It's the Law! --
Judging from the writing and presentation, I would infer that
this book is aimed at students in the elementary grades.
In the introduction to the Facilitator's Guide, Carrel says that
the purpose of It's the Law! is "to present to young people a
look into our country's justice system and to involve them in the
idea of the legal process." She also expresses the hope that
"young people will not to be preached to," and she says that
students "should not have to listen to an adult who interprets
this material according to his or her personal ethic or
viewpoint." Carrel herself, however, seems to observe both these
injunctions in the breach. The text of It's the Law! is so
preachy that it is reminiscent of a Romper Room program, and it
is replete with personal commentary that often is ill-conceived
and misinformed.
The rest of the book is not as useful. Chapters 1 through 9 --
with titles such as "What Is Law?" and "Justice" and "Why Do We
Need Laws?" -- purport to introduce students to the theory and
purpose of law. Here, however, the author has underestimated the
educational opportunities that such topics afford, and she has
misunderstood, in a serious way, the philosophical dimensions of
her subject.
The concept of law presented in these chapters revolves around
control -- indeed, chapter 4 is entitled "Control" and it opens
with a description of prisoners in handcuffs and ankle-irons.
But even if control is the purpose of the rules that govern
classrooms and school playgrounds, control is not what our legal
system, in general, is about. The view urged in It's the Law!
can scarcely describe or explain the dynamic role that law plays
in American society. Given the emphasis that Carrel has put on
the juvenile offender (in her middle chapters and in the
mock-trial script), she would have done well to confine herself to
discussing the criminal-justice system only, without presenting
her speculations about other jurisprudential realms. She has
reached too far, and the results include incoherence and a lot of
silly posturing.
At best, that is a strange gloss to offer when discussing the
Declaration, especially because the Declaration's central ideas
are equality and natural rights.
Serious misreadings are displayed when Carrel attempts to discuss
various provisions of the Constitution. In chapter 17, for
example, she correctly quotes Section 1 of the Fourth Amendment,
but she interprets it in a preposterous way. Here is what
Section 1 says:
Carrel's commentary on the section is this: "The seizure part of
the amendment meant that a person could not be arrested except by
a warrant sworn for that purpose." Quite obviously, however, the
Section does not refer to arrests or to the conditions under
which a person can be arrested. It deals with restrictions on
the government's effort to find and collect evidence of
wrongdoing. Put simply, it states the conditions under which a
person's house can be searched.
What Carrel says about the Fourteenth Amendment is equally
misleading. The important provisions of that amendment are three
clauses in Section 1: the privileges-of-citizenship clause (which
was intended, in part, to overrule the Dred Scott decision), the
due-process clause (by which most provisions of the Bill of
Rights have been applied to the states), and the
equal-protection clause (which has become the basis of most of our
civil-rights law that deters discrimination based upon race or
gender). Carrel quotes the entire amendment, but she does not
offer any commentary about those powerful clauses in Section 1.
She focuses instead on Section 2, a passage that has never been
applied or enforced! Section 2 was meant to protect the voting
rights of freedmen in the South and to ensure that black males
would be included in the nation's body politic, which at that
time consisted only of males aged 21 or older. (The section was
never applied because a more specific form of protection was
provided, two years later, by the Fifteenth Amendment). Now,
what are Carrel's comments about all of this? She tells students
to note that "the amendment" spoke only of males, and that it did
not extend the franchise to women! Her second comment is
frivolous, and her first comment wrong: Section 2 dealt only with
males, but Section 1 -- the paramount part of the amendment --
applied to all "persons" and all "citizens."
Teachers who desire more information about procedure will profit
from reading American Civil Procedure: An Introduction, by
Geoffry C. Hazard, Jr., and Michele Taruffo. Published in 1993
by Yale University Press (New Haven, Connecticut), this book is
meant for a general audience. It will be useful to teachers at
all levels, from elementary schools to community colleges, and
it contains material that will be particularly interesting to
high-school students who are thinking of becoming lawyers.
For authentic case materials -- texts of some actual cases, along
with instructors' guides that explain the issues involved and
show how to engage students in the workings of our legal
system -- teachers should turn to the Youth for Justice program sponsored
by the Center for Civic Education (in Calabasas, California).
