American Bar Association Division for Public Education

Since 1971, ABA’s Division for Public Education has combined the strengths of America’s legal and educational communities to provide national leadership to both established and emerging audiences in the field of law-related education. ABA’s programs and products are designed to strengthen young people’s understanding of their rights and responsibilities and prepare them for active participation in public life.

Program Highlights

The National Law-Related Education Leadership Conference is the principal national professional development and networking conference in the field of LRE. The biennial conference brings together national, State, and local LRE program staff; legal, educational, law enforcement, and juvenile justice professionals; and representatives of educational, legal, judicial, and community organizations. The conference focuses on topics relevant to program goals such as engaging youth to learn, serve, and lead; considering the future of human and civil rights in the United States; and educating youth for democratic citizenship.

Assessment Many programs and products supported by Youth for Justice have been evaluated to assess their effectiveness. Most recently, evaluations have been conducted on the research and development models, youth summits, intensive technical assistance outcomes, and various conferences and trainings. These reports are available from the Social Science Education Consortium (SSEC). With the assistance of SSEC and Caliber Associates, the program is studying the feasibility of a national evaluation of LRE.

Collaboration With Related Organizations Youth for Justice projects collaborate with a wide variety of other youth-serving programs and organizations to enhance their effectiveness by using LRE resources. Some of the OJJDP-sponsored programs collaborating with the projects are the National Youth Network, the National Resource Center for Safe Schools, SafeFutures, and the National Youth Court Center. Youth for Justice also collaborates with the National Council for the Social Studies and the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress for Civics.

The National Law-Related Education Resource Center collects and disseminates information about LRE resources that are available not only from ABA but also from other organizations throughout the Nation. The Resource Center responds to mail, telephone, and electronic inquiries about all aspects of Youth for Justice and uses its Web site, e-mail groups, listservs, targeted mailings, and newsletter, Law Matters, to keep friends and practitioners of LRE informed about the latest resources and information for the field.

Bar-school partnerships are ABA’s unique assets. ABA has a membership of more than 400,000 lawyers and connections to nearly 700 State, local, women’s, and minority bar associations and young lawyer affiliates. ABA uses targeted mailings, journal articles, presentations at meetings, and publications to promote Youth for Justice to ABA members and to other bar associations, encouraging lawyer-teacher partnerships at the State and local levels.

Law Day, led by ABA, is celebrated nationwide on May 1. ABA widely distributes a planning guide, provides extensive information and resources on a Web site,⁹ and promotes Law Day activities to State and local bar associations, schools, and the media. Among the activities promoted for middle and high school use are conversations with leaders in the law (both in person and online) and a student photography contest for depictions of the Law Day theme. A variety of classroom activities are offered for students from kindergarten through grade 12.

Interactive online programs for students make use of new technology. ABA has created cutting-edge interactive Web-based programs, beginning with the 1998 national Online Conversation with the Tinker v. Des Moines plaintiffs. The “conversation” was an electronic question-and-answer session between secondary school students around the country and the three plaintiffs in the 1969 landmark Supreme Court students’ rights case, Tinker v. Des Moines. The plaintiffs were suspended from school as teenagers for wearing black armbands to mourn the casualties of the Vietnam conflict. In addition to the students’ questions and the Tinker plaintiffs’ answers, the Web site included educational information about the case and links to additional information.

The National Online Youth Summit, begun during the 1999–2000 school year, electronically links 50 high school classrooms from across the Nation and enables students to discuss important issues with each other and with legal and public policy experts. Topics have included Chicago’s antigang loitering law and restrictions on youth access to the Internet and mass media. The online summit provides printed teacher resource guides, listservs connecting participating classrooms, a Web site filled with topical information and links, a Web message board that allows students to communicate with each other, and an electronic question-and-answer forum via e-mail or conferencing software for “live chats” with legal and public policy experts. The summit’s Web site¹⁰ is available to all teachers and students for enhancing local youth summits or classroom enrichment.

Youth/teen court networking has been promoted and supported by ABA since 1991 through mailings, articles in newsletters, presentations at conferences, representatives on national youth court advisory committees, and the publication Technical Assistance Bulletin No. 17: Youth Court: A National Movement. In the 2000–2001 school year, ABA is creating the Youth Court Youth Volunteer Educational/Training Package to provide high-quality educational resources to train youth volunteers and to enhance their understanding of the law and the justice system.

Publications

After City of Chicago v. Jesus Morales: A Resource Guide for Teachers provides information that helps high school teachers educate their students about the historical, social, and philosophical foundations of constitutional democracy through the lens of a 1999 Supreme Court decision with wide-ranging legal and social implications for people across the country. The Supreme Court’s decision in City of Chicago, Petitioner v. Jesus Morales et al. found a controversial Chicago “anti-gang congregation” (loitering) ordinance unconstitutional because it violated due process.

The Online Youth Summit Experience Student journalists are eager to tackle tough issues such as gang involvement, drug abuse, censorship, and race relations. While they may gather research from libraries and community resources, few have the opportunity to interview truly authoritative sources. That’s why I was eager to involve my journalism students in the ABA’s Online Youth Summit. The first-semester summit centered on a Supreme Court decision related to gangs. Readings provided by ABA offered objective background on topics such as racial profiling and curfew laws. Students prepared questions for nationally known experts, incorporated their remarks in classroom writing activities, and prepared for a press conference with a local police officer. Students enjoyed responding to questions on the ABA Web site, where they compared their views with those posted by other teens across the country. Information gathered for the summit became a front-page feature in our high school newspaper. The online summit allowed students from a small midwestern town to be in touch with their peers around the Nation and with world-class legal experts sharing insights on a crucial issue. —Sheryl Hinman Journalism teacher at Galesburg High School in Illinois

Insights on Law and Society is a new magazine for high school teachers of government, history, and law. This classroom aid combines print and an integrated online format that includes thematic editions on law-related topics; feature articles of special interest to students; teaching strategies, activities, and resources; Supreme Court and congressional updates; and much more.

Law Matters is a free newsletter that provides LRE information and resources and a platform for networking and outreach in schools and community settings.

The Bar-School Partnerships series provides how-to handbooks for teachers, lawyers, court personnel, law enforcement professionals, and others. Titles include Sure-Fire Presentations, Putting on Mock Trials, Courts and the Schools, and Everybody Wins: Mediation in the Schools.

Essentials of Law-Related Education (American Bar Association Special Committee on Youth Education for Citizenship, 1995) provides a definitive description of the goals, content, and effectiveness of law-related education and is to be used by LRE leaders in advancing national civics education goals and standards.

Mock trials for elementary-level students are based on fairytales and include scripts; for secondary-level students, the mock trials are fictitious civil and criminal cases. At both levels, mock trials include tips on preparing and conducting a trial and simplified steps and rules for a trial.

Technical Assistance Bulletins are 4- to 12-page publications on special topics relevant to the field of LRE. Recent titles are Technical Assistance Bulletin No. 15: Law Magnet Programs, Technical Assistance Bulletin No. 16: Vicarious Violence on the Screen, Technical Assistance Bulletin No. 17: Youth Court: A National Movement, and Technical Assistance Bulletin No. 18: Youth Summits.

Youth for Justice	Juvenile Justice Bulletin • April 2001