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Section Summaries
The Big Ideas
Privacy
Free Expression
Symbolic Speech
Censorship
Courts
Due Process
Laws
Checks and Balances

The Third Branch
Landmark Cases
The Third Branch

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The Big Ideas Section contents
The Big Ideas menu bar > Checks & Balances

What Judges Do
The What Judges Do 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 thta courts help resolve and the role of the judge in applying the law to the facts of each case.  There are also sections on judicial independence and checks and balances.

Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears 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 forced removal of the Cherokee people from their homeland and the Trail of Tears.

 

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    Scene from "What Judges Do"   Scene from "Checks and Balances"
 
 
Scene from "What
Judges Do"
 
Scene from "Worcester v. Georgia"