Week 4 Quiz Responses Overview

Right Answers to Multiple Choice:

What type of court system does the U.S. Have: Federalist. All 42 students got this correct.

Which three type of cases are most common in the U.S. Courts? : Common Law, Criminal Law, Civil Law. 34 students got this correct. Constitutional cases are not common. They are over-reported by news media, social media, popular culture, and textbooks .

All Constitutional Rights apply equally to private and public sector is FALSE.
26 students got this wrong; this shows me there is not sufficient understanding of the private sector and public sector. It also tells me there is not sufficient understanding about both property rights and the likelihood of violations not being reported at all thus a problem of idealism v. realism.

The 4th Amendment explicitly requires a warrant issued by a judge. 13 students got this wrong.

The New York Court of Appeals is the highest court in the State of New York. It is uncommon to name the highest court this way but you should remember that 13 colonial court systems are older than the United States.

Very few cases ever get to the U.S. Supreme Court. Even fewer start there.

Over 90% of cases, criminal and civil, are NOT tried by a jury of peers. The U.S. Constitution does guarantee that CRIMINAL cases are to be held by jury and yet very few are in reality. This should show you that “law”, “rights” and “justice” are not automatic and the the goal of the legal system is not to find “truth”. You will need to make your arguments in this reality.

If you got 2 or more of the multiple choice questions wrong then you had a C or a C- until I factored in your long responses. For example, if you got a C+ on the first part and a B on the long responses then the Grade you see on BBOARD would be a B-. The average grade was a B.

For the long responses:

A answers were those that were able to see the differences that made a difference: if one believes that human nature is fixed at birth or that humans are selfish then it is a contradiction to hold Amazon managers responsible for “immoral” or bad behavior. Those responses showed that human nature is complex and were able to see that most students were looking at non-legal aspects of the Amazon hypo.

B answers were able to see that there were differences in the responses but did not show that these differences made a difference. They most often left it at people have different opinions, perspectives, or experiences but did not show why this would matter in a legal system.

C and below answers were too broad, “they answered differently” or “they answered the same question,” or they were unclear. These answers tended to be less than 1 sentence long and did not seem to be based in the reading and did not show evidence of reading through peer responses.

 

What to think about on the next graded assignment: Letter to a Judge

You need to show me the way you personally think about the legal system: whether you expect judges to deliver moral judgments, stick with their idea of process, or consider the dynamics of legislatures, corporations, interest groups, and the impact on general public when they make their decisions.
You need to show me that you understand there is no one “right” way to think about the legal system as it relates to what expectations you have of judges.
You need to show me that you understand that Judges and lawyers are trained within one of the schools of thought I listed above.
You need to show that you understand that how a judge views the purpose of the legal system will influence how they make their decisions.
You should be able to explain why the views of trained lawyers and judges are not similar to the general public (you) because of their experience, their social class, and the similar education they all received.
Finally, you should be able to start to explain how your learning is changing as you move away from your original ideas and move toward a legal reasoning model of: legal rule, case as adversarial process, and conclusion (judicial decision).