Research Assignment

I have divided the class into four discussion groups of four or five students each. Every group will exchange ideas about the issues and methods of online and library research. Within each group, every student will ask another to review her or his paper. The reviewer’s name should appear on the paper, along with that of the author.

George Ashford                    Claire Vlases
Bhanu Cheepurupalli           Adrian Flynn

Katherine Jackson                Alvin Lee        

Alvin Villarosa                     Maribella Munoz-Jimenez

Henry Long                            Peter Dien

Labiba Hassan                        Katherine Lanzalotto
Joshua Morganstein               Ryan Lenney

Bianca Rodriguez                   Ashley Park

Oliva Wee                               Nolan Windham

 Pick a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution concerning justice, elections, political participation, or free expression.  What is the political motivation behind the proposal?  What are the arguments for and against it?  If you were a member of Congress, would you support it? 

Here are some examples from the 117th Congress:

H.J.Res.4 -- pardon power
H.J.Res.5 -- right to vote

H.J. Res 39 -- size of Supreme Court
H.J. Res. 42 -- admission of new states
H.J.Res.19 -- repeal 23d Amendment
H.J.Res.23 -- lower voting age to 16
H.J.Res.24 -- apportionment by citizen population
H.J.Res.1 -- campaign finance regulation

H.J.Res.48 -- no constitutional rights for corporations

H.J.Res.14 -- abolish Electoral College

Note that bill numbers start over again with each new Congress.  H.J. Res. 80 from the 117th Congress is completely different from H.J. Res. 80 from the 115th Congress.

Your essay must have at least five different sources.  As I hope that you learned from the riddles, print books are still useful. * Other possible sources include:

• CQ Library
• Law reviews on Lexis-Nexis (click "advanced options" and select "law reviews")
• Congress.gov (http://www.congress.gov/) -- official site for bill summary and status 
• GovTrack (http://www.govtrack.us/) – unofficial site for congressional information 
• ProQuest Congressional, via Honnold menu -- many congressional documents including searchable Congressional Record. Click “databases,” then the letter “P,” then “ProQuest Congressional.”) 
• Committee web pages, which usually contain testimony and text of reports. See http://www.house.gov/committees/ or http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/committees/d_three_sections_with_teasers/committees_home.htm

Your sources may include specialized references such as The Almanac of American Politics, but do not cite general-purpose encyclopedias such as Encyclopaedia Britannica and Encyclopedia Americana. And especially do not cite Wikipedia. 

• Assignments should be typed, double-spaced, and no more than six pages long. Use 12-point type and one-inch margins.  
• Cite your sources with endnotes, which should be in standard Turabian format.
• Endnote pages do not count against the page limit. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you.
• Return assignments to the class Sakai dropbox (in Word format, not pdf) by 11:59 PM, Monday, November 15. (Yes, you have more time than the syllabus indicates.) Essays will drop one gradepoint for one day’s lateness and a full grade for two or more days’ lateness. 

*The link takes you to a 1967 Star Trek clip.  Fifty years ago, the notion of using a desktop to access laws and law books was still science fiction.