CompuLEGAL Home Page
CompuLEGAL presents the Project LEGAL teaching
method of Law-Related Education through the use of landmark Supreme Court
cases. CompuLEGAL helps develop advanced
problem-solving and critical thinking skills and increases knowledge and
comprehension of the U.S. legal/judicial system.
The Structure of CompuLEGAL
Method 1:
Analysis of cases from the Project LEGAL case library
You will examine a case from beginning to end.
- First,
you will be given a brief summary of the facts of the case in question.
- Then
you will be able to look at a visual of the case.
- Next,
you will be asked to list the actions, values, and legal bases of the
competing parties. This will assist you in forming the issue question
for the case you chose. Directions are provided.
- You
will then be asked to decide which side you favor in the case, and why.
This is the reasoning page. Directions are available on that page as
well.
- Then
you will examine the actual judicial decision reached in that case.
- Then
there will be an opportunity for you to examine and research additional
cases and scenarios.
- IMPORTANT
If
you click on a link which takes you out of the case you were working on
and into another web page, you need to click the "Back" button
in your browser's tool bar in order to get back to the page you were on.
Method 2:
Analysis of a case not in the case library.
You will analyze a case chosen by you or
your teacher. This case can be one previously decided by the U.S. Supreme
Court (Other Visuals), one that is
pending or not yet ruled on by the Supreme Court, a lower court case, or even
a hypothetical (made up) case.
After going over the facts of the case
(either provided by your teacher or found on the Internet or through other
sources), you will use CompuLEGAL to form the issue
question. Then you will examine the precedents for your case and develop
arguments for that case.
IMPORTANT: The Project LEGAL case method
and CompuLEGAL will only work with a Bill of Rights
or 14th Amendment type case in which an individual or group's rights are
being abridged, denied, or ignored by the state, one of its agencies, or
another group.
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