“Your honors, may I start?” Magda Khedr clears her throat and addresses the court.
After a quick nod from one of the three justices, the prosecutor begins her opening argument. “We contend that the search of Carmen Bundy’s phone,” Khedr says, “was a clear violation of her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.”
And so begins a day-long trial in New York City. Though in this case, the prosecutor is a high school senior from Staten Island. It’s all part of an annual moot-court competition, and students from more than 30 city high schools have been researching and preparing their cases for weeks.
The justices are Fordham University law students, and their ruling will carry not the weight of law, but instead an important lesson in how government works.
For many young people, the legal system is a black box: They know what goes in and what comes out, but few have any knowledge of what goes on in the room where it happens. This program – now in its 41st year – seeks to change that as a part of a city-wide civics curriculum.
The case that Khedr, who attends Susan E. Wagner High School, is prosecuting is a fictional incident involving a high school student implicated in a pranking incident. As a result, the student is summoned to the assistant principal’s office for questioning. While inside the room, the school resource officer searches her phone, but does not read her Miranda rights.
Khedr makes the case that the search was unlawful, while Brianna Mojica, a senior at New York City’s High School for Law, Advocacy and Community Justice, argues that the meeting wasn’t really an interrogation.
“Just because a school resource officer who is a certified law enforcement officer is present doesn’t mean the questioning is custodial,” Mojica says in her opening statement. “Similar to how the presence of a priest doesn’t turn a gathering into a church service.”
A national spotlight on civics education
Civics is a subject long-held as a bipartisan one. However, President Trump recently made waves by criticizing current methods for teaching it and vowing to change the system. In September, the administration announced a new coalition of conservative groups to oversee a re-vamp of civics education ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary.
The department’s statement said the initiative “is dedicated to renewing patriotism, strengthening civic knowledge, and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation.”
The administration’s focus comes as national test scores, from the assessment known as the Nation’s Report Card, show that civics scores for eighth graders in the U.S. have been on the decline since 2014. All this at a time when concerns about polarization of society and erosion of democratic principles have increased.
Louise Dubé, the CEO of iCivics, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on civic education, says that civics is not just government or history or social studies, but a bit of all three. More than anything, she maintains, it’s a set of skills.
“In a democracy, disagreement is baked in,” she says. “So what we’re looking for are skills to talk to people you disagree with in a civil manner to try to resolve problems.”
That starts with an understanding of concepts, including the three branches of government, checks and balances on power and the philosophy behind the nation’s founding. iCivics, founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor after her retirement from the Supreme Court, provides free education materials to help students understand democracy and develop the skills to participate in it.
The idea is to help students “feel part of the community,” Dubé says. “To understand service to your neighbor, your community, your country and value that as part of who you are.”
“We want all our students to have a baseline understanding of government, right?” says Michael Seif, a senior program manager at the Justice Resource Center, the nonprofit that oversees Fordham’s moot court competition and other civics programs around the city.
“We want students to understand the importance of oral advocacy, to be able to look at law-related and civic-related issues analytically and critically, and be able to apply them in their lives.”
Confident, informed citizens
For the students in the month-long competition, the real-world experience was much more engaging than a lecture. The law-student judges don’t rule one way or the other in the cases, but they offer feedback to the students and give them scores to see if they advance in the competition.
The judges all mentioned both students’ confidence and preparedness, but Mojica got one special shoutout. “We all mentioned this when we conferred,” Emily Knight, one of the justices and a third-year law student at Fordham, said. “The analogy you had about the priest was great.”
Knight says all of the students should be proud of themselves: “It’s so impressive. I certainly was in no position to do anything like this in high-school.”
Marla Kleinman, a social studies teacher at Wagner High School, helped Magda Khedr and the prosecution team prepare for the morning’s argument. She says giving students a feel for their own voice is a big part of their school’s civics-heavy curriculum.
No matter the subject, she reminds her students: “It’s okay to challenge ideas, not people.”
