Today in Supreme Court History: April 26, 1995

4/26/1995: U.S. v. Lopez decided.

Comments

[Dr. Ed]

Is part of this missing?

I ask because I heard no mention of either “gun”, or “gun free school act”, nor even “the commerce clause” — which is what this is about.
It’s a finding that I am familiar with as an educator but didn’t know the name of the case, and didn’t recognize it from the video.

I hate being critical, but when there isn’t enough for me to recognize a case in my field, a case I know exists and a finding that I am familiar with, there is a lack of academic rigor in the curricular device (i.e. video clip).

But I will state this a different way — I ask the law professors: if you were to ask what this case was on an exam, and the answer consisted solely of the facts presented here, would you give credit for it? And why not???

[Dr. Ed]

On the high school level, I might give one (of five) points to a student who accurately discussed the RBG/SG/Scala interchange — two if that wasn’t in the textbook and hadn’t been mentioned in class.

But I’d also pull out my red pen and write “…and how is your life different today because of this case?”

Without going too deeply into the weeds — and I wouldn’t make a SPED referral on just one answer on one exam — but I’d start wondering about an undiagnosed learning disability because the kid clearly knows about the case, but neglected to include the most relevant facts.

[captcrisis]

Many law professors, if given 60 seconds, can briefly explain a major Supreme Court case — the context, the facts, the holding, and how it changed the law — and do it in a way that is engaging and makes the listener want to know more.

Profs. Barnett and Blackman are not up to the task.