Judicial Behavior

Overview

As a group, students will give 3 PowerPoint Presentations in class throughout the semester. Each presentation is worth 100 points (for a total of 300 points). The PowerPoint Presentations will be over 3 separate federal judges/justices (one presentation over a Southern District of Texas judge, one over a 5th Circuit Court justice, and one over a U.S. Supreme Court justice). The due-dates for the presentations are listed on the syllabus.

Each Group Presentation will be 5-8 minutes long. Your group will lose 3 points for every 10 seconds less than 5 minutes the presentation is. Also, I will stop the presentations at 8 minutes, so if you fail to cover everything important in the 8 minutes, your group will most likely lose points as well. Thus, the ability to manage time is key to doing well on these presentations. Since these are presentations, part of your grade (a relatively small part) will be based on your group’s ability to make the presentations interesting, as well as your group’s ability to speak loudly and clearly. This also means that you should be making eye-contact with the class, and not simply staring at the ground, your note-cards, or the slides.

Each group will also be required to use PowerPoint slides as part of their presentations. PowerPoint is the only software that groups are allowed to use. Each group must have a back-up copy of their PowerPoint presentation, just in case something doesn’t work. I recommend having one copy on a flash drive, and another copy in your email. On top of that, each group must bring enough hard copies of their PowerPoint presentations so that every student in class (AND I) can have a copy. The hard copies must be printed 3 slides per page (you can make it front and back to save paper if you like). I will use the hard copy you give me to write grading notes on, which I will eventually return to you.

The PowerPoint slides are meant to AID your presentation. Your group should NOT be reading word for word from the slides. In general, you want to make your slides visually appealing, but not overly distracting. You can include picture, charts and graphs, and colorful backgrounds in them. However, you are not allowed to include any video or audio clips in your slides, since they would cut into your presentation time. Typically speaking, you want each slide to have a clear title on it, and you want to keep the words on each slide to a few, relatively short, bullet-points. If your slides have paragraphs upon paragraphs of words per slide, you are doing something wrong. Thus, each group should KNOW the content of their presentation largely by heart (using maybe some note-cards or the bullet-points on each slide as a cue for what to talk about next).

The PowerPoint Presentations MUST have a MINIMUM of 5 slides, and include the following:

(1) A picture of the judge/justice you are presenting:

This slide SHOULD simply have the judge/justice’s full name, the court they are on, and a picture of them.

(2) A background of the judge/justice before they served on the court:

This CAN include:

(A) Where they were born, and all the places they have lived.

(B) Where they went to college and law school.

(C) Work experience that they had before serving on the current court.

(D) Any political experience they had.

(E) Any scandals they may have been involved in.

(F) Their political leanings.

(G) Any possible influence that their family may have had on them.

(3) A description of how the confirmation process went for the judge/justice:

This SHOULD include:

(A) Which president nominated them for the position.

(B) The party that was the majority party in the U.S. Senate when they were confirmed.

(C) What the final vote in the U.S. Senate was for their confirmation.

(D) A brief summary of how controversial the judge/justice’s confirmation process was.

(4) A description of how the judge/justice has decided cases:

This CAN include:

(A) An analysis of whether the judge/justices decisions are liberal or conservative (possibly broken down by categories of cases).

(B) An example of a somewhat famous or controversial decision that the judge/justice handed down.

(C) If it is a justice, how often the justice hands down dissenting opinions.

(D) If it is a justice, how well liked are they amongst their fellow justices on the court.

(E) What is their demeanor in the courtroom?

a. Do they rarely talk, or talk a lot?

b. Do they have a reputation for strictly following procedure in the court?

c. Do they have an abrasive personality, or are they more easy-going?

(5) A works-cited slide:

This SHOULD include ANY and ALL sources that you used to research your presentation. I do not care what format you use (MLA, APA, Chicago Style, etc.). All I care about is that you include the critical information such as the author, the name of the work, and the year it was published. TO BE CLEAR, THE WORKS CITED SLIDE DOES NOT NEED TO BE COVERED DURING YOUR 5-8 MINUTE PRESENTATION, IT IS ONLY THERE SO THAT I CAN LOOK AT ON THE HARD COPY OF THE POWERPOINT THAT YOU GIVE ME.

· To be clear, this is a GROUP Project, consisting of 3 presentations!

· This means that your group cannot fracture into subgroups, with each subgroup submitting their own presentations.

· As a result, you must learn to work together as a group, put aside your differences, and learn how to compromise on certain issues.

You will be graded on the following things:

· The PowerPoint slides (25 points):

1. Are there enough slides?

1. Are the slides visually appealing?

1. Do the slides cover the content that was requested?

· Presentation Skills (15 points):

1. Did everyone in the group speak at some point? (Group members that are better public speakers are permitted to carry the heavier load of the presentation, but every group member must speak some. Also, it is implied that group members that speak less should make up for that by carrying more of the load during research or during the construction of the PowerPoint slides).

1. Did all the group members speak loudly and clearly?

1. Did all the group members make eye-contact with the audience?

1. Was the presentation interesting or boring?

· Content (60 points):

1. Did the group accurately cover the judge/justice’s background?

1. Did the group accurately cover the confirmation process in the U.S. Senate for their particular judge/justice?

1. Did the group accurately cover how the judge/justice has decided cases in the court they are currently in?

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If you have a group member that is not meeting deadlines for submitting work to the group you should FIRST give them a warning , and if they continue to fail to meet deadlines you have the authority to kick them out of your group. However, this should only be done as a last resort!

If you are kicked out of a group, you have three options:

(1) Find another group to join that is willing to take you in.

(2) Do the paper option listed below (which includes an automatic 10 point penalty).

(3) Take a zero on the assignment (please do not do this because it will KILL your Semester Grade).

THE PAPER OPTION: (Only to be done by students NOT submitting a children’s book.)

· If you are kicked out of your group for not meeting deadlines, or if you just really hate working with groups in the first place, you have the option of submitting a paper instead for each presentation that you do not do. (Keep in mind that there are 3 presentations, worth 100 points each…so if you do none of the presentations, you will owe me 3 separate papers).

HOWEVER, anyone that submits a paper instead of doing a presentation will be penalized 10 points for failing to work with a group! This means that the highest possible grade that you can get on each paper is a 90.

· Each paper is due the same days that each of the group presentations are due.

· Each paper is a MINIMUM of EIGHT typed pages. (A title page and works cited page would be in addition to the minimum of twelve typed pages.) Ten points well be deducted for each page short that you are.

· The paper should be double-spaced, and in 12 point font.

· The paper(s) MUST be about the judges/justices your group was assigned to cover.

· You must cite sources that you use for the paper! I do not care what format you use to cite your sources, so long as you cite them and include the critical information in the Works Cited page (such as the title of the publication, the author, and the year).

· If you plagiarize, you will receive a grade of ZERO!

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