New Teaching Materials on Key Supreme Court Cases

Last month, Street Law developed or updated teaching materials on three key Supreme Court cases, which were recently added to Maryland’s high school government course curriculum.

Case summaries are now available for:

• Baker v. Carr (1962) 
• United States v. Nixon (1974)
• McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010)

These three join more than one hundred case summaries in Street Law’s Free Resource Library. All are suitable for use directly in secondary classrooms, adapted into a variety of case studies and used as moot courts.

On February 15, Street Law’s executive director, Lee Arbetman, led a professional development workshop for social studies staff from the Maryland State Department of Education, along with middle and high school social studies supervisors from the state’s 25 school districts. The discussion of the cases highlighted the enduring nature of the legal and policy issues they raise:

• voting rights and legislative redistricting (Baker),
• scope and limits of executive power and privilege (Nixon), and
• gun rights and federalism (McDonald).

Street Law staff and consultants will also provide professional development sessions on these cases directly to teachers from Allegany County and from counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Maryland government teachers can find all of Street Law’s teaching materials on the required Supreme Court cases at Street Law Materials — Supreme Court Cases.

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To learn more about how to bring Street Law professional development to teachers in your area, or to contract with Street Law to write new classroom materials, contact Jen Wheeler.