This lesson allows students to analyze the Constitution and ask questions about how the Constitution allows the President to enforce the law.

This lesson allows students to analyze the Constitution and ask questions about how the Constitution lays out the President's powers.

This lesson allows students to analyze the Constitution and ask questions about how the Constitution lays out the President's powers.

Use this lesson with The Constitutional Convention Narrative and after students have done The Articles of Confederation, 1781 Primary Source activity.

This lesson contains various activites that can be used while teaching about the Constitutional Convention. Some have students compare similiarities/differences between the Convention members. Others deal with comparing the Articles of Confederacy to the Constitution, objections to the Constitution, or Madison's description of 'Federalism.'

The Constitution was written in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by delegates from 12 states, in order to replace the Articles of Confederation with a new form of government. It created a federal system with a national government composed of 3 separated powers, and included both reserved and concurrent powers of states. The president of the Constitutional Convention, the body that framed the new government, was George Washington, though James Madison is known as the "Father of the Constitution" because of his great contributions to the formation of the new government. Gouverneur Morris wrote the Constitutionâ"s final language. The Constitution was a compact – though Federalists and Anti-Federalists disagreed over whether the states or the people were the agents of the compact.

In this lesson, students will learn about the actions of John Marshall concerning the Cherokee nation. They will explore how his actions helped to advance justice and, through his example, learn how they can advance justice in their own lives.

Provide excerpts from Montesquieu's, ÒSpirit of LawsÓ, the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, and the English Bill of Rights. Have students read and summarize each excerpt and then have them identify and describe a key Constitutional principle found in the excerpt. This is a discussion of where did the ideas possible come from. For example the English Bill of Rights is a good example of separation of powers and checks and balances, as it describes things the King is not allowed to do without the consent of Parliament. Some of the excerpts require a good understanding of the context to really understand the principle so that may be required as part of the reading. A document analysis worksheet from the national archives Text/HTML may be a good tool as students are reading the document.

In this lesson, students will evaluate contradictory viewpoints concerning liberty and security. They will evaluate Supreme Court decisions regarding fair trials, due process, and the war on terror and evaluate whether the Constitution takes on different meanings during wartime.

The ink was barely dry on the Constitution when the first challenges to its protections arose. These early challenges to the new constitutional republic often involved the meaning of the Constitution itself. What did its words actually mean, and who would get to decide?

The original thirteen states that formed the United States included individuals from a variety of religious traditions. To ensure that the national government respected freedom of belief, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religious practice, the First Amendment prohibited the federal government from either establishing a national church or interfering with existing state religions. Since then the Supreme Court has created various "tests" to determine if government practices violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This lesson explores the history and principles behind this clause.

In this lesson, students will gain an understanding of how the Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment changed in light of the Fourteenth Amendment. They will also analyze Thomas Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, evaluate the Supreme Court's application of Jefferson's metaphor about the wall of separation between church and state, and assess how much weight should be given to Jefferson's letter in determining the constitutionality of state action with respect to religion.

This lesson can be used to reinforce and review the key events of the American Revolution. Can also be used as a DBQ for APUSH This activity will also introduce students to the effects the Revolution had on the world stage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.