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Section Summaries
The Big Ideas


The Third Branch
About Judges
About Courts

The Third Branch
Landmark Cases

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The Third Branch section contents
The Third Branch menu bar > About Judges

What Judges Do
The What Judges Doe module opens with a terrible, horrible, rotten, no-good day in which everything goes wrong and everyone wants justice!  The storyline describes the types of conflict that courts help resolve and the role of the judges in applying the law to the facts of each case.  A section on judicial independence describes how the fair and even application of law requires that judges be able to rule on cases without retaliation from politicians or the public.

Checks and Balances
The Checks and Balances module opens with a young immigrant asking Justice to explain the checks and balances system.  Justice takes the boy through a chart on checks and balances.  The chart contains descriptions of each branch and details their powers and the checks on those powers.   The module concludes with a discussion of the landmark case Worcester v. Georgia, which demonstrates the failure of checks and balances, resulting in the removal of the Cherokee people from their homeland and the Trail of Tears.

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  Third Branch sub-menu images
 
 
    Scene from "What Judges Do"   Title Screen from "Checks and Balances"
 
Scene from "What
Judges Do"
 
Title screen from "Checks and Balances"