Read the Whole Syllabus

Skill Development: Directed Internet Search

Skill Reading: "Beginners Central,"Chapter 1, Parts 4-9 (Getting Started, Surf's up!, Picking your First Resources, Bookmarking your Resources, Searching the Internet, and Advanced Search Techniques) http://northernwebs.com/bc/

You also must begin familiarizing yourselves with the rules of citation!!!! Remember, failure to properly cite sources will result in a substantial grade penalty.

For basic citation rules see: Hacker, pp. 143-194.

For basic legal citation see: Peter W. Martin, Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (2000-2001 ed.) at http://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/citation.table.html

For electronic citation see Footnoting Electronic Sources in the Chicago Style, http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite7.html or Electronic Reference Formats Recommended by the American Psychological Association, http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html

Cross-Campus Research: Via e-mail, you and your partners should begin discussing your research topic. Specifically, begin chatting about subtopics within your "area" that might be of interest to both of you and which would be researchable (do-able) projects and which will potentially address one or more of the course themes (i.e., law is ubiquitous [it's everywhere], law is ambiguous [it's elusive or enigmatic], law tries to reconcile conflicting values [the liberty v. order problem]) .

Discussion Content: Law and American Culture

Reading and Writing Assignment: In "Causes Which Mitigate the Tyranny of the Majority in the United States," Chapter 16, Vol 1 of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that "Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question. Hence all parties are obliged to borrow, in their daily controversies, the ideas, and even the language, peculiar to judicial proceedings." Find this quote online and read the entire chapter. Contemporary political commentators and politicians constantly bemoan the fact that America has become an overly litigious society. The premise behind these comments seems to be that once in the "good ole days of traditional family values," Americans settled controversies amicably within loving communities and without recourse to the judicial process. In light of Tocqueville's observations, is there anything new to the contemporary griping? What does this tell us about our system? Write a 1-2 page response. Also, report the URL and be sure and include in your response when (what date) de Tocqueville made this observation about how things work in the United States? E-mail responses due by Tuesday, September 24^th at 6P.M.

WebChat: See assignment on WebChat, Week of September 23. Your WebChat contribution must be submitted by Saturday, September 28 at midnight.

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Last Updated:  08/13/02