Assignment:
Supreme Court Case Reflection
This Supreme Court Case Reflection is brief - at least 500 words - written double-spaced Times New Roman 12 point, one inch margins.
Your Reflection should be based on a court case from the following list. You should include, as with any assignment you ever do for any class, citations to any sources you consult. Use a standard MLA format Works Cited page. Ensure that I can easily navigate to any source you cite. I'm actually less worried about the technical detail of constructing proper citations than I am my ability easily - hopefully with one click - to access any source you use, assuming you use online sources. If you use other, non-online sources, be sure to use an appropriate citation.
Here are the court cases you may choose from:
Snyder v. Phelps (2010)
Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011)
Edwards v. Aguillard (1987)
Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002)
Engel v. Vitale (1962)
In your Reflection you should answer the following questions:
- What case did you write about?
- What was the dispute in the case you chose? (Don't tell the whole story. I know it. Just tell me enough that I can see that you actually read and understand the actual basis of the dispute. Remember that headlines frequently misstate what's going on.)
- What arguments were made by the side you disagreed with?
- What arguments were made by the side you agreed with?
- Why are your arguments better than the other side's?
- What did the court decide in your case?
- Did you agree with their decision?
It is critical that you remember not to simply cut and paste, or use too much of the actual wording of sources. Plagiarism is not acceptable, as you know. In an assignment like this, I have found that it is easy for students to use too many of the words of the source, without even realizing it. Be mindful so that you do not lose credit. One thing you can do is check the SafeAssignment upload after you have completed it. You will be able to see how much of your submission was flagged by SafeAssign. If you look and think there's a problem, you can let me know and we can work it out so that you can submit it again, so long as it is before the due date. The assignment is set to allow two submissions, so if for any reason you need to resubmit you may do so once without needing to contact me.
Also remember that quoting long stretches from a source is not appropriate, even if you cite it correctly. In an assignment this short, (and this assignment is VERY short) quoting more than a line or two is too much. This assignment is supposed to be your work. Not someone else's.
The point of this assignment is for you to think deeply about the case and write intelligently about it.