From the beginning to the end of her book, Carrel speaks in the
first person to her audience of students, professing to tell them
about laws, about consequences of breaking laws, and about our
legal system itself. Overall, she succeeds in achieving these
goals, although her simplistic presentations and homilies may
repel older high-school students who resent lectures by seemingly
"out-of-touch" adults.
The book does not begin with a bang. The brief introductory
chapters on "What Is a Law?," "Justice," "Control," and "Why Do
We Need Laws?" are so simple-minded that most high-school
students will probably find them condescending. For example,
Carrel writes that laws are "mostly invisible," that "[the] word
justice is not very large, yet it stands for one of the most
valuable gifts you possess," and that "When people came to this
new land called America, they wanted a form of government that
would treat all persons equally." Her tone recalls the sing-song
style of a tour guide, and she patronizes her readers with
comments like this: "[DNA testing] is pretty heavy science for
you, and most adults haven't yet learned enough to understand it.
It is new and it is exciting, and it is part of your future
world. Let's see if I can explain just enough to let you
understand. The letters DNA stand for a big word,
deoxyribonucleic acid. . . ."
But as many tour guides do, Carrel also makes an excellent effort
to provide information that resonates with her audience's
interests and experiences. In choosing her topics and examples,
she focuses on matters that are relevant to the lives of
high-school students: driving, drugs, computers and the
juvenile-justice system.
In chapter 10 Carrel nicely summarizes the actions for which a
person can be arrested, and in chapter 12 ("The Right to a
Trial") she clearly defines the players in civil and criminal
cases. These explanations are supported by the book's excellent
and comprehensive glossary of legal terms -- a thirteen-page
section that, by itself, makes It's the Law! a good buy.
Carrel is at her best, though, when she leads the reader through
a representative trial. In chapter 13 she provides a
straightforward description of what happens at a trial, and in
chapter 14 she explains juvenile justice in a relevant way. She
begins with a short history of the juvenile-justice system, then
she tells about how juvenile cases are classified, how juvenile
offenses are treated, and how judges use probation in sentencing
juvenile offenders.
Carrel's errors, however, aren't nearly as hard to take as her
little Fourth-of-July sermons about patriotism and citizenship.
For example:
It is possible that some people would use their vote, their
power, to make bad laws. Thank heavens there are also many
good-thinking citizens who, like you, can make sure that bad laws
don't happen. [page 43]
Sure, [your friends] may think you are real tough, that you did
real good. But while you are sitting in jail, they are out in
the sunshine saying how cool you were. Well, jail is not cool.
[page 49]
Children are indeed people. But children are not just very
short adults, they are different. Children are thought about in
special ways when we discuss their needs, their rights, and the
law. [page 104]
Each challenge [to our justice system] is serious, especially to
the group making it. We must watch and be informed and
participate. Don't sit back and just let everyone else care.
[page 115]
Do realize that [the Declaration of Independence] stated that
people are endowed with the right to the pursuit of happiness.
It did not say that all have the right to happiness. It did not
say that the government must make you happy. It did not say that
you have the right to be happy at anyone's expense. It meant
that you have the right to earn, or find, or create (to pursue)
happiness for yourself. No one owes happiness to you. Your
rights must be shared with all people who also have those same
rights. [page 119]
There's no doubt that such material will be reassuring to Middle
America's parents, but Carrel's sermons oversimplify pivotal
concepts and will probably sound like white noise to the many
teenagers who dislike moralistic lectures of any kind.
It's the Law! cannot serve as a primary text for a high-school
civics class, because it is much too cursory in its consideration
of how laws are made, how laws are changed, and how law defines
the branches and the functions of our government. But as a tour
through our judicial system, with an outline of terms and
concepts, it is a superior supplementary text. It can be used in
any high-school or middle-school course that includes a segment
about government or law.
Albie Burke, a specialist in the constitutional and legal
history of the United States, is a professor in the Department of
History at California State University, Long Beach. He is also
an associate editor of The History Teacher, the quarterly of the
Society for History Education.
James M. Wagstaffe is a constitutional lawyer, a specialist in
First Amendment cases, and a partner in the law firm of Cooper,
White & Cooper (San Francisco).
