Federal Government: Supreme Court Cases or Policy

Professor Cavallo’s Class Instructions for Term Papers and Projects

All papers must:

· Have no more than 1” margins.

· Use proper grammar, capitalization and punctuation.

· Be double-spaced

· Properly quote all sources and be written in MLA or APA format.

· Be written in third person and have formal writing—no contractions!

· Have a Works Cited page.

· Accurately quote and cite sources.

· Flow in a logical order.

· Be written in Times New Roman style font in a size 12 pts or under.

· Follows completely the assignment directions–not exceeding or being short of page requirements. Works Cited pages do not count towards total page requirements.

Supreme Court Cases Paper (Govt 2305) Paper Option 1

Students must pick one US Supreme Court case that did not conclude in an unanimous decision. From the concurring and dissenting (for and against) Supreme Court Opinions, students must cite, explain, and explore the logic for and against the case. Three arguments by the Supreme Court Justices in favor of each side must be analyzed. Students are encouraged to read the primary sources which are written by the Supreme Court Justice Opinions to learn their official position. This is an analysis paper that explores two sides of a controversy.

Paper requires a light explanation of the case with proper quotations/citations.

Students must find at least one relevant academic article about the case or the subject matter. These articles will be found from academic journals. Students may find academic journals from the JSTOR or EBSCO servers (found in the SanJac library). Cases after year 2004 may not have an academic article yet, if this is the case, news articles or policy center articles may be used.

In addition to the academic sources, students may also site congressional speeches, additional Supreme Court Justice Opinions, Presidential speeches, non-fiction books, biographies, autobiographies or laws on this topic. No blogs, opinion articles, or Wikipedia articles are permitted.

Only in the conclusion paragraph, students may choose to side with either the concurring or dissenting opinion.

As always, students must accurately quote all sources and keep the paper in third person.

Papers must be 4-6 pages long and at least four sources must be used in the paper.

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Policy Term Paper (Govt 2305) Paper Option 2

Students must find two academic articles about the same U.S. national policy. These articles will be found from academic journals. Students may find academic journals from the JSTOR server (found in the SanJac Blackboard library).

In addition to the academic sources, students may also site congressional speeches, non-fiction books, biographies, autobiographies or laws on this topic. No blogs, opinion articles, or Wikipedia articles are permitted. Newspapers are discouraged.

Students must accurately quote sources.

Papers must be 4-6 pages long and at least three sources must be used in the paper.

Logically analyze three arguments for and against the topic (six reasons total). Which of the policy’s (or group’s) actions were successful or unsuccessful? Why or why not?