an organization whose board is led by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The site is currently organized around two interactive (Flash) games: Supreme Decision, which walks a player through a Supreme Court case, the issues involved, and an analysis of each; and Do I Have a Right? (DIHAR), which helps students understand some of the rights secured by the amendments to the US Constitution.

The materials are well organized and compelling; the content is complete and engaging, and the presentation is appealing. The games are supported by teacher materials and volunteer guides so practitioners and parents can easily bring these civics lessons into classrooms. The games are well designed: they're informative at the right level (middle school); they include randomized events, so it's possible to play more than once without being bored; there are enough variables (especially in DIHAR) to play with so kids can make decisions such as upgrading the office or individual lawyer desks; and the game benefits (points) are directly and proportionately related to the goals, so success is rewarded, and failure counts gently against you. Their team clearly had access to game play designers who know what they're doing.

I encourage you to go check out these resources!