- Section 1 – Politics, Government, Information, and the People
- Section 2 – The Constitution
- Section 3 – Federalism
- Section 4 – Liberties and Rights
What to submit?
This assignment requires you to look more closely at how the US Constitution, Federalism, and the debates over Rights and Liberties impact your chosen topic. You will be presenting a three to five-page paper (or a recorded PowerPoint presentation of similar length, roughly 10-minutes) in which you answer the following questions:
- Briefly summarize what you know about your issue given the tracking you’ve done since the start of the quarter and discussing it in the RL and Discussions.
- Discuss any Constitutional issues that arise in your issue.
- Discuss any issues of Federalism that arise in your issue.
- Use the definitions of Freedom presented in the lecture, to discuss how your issue looks.
- Use the definitions of Order presented in the lecture to discuss how your issue looks
- Use the definitions of Equality presented in the lecture to discuss how your issue looks
- In your opinion, which value (Freedom, Order, or Equality) is most important in any public policy on your issue and why?
Submission Check List:
- Have you prepared responses for each of the sections outlined above?
- Paper Option –
- Have you correctly formatted your document according to the style guide of your choosing (MLA or APA, or APSA)?
- Have you saved your file as in PDF, doc, or docx? If not, export to PDF in your document processing program (Google Docs, Apple Pages, OpenDocument) before uploading.
- Recorded Presentation – Make sure you upload an mp4 + a pdf of your presentation + speaking script.
How to Research – This exercise will require that you learn more about your chosen policy topic by:
- Monitoring the news about your topic.
- Finding out what policies currently exist.
- Understanding the debate(s) over the policy.
- Moving beyond news and social media treatment by exploring professional-level literature.
You will need to:
- Establish a news monitoring system (Google AlertsLinks to an external site. can be helpful, but there are other options).
- Figure out how to find current Federal policy in your area.
- Find the journals, magazines, blogs, and other media that people who work in your policy area follow.
A Word About Wikipedia – Wikipedia is a place to start your research, but not to end it. The site has its issuesLinks to an external site. – its articles may be inaccurate, subject to manipulation, or contain hoaxes – but it can also be an excellent place to start getting a sense of your issue by seeing what ideas are presented in the entry, what links to other texts and sources are presented, and what search terms you can use. Use with critical caution.