Audio-Visual Materials: K: Law

4 Discs

This 8-part series explores how The U.S. Constitution came to be.

United States Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer talk about the Constitution with high school students and discuss why we have and need a constitution, what federalism is, how implicit and explicit rights are defined and how separation of powers ensures that no one branch of government obtains too much power.

Explores the workings of the American Immigration and Naturalization Service which decide the fates of thousands of asylum-seekers.

From George Washington to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, examines the relationship between the presidency, mass media, and public opinion.

Explains how the new drug seizure laws permit police officers to stop cars and seize money and possessions without due process. Although these laws were intended to help police fight the illegal drug trade, some highway policemen are abusing the laws to make a profit.

How does America's juvenile justice system work? In what ways has it failed? And what would it take to improve it so that it routinely operates in the best interests of offenders, their victims, and society as a whole? These are not simple questions, as this Fred Friendly Seminar points out--and they become all the more complex when moderator Charles Ogletree, of Harvard Law School, casts 13 experts as figures in a hypothetical scenario involving two families, four teens, and a sequence of violent crimes culminating in a murder. By incrementally raising the stakes, Ogletree moderates a passionate discussion that addresses different conceptions of justice, the balance between rehabilitation of a minor and the safety of the public, the need to strengthen the home environment, availability of social services, and matters of race and socioeconomic status.