Period 2: Introduction to Law, Day 3 - Class Recap

We talked a bit about the differences between Civil Law and Criminal Law today, and also touched on a bit of International Law. This is me at the border of the United States and Canada (at the Peace Arch) in the summer of 2009!

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another blog! Sorry this is up so late - I was watching the USA vs. Mexico World Cup qualifying soccer match. The USA won and we will be heading to Brazil next year! Fun stuff. In any case, here's what we did today in class.

Soundtrack: “Evil Ways” by Santana. Selected because if someone is doing something evil, a possible consequence is that they will get in trouble with the law. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 9/10/13:
Law in Our Lives
Civil vs. Criminal Law
Introduce Tort Report
Read Chapter 1/Do Definitions

Homework: Get the syllabus signed. Check the blog and post a comment! Tort Report assigned to Daniel K.

Law in Our Lives: We finished up this worksheet in thinking about different ways that laws impact our day to day lives. My point here was that many of the laws we were talking about were probably more Criminal if violated. Civil laws are more about disputes between individuals, rather than the government/society at large.

Civil vs. Criminal Law: For this section, we went through and made notes on the differences between Civil and Criminal Law. We had a good in class discussion about these differences, like who is represented, what the standard of proof is, and how the Constitution impacts both. Those notes will be available in the class (I do not have an electronic copy). Make sure to keep them with you for any upcoming quizzes/tests.

Introduce Tort Report: This is basically like a current event, but I want to have it focused on some element of Civil Law here in America. I asked Daniel K. to go first, because I know he knows what I am looking for (being in my Global Studies class last year). Basically, I just want to have something to start the class off each session that reminds us of why what we are learning is relevant.

Read Chapter 1/Do Definitions: To end the class, I had students start reading Chapter 1 in the "Street Law" textbook we keep in class, and start to define the vocabulary words in it. I will give you multiple chances to learn these, through multiple different avenues (like a PowerPoint next class, probably), so that I know we are good on them before moving on. Thanks for your work here! We will get back at it next class.