Author:  Washington State Courts

Students perform 4 brief skits demonstrating procedural unfairness in trials.  They then analyze the skits, listing what was unfair in each situation and what rights needed to be protected.  These lists are finally compared to the procedural protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Objectives:

Students will analyze the concept of procedural justice by:

• identifying the unfair decisions by the ruler in a play,
• stating the procedural guarantees that ought to be included in a Bill of Rights,
• comparing their list of procedural guarantees to the procedural guarantees provided by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and
• concluding that procedural fairness is an essential element of the Bill of Rights.

Link: Understanding Procedural Justice

Source

The Washington State Courts Judges in the Classroom program includes 30 lessons developed by the Institute for Citizen’s Education in the Law.