What Legal Understanding is Essential to Citizenship? Part 1--Fundamental Aspects of Our Legal System

Religions and clubs, especially those looking to gain members, are generally successful at organizing short discrete courses of study that allow potential and new members to begin substantial participation. I am specifically familiar with the introduction to religion courses taught at churches, synagogues, and mosques that give course attendees familiarity with the institution's core beliefs and customs. One fascinating aspect of many of these courses is that they are able to present new members to their institutions with an understanding of the institution's analytical process, sufficient for new members to investigate sources on their own. I would like to see everyday courses in American civics and law take a similar approach, namely one that introduces participants to their rights and responsibilities with an eye towards engagement, involvement, and personal investigations. We often speak about the rights of citizens to exercise their first amendment rights, and rights to engage in commerce, but we don't always consider whether we are giving them the proper tools in order to do so. A study done several years ago in the former Soviet republics (the details of that survey are presented on this blog in one of the earliest entries) shows that students of democracy are most likely to become participants in the democratic system when they are provided tools in which to take action. Thus, there are two discussions to hold. The first discussion to hold: what educational activities lead students to consider themselves both interested and knowledgeable about civics and the law. This is a pedagogical question. The next question is: what legal knowledge is essential to active citizenship, and thus must be covered in any "intro to being an active citizen" course. To start this discussion, below is a model outline of subject matters that should be covered in an introduction to democratic involvement course. (As I continue studying these matters, I trust this outline will go through dramatic updating and transformations.) 1. Fundamentals about the Structure of our Judicial System: A. How to locate particular laws; B. How to locate the applciable procedures to vindicate rights through court; C. General information about the federal court and state court structure, and the relationship, similarities, and differences between the two. 2. Fundamentals about the Structure of the Executive Branch: A. How to determine if rights must be exhausted through administrative procedures before pursuing litigation, such as EEOC and certain local zoning boards; B. How to determine when executive agencies have departments tasked with addressing certain problems in manners more expedient than court--such as certain state consumer affairs divisions and wage and hour boards. 3. The Art of Reading Case Law 4. Fundamentals of Constitutional Rights and the Supreme Court's role in interpreting I maintain that the above 4 topics can give anyone a general overview necessary for anyone to determine if they have a problem for which the law might provide a remedy, and to determine which structure is available to adequately address it. As lawyers have extensive training in these topics, I don't envision that all citizens would attend 4 sessions and become lawyers. It goes without saying that any citizen training course would need to be extremely clear that what level of education is being provided. This warning is similar to any program designed to give a lay person an overview of an extensive field where expertise is prime. I'd draw a further analogy to a health class. Certain knowledge about the human body, food, vitamins, and medicine is required for people to address their day-to-day medical needs. Medical professionals are needed to give periodic check ups and advise, test to assure that further medical needs are identified and addressed, and more sophisticated medical problems are handled by appropriate professionals. Thus, I'd argue that a basic course in legal literacy is needed to assure that all citizens have a basic knowledge of their rights and responsibilities.