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YourConstitution.net
(coming Summer 2010)
YourConstitution.net will bring the
Constitution to
life by shining a light on the faces and places that gave rise to
famous Supreme Court cases, and telling their stories. All too often,
textbooks and lesson plans reduce the Constitution to nothing more than
a series of rules, holdings, and tests, neglecting the human disputes
that sparked the very cases articulating those rules. Behind all
constitutional cases are stories, stories of actual people who are
affected by the rule of law. The people and locations that give life to
the most celebrated and reviled opinions provide an insightful glimpse
into the what the law really is, beyond the wooden descriptions in the
Supreme Court’s decisions. Teachers, in conjunction with lesson plans
provided by the Harlan Institute, will be use YourConstitution.net in
conjunction with FantasySCOTUS.org to excite their students and make
the facts of the Supreme Court’s decisions jump off the page. This site
highlights the places and faces of constitutional law in order to
illuminate the text, history, and modern-day relevance of our
Constitution.
This interactive website will take the reader through a visual tour of
some of the most famous cases in constitutional law history. Along this
journey, the reader will see some rare archived photos of the people
and places involved; hear the facts of the cases retold from a human
perspective; and most importantly, learn the history and see
photographs of what happened to those people and places after the
Supreme Court decided their fates. A series of audio interviews with
individuals associated with each case -- including the lawyers
involved, the parties themselves, or even descendants of those parties
-- will form a living-history compendium of constitutional stories,
known as Constitutional Voices. The site will locate all of the
Constitutional Places on an interactive Google Earth map. The virtual
map will offer additional photographs, videos, lectures on the case,
discussions from constitutional law scholars, and more. The institute
will reach out to Google Scholar to discuss partnership possibilities.
Google Scholar offers free access to all reported state and federal
cases. This is an invaluable resources for teachers and students,
already familiar with Google's product offerings. The Institute will
aim to collaborate with Google, and integrate these cases into
YourConstitution.net.
After announcing this project on several popular blogs, Blackman and
Roth received an outpouring of support from Supreme Court aficionados
nationwide. The authors received over a hundred royalty-free
photographs from personal collections of famous constitutional places.
In addition, dozens of other semi-professional and amateur
photographers volunteered to take pictures, and have already submitted
photographs of constitutional places from across the country. These
volunteers serve as a veritable collaborative army of reporters,
willing to take pictures, conduct interviews with locals, and assist us
with this project. Blackman and Roth have also reached out to numerous
historical societies, the Supreme Court’s curator, newspaper archives,
halls of records, prisons and Departments of Correction, and county
clerks, to obtain rare photographs and vital documents that paint the
picture of the people and places behind landmark Supreme Court
decisions from long ago.
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