Criminal Law and the Death Penalty A-Term Day 1 - Chiara Abel

     On the first day of the Criminal Law and Defense A-Term, one of the first things we did in the morning was go over what we will be learning in the next two weeks. For week one we are going to be exploring Criminal Law and some major concepts and in the second week, we are going to be exploring the Death Penalty. Later in the morning, we worked on a bigger project. Everyone split into five groups and each group discussed one of five documents and how they were connected to the Declaration of Independence. The five documents that we looked at were “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., The Declaration of Sentiments written for the Seneca Falls convention, The Commonwealth club address by Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, and lastly, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights written by the United Nations member states. After all the small groups finished reading and discussing the documents a few students from each group shared ideas their group had with the whole group. 

Claire and Sophia present what they learned about the Gettysburg Address.

Shyla and Owen present what they learned about the Letter From a Bermingham Jail.     After we came back from lunch we listened to an episode from a podcast and took notes. The podcast we listened to was called “We the People” and the episode we listened to was called “The Declaration of Independence and its Influence on the Constitution.” The episode was hosted by Jeffery Rosen who invited guest speakers Dr. Danielle Allen a James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Dr. Ken Kersch a professor of political science at Boston College. During the episode, the speakers discussed how the Constitution was influenced by the Declaration of Independence and the relationship between the two. One important thing that was discussed in the episode was the first use of the Declaration for something other than the purpose of independence. Prince Hall was a free African American in Boston, he used the Declaration for the purpose of abolitionism in a petition to end slavery. Another important thing that was talked about was the fact that Thomas Jefferson did not include any language that regarded religion in his draft of the Declaration, it was actually added in by Congress. It is also important to note that the religious words used in the Declaration are not supposed to connect to a specific religion. 

Overall today was a good start to A-Term and I think students are excited to continue exploring the topic of Criminal Law and Defense. 

Chiara Abel