Constitutional Literacy & Youth Education in Ithaca

The following is an op-ed submitted by Chiemezie Okeke-Ojiudu ’15, law. Those interested in Cornell’s chapter of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project can reach out its president, Mr. Okeke-Ojiudu, at cuo4@cornell.edu. 

A Constitution it is said is vital to every functional democratic system. It is the glue that holds governments together; it spells out government’s powers and duties and at the same time provides against encroachment on individual rights and freedoms by government. Thus it could be sad that the constitution empowers but in the same vein places limits on the powers of the various arms of government (i.e. executive, legislature and judiciary). Most importantly, the constitution establishes the rule of law; No one is above the law, and everyone must follow the law.

Enshrined in the US constitution are basic yet fundamental rights in the form of the bill of rights. The bill of rights in my view is the single most important section of the US constitution with regards citizen’s rights. Unfortunately, the constitution, a powerful and easily accessible document, still has difficulty finding its way into the libraries and homes of most US citizens’. A constitutionally literate citizen is not only able to challenge government, but is also able to demand accountability and transparency from his or her government.

The Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project was conceived in 1999 by Professor Jamin Raskin of the American University Washington College of Law in order to recruit and mobilize talented law students to teach constitutional law and juvenile justice in underserved public high schools. The project is designed to engage high school students, while informing them of their rights and duties as citizens.

Because many students do not participate and feel detached from politics, the movement for constitutional literacy was born of the belief that high school students will profit for a lifetime from learning the system and structure of rights and responsibilities under the U.S. Constitution. With the launch of the Cornell Law School chapter this semester, Cornell has thus joined the league of law schools taking on the herculean but noble task of educating public high school students in the local community via the Cornell Chapter of Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project. The Cornell chapter, which had its first special session last Friday at the New Roots Charter School, Ithaca, as part of a temporary arrangement with the high school with hopes to commence fully in the fall semester of 2015, is posed to bring experience and quality education in areas of criminal and constitutional law.

In the following semester, Cornell fellows will work with a supervisor and will be teaching in groups of two or more at least once a week in local high school like New Roots. New Roots Charter School is the first in what will hopefully be a string of schools that the Cornell Chapter will be serving in Ithaca’s local community next semester. In total, there are 18 Chapters across the United States with the main headquarters in Washington College of Law, Washington DC. The opening of the Cornell chapter makes Cornell only the second law school in the Ivy League participating in the project, the other being Yale Law School.

Cornell Law School has thus joined the literacy battle in order to provide quality education to Ithaca’s underserved high schools and to ensure that Ithaca students are constitutionally literate. This is indeed a step in the right direction and it is evidenced by the passion, commitment and determination displayed by the programs fellows and student representatives. New Roots Charter School is but the first in a string of schools that will be served by the Cornell chapter when it commences fully next semester.

The chapter hopes to become as prominent in Cornell as the ‘Cornell Prison Education Program’ which mobilises students to teach incarcerated men at the Auburn and Cayuga Correctional Facilities, while offering a liberal arts curriculum leading to an Associate of Arts degree for the prisoners. Unlike the Cornell Prison Education Program which offers nearly a dozen courses each semester in vast areas such as; genetics, economics, creative writing, constitutional law, medical anthropology etc., the Marshall-Brennan program will focus mainly on criminal law & criminal procedure on the one hand and constitutional law on the other.

In order to achieve this, the project aims to utilise two different text books for its curriculum: Youth Justice in America and We the students. Both books focus on criminal law and constitutional law respectively and will both be used by the fellows to help enlighten and educate the students on their legal and constitutional duties and as well as rights as US citizens.

Once fully commenced next semester, the teaching fellows, along with the high school students, will receive academic credits each semester for their participation in the project. And like the Cornell Prison Education Program, the fellows will also be supervised by a faculty member at the Law school.

The special sessions have so far proven successful and the students seem engaged and interested. The program has managed to spark their interest and as said before, it is indeed is a step in the right direction. It has not just been a successful trial session for the Cornell chapter and its fellows alone, but one for New Roots as well as this could open the door to future partnership and collaboration for both institutions while unlocking numerous possibilities and opportunities for both fellows, students, and the Ithaca community at large. In the words of the late Martin Luther King Jr; “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education”. It is therefore safe to say that we have gotten the students thinking; now we can only hope to build on what we have started and hopefully progress to the next level.