How are the republican principles of limited government, separation of powers, and checks and balances reflected in the U.S. Constitution?

Goldberg v. Kelly (1970) asked the Supreme Court to determine whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to welfare recipients who are about to lose their benefits. The landmark case hinged on whether or not public assistance could be considered “property” and whether the interests of the state or the individual took precedence.

A SCOTUS case study where the argument of whether the state or the nation has control when it comes to the growing and use of medical marijuana.

Case background and primary source documents concerning the Supreme Court case of Griswold v. Connecticut. Dealing with whether or not a citizen has a natural right to privacy, this lesson asks students to support or refute the Supreme Court's ruling in Griswold that the Constitution protects a right to privacy within marriage that includes the decision to use artificial birth control.

This resource includes curated guided readings about the ratification of the United States Constitution and accompanying disucssion questions.

One of our oldest human rights, habeas corpus safeguards individual freedom by preventing unlawful or arbitrary imprisonment. This documentary examines habeas corpus and the separation of powers in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks as the Supreme Court tried to strike a balance between the president's duty to protect the nation and the constitutional protection of civil liberties in four major Guantanamo Bay cases: Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Rasul v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush.

Closed captions available in English and Spanish.

Primary sources are a main focus throughout Documents of Freedom. Here we offer many of the most important primary sources from American history that include annotations to help you understand the purposes of each document.

Using the Case Method Project from Harvard, students read various case material and then are led through a socratic style seminar to discuss a specific issue/historical decision in American history/politics. In order to access their materials you will need to participate in professional development sessions hosted by Harvard. The sessions are free and done online a various times in the school year.

Case background and primary source documents concerning the Supreme Court case of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier. Dealing with the extent of students' First Amendment rights, this lesson asks students to argue whether or not the First Amendment should protect student speech in public school-sponsored newspapers.

The Supreme Court decided that Principal Reynolds had the right to such editorial decisions, as he had “legitimate pedagogical concerns.” This resource includes teacher materials, guides, and activities for teaching about this Supreme Court case.

In this lesson, students examine one of six key amendments to the Constitution while considering their historical context. Students create timelines for each amendment that are later combined to fully evaluate and interpret how the Constitution has evolved within its historical context.

On the 200th anniversary of the ratification of the US Constitution, Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to sit on the Supreme Court, said that the Constitution was "defective from the start." Read more about the Constitution and slavery in this article by Steven Mintz.

The United States has the oldest written national framework of government in the world. At the end of the twentieth century, there were about 159 other national constitutions in the world, and 101 had been adopted since 1970. Read more in this article written by Steven Mintz.

Thomas Jefferson explains the importance of the Bill of Rights.
Colonial Williamsburg's Center for Teaching, Learning, and Leadership provides American history and civics materials nationwide. For more great videos, lesson plans, interactive games and more, create a free account on the Colonial Williamsburg Education Resource Library: resourcelibrary.history.org.

Citizens of the United States have celebrated Independence Day and Presidents' Day since the 1870s, and in 2005, the nation began to celebrate Constitution Day. Also know as Citizenship Day, Constitution Day is an American holiday honoring the day 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the United States Constitution. This historic date was September 17, 1787.

The three-fifths compromise was an agreement reached by the state delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Under the compromise, every enslaved American would be counted as three-fifths of a person for taxation and representation purposes. This agreement gave the Southern states more electoral power than they would have had if the enslaved population had been ignored entirely.

When the Founding Fathers weren't out fighting wars, drafting important documents like the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, or helping to found a country, they were at home with their families and businesses. Here are the places the Founding Fathers called "home," and some interesting facts about each man's personal estate.

The Founders paid close attention to the rights of the accused because they realized that the government had the power both to prosecute and convict. Protections were needed to guard against the government's abuse of these powers. Understanding how the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments operate to guarantee such protection and how they work to ensure both individual liberty and limit government is vital to maintaining free citizenship. This lesson explores these amendments and the protections they provide.

This discussion guide is for use with the video âHow Do Judges Decide Cases?â which features the Hon. Anthony J. Scirica of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Stephen Burbank, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, at the Fair and Impartial Judiciary Symposium on October 26, 2019, at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

The Founders listed several rights guaranteed to the people in the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights. They did not believe that this list was all encompassing, so they included the Ninth Amendment as a way to protect the rights of the people that were not listed in the first Eight. This lesson explores the nature of these unnamed rights and examines the arguments around who should interpret them, judges or the people.