FAQ: How this site works


This site gathers selected web-based materials judges and other court personnel can use for in-court and community educational encounters with students, court visitors and community groups.  

Many government agencies, professional associations, non-profit organizations and universities have created resources related to the U.S. Constitution and the federal judiciary for their own purposes and for their own constituencies.  Many, although not well known or widely used, are excellent resources. This website, therefore, collects some of the best of these resources so that judges can easily find and access them. 
The resources described and linked on this site range from one-page handouts to full-fledged lesson plans, from outlines of crafts projects for very young audiences to dynamically interactive computer simulations for high school and college students, from simple matching exercises to detailed case studies.

Please note that each resource is coded to indicate the recommended audience – P (Primary school), M (middle school), H (high school), and A (general adult).

On the left Table of Contents column that appears on every page of this site, is the "Index of Resources" list.  The resources listed on this site are all gathered into those eight topical sub-sections.  
For example, a judge preparing a presentation can click into the topic that aligns with the subject of that presentation (for example, the "Bill of Rights")  and browse the summaries of the resources linked to from that page.  On locating a potentially helpful resource, the judge can click on the resource summaries to learn more about those resources.  Each specific resource page either links directly to the website that hosts the summarized resource or actually hosts the resource itself.

Each topical sub-section page under the Index of Resources category summarizes the key issues of its specific topic, and identifies learning objectives for students who are taught from the resources gathered on that page.  Judges may find those narrative summaries and those learning objectives to be useful as they consider what key points to make in their presentations.

Some of the resources are suitable for use as stand-alone presentations or provide complete lesson plans and accompanying materials; others may guide, inspire or provide components for user-developed presentations. Note that the non- governmental linked sites have differing policies as to downloading and/or adaptation of their materials; please review the relevant policy notices.

Federal judges, journalists and academic scholars have identified and reviewed the resources collected here for both accuracy and educational effectiveness.  Every resource listed here has been evaluated multiple times.  A Task Force of federal judges and a focus group of additional federal judges have evaluated the usefulness of the linked resources and the site itself, and have made recommendations about the linked resources themselves, as well as have edited the content original to this site.  

Users of this site can understand it to be a "work in progress."  At the moment, for example, the "Recommend Another Resource" page of the site has been disabled.  During the launch period, the site's organizational partners are also continuing to secure permissions to directly link to all the resources gathered here. 


There is a dedicated page for visitors to this site to make suggestions for other resources or for ways to improve this site.  That comment page can be found here.  NB:  During the launch of this site and its resources, that page has been temporarily disabled.