Reviewing a high-school book in social studies
A Young Person's Guide to Our Legal System
1994. 187 pages. ISBN: 1-884244-01-7.
Volcano Press, Inc., P.O. Box 270, Volcano, California 95689.
Though This Is a Poor Book,
It Has Some Useful ChaptersAlbie Burke
It's the Law!, by Annette Carrel, comes in two versions. One is
meant for use by students, presumably as an assigned text. The
other, subtitled Facilitator's Guide, is meant for instructors;
it includes an introductory statement and a mock-trial script
that do not appear in the student's text, and it offers a
somewhat larger glossary. In all other respects, the two
versions are identical.
The most serviceable parts of It's the Law! are chapters 10
through 14, plus the mock-trial script in the Facilitator's
Guide. Chapters 10 through 14 describe, in a step-by-step
manner, what a juvenile offender might experience during an
encounter with the criminal-justice system, from arrest through
conviction and sentencing. The chapter titles are illustrative:
"When People Break the Law," "Under Arrest!," "The Right to a
Trial," "What Happens at a Trial" and "Juvenile Justice." The
mock-trial script covers much of the same ground. Using the
script, students can perform a little play that represents the
trial of a defendant who has been accused of theft; the roles
include witnesses, attorneys, the judge, the bailiff, the
defendant, and the members of the jury. This play can be put to
good use as student theater, and it is the sort of thing that
many young people delight in doing.
The closing chapters (i.e., chapters 15 through 18) discuss the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and here the
author's political biases are displayed in full color. Consider
this commentary about the Declaration, in chapter 16:
Do realize that this declaration stated that people are endowed
with the right to the pursuit of happiness. It did not say that
all have the right to happiness [emphasis in the original]. It
did not say that the government must make you happy. It did not
say that you have the right to be happy at anyone's expense. It
meant that you have the right to earn, or find, or create (to
pursue) happiness for yourself.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no warrants shall be issued but upon
probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons
or things to be seized.
Rather than purchasing It's the Law! for use as a classroom text,
a school district may want to buy a copy for the district
library, so that material in chapters 10 through 14 will be
available to teachers who must prepare lectures about the
criminal-justice system. The district may also want to negotiate
with the publisher of It's the Law! for rights to reproduce and
use the trial script.
A Good Supplementary Text,
Despite Its Puerile Sermons
James M. Wagstaffe
It's the Law!, a supplementary text for use in high-school civics
and government classes, was written by Annette Carrel. A blurb
on the book's back cover says that Carrel has worked for many
years as a docent at a local courthouse -- and indeed, I find
that It's the Law! has everything that one might expect of a
docent: It is informative, engaging, simplistic, perky and
homilistic, and it is filled with cheer-leading for American
values.
As one might expect in a law book by a person who isn't a lawyer,
It's the Law! occasionally presents statements that are wrong.
For example, Carrel incorrectly says that in some communities, a
grand-jury proceeding has replaced a preliminary hearing (before
a magistrate) as a means of instituting felony cases. In a
similarly mistaken fashion, she says that small-claims
jurisdiction is limited to $1,000, and that a civil suit can be
brought in a federal district court only if the amount in
controversy exceeds $10,000; the correct number, in each
instance, is five times greater. And on page 79, Carrel naively
says that "All accused persons have a right to a defense -- the
best defense our government can provide, whether they can pay for
it or not." While that is indeed the law of the land, derived
from the Supreme Court's ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright, even a
casual examination of routine felony cases discloses that our
public defenders are overworked and underfunded, and that the
Supreme Court's vision is rarely realized.
In order to get elected, [a] candidate must have the votes of
people like you. Do not give your vote away without thinking.
You are very special, and powerful. Get involved! [page 19]
Carrel redeems herself by providing a good appendix that includes
not only her helpful glossary but also a group of activities and
hypothetical cases for discussion and analysis. There's nothing
passive about these exercises; Carrel asks her readers to ponder
a number of provocative, instructive situations. On page 157,
for example, she presents "The Case of the Tall Ladder": A
person hired a workman to repair her roof, and the workman left
his tall ladder standing against her house; then a teenager,
trying to retrieve an errant ball, climbed the ladder, fell, and
was fatally injured. Who was responsible? This raises excellent
questions of tort law, in a context that is readily
understandable to young students.
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