With the stars and stripes keeping a watchful eye from the corner of the classroom, two University of Colorado Boulder law students queried high school government students recently about the long-standing purpose of the Constitution and its amendments.
“What is the Fourth Amendment supposed to protect? What do you guys think?” asked Shahar Atary, a third-year CU-Boulder law student.
In honor of Constitution Day on Sept. 17, more than 75 CU-Boulder law students and many alumni toured 100-plus Colorado classrooms throughout the week surrounding the nationally recognized date. Constitution Day annually commemorates the Sept. 17, 1787, signing of the U.S. Constitution.
Atary and his partner Christina Warner, a first year law student, visited two high school government classes in Lafayette. They engaged with and at times elicited arguments between the students about the Constitution and precedent cases related to the Fourth Amendment— the theme for this year’s visits.
Launched in 2011 by the Byron White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law and its director Melissa Hart, Constitution Day was part of a larger project called “Constitutional Literacy in Colorado High Schools.” The project, hosted by the Law School and supported by a CU-Boulder Outreach Award, aims to address the national need for increased civics education and citizen engagement.
“High school students desperately need, but have limited access to, rich and engaging civics education,” said Hart, associate professor of law. “At the same time, law schools have recognized that students will learn the law better, and will be more engaged and prepared as lawyers, if they integrate experiential opportunities into their years in law school.
“This project offers two distinct opportunities for interactive constitutional education to high school students while giving law students the chance to put their classroom knowledge to work as they go into different communities and teach the Constitution.”
In addition to the Constitution Day school visits, the literacy project also includes the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, which sends law students into high schools in underserved communities to teach constitutional law once a week throughout the academic year. In addition to weekly lessons, law students coach the high school students to participate in a moot court competition. Students who wish to participate in the Colorado competition come to CU Law School for a day and argue an issue of constitutional law to lawyers and judges. The top students from that event are chosen to go to Washington, D.C. to participate in the National Marshall-Brennan competition.
Both components of the project have grown since they were inaugurated in 2011. Student participation has increased, and the school visits have expanded to include more high schools and communities in the eastern and western regions of the state. Hart hopes the program will continue to expand in the future years.
Atary and Warner said they did not have a similar constitutional literacy program in their high schools but believed they would have benefited from such a project. Now, as law students, they appreciate the opportunity to contribute to civics education.
“I love being in the classroom setting and love seeing the kids’ perceptions of the law,” Warner said. “We had a great group; they were really insightful.”