What Happens in the Courtroom, Doesn't Stay in the Courtroom

Our last unit of "Policy" consisted of our research on the United States Supreme Court and what difficult decisions they have to make that sets precedent for the future of court cases. My class produced an abundance of research about the suspension of habeas corpus of imprisoned suspects of terrorists of 9/11 on Guantanamo Bay. I couldn't believe that this policy was allowed back then under Bush's rule. After compiling our research, the class practiced on producing consensus among an entire class court answering... "Given world events from 2001-2008, is the Bush administration's decision to suspend *habeas corpus* for detainees at Guantanamo constitutional?"

Practicing discussing with my class was a little difficult because we usually all disagree with each other. I heard some unique, out of the box ideas that I would have not thought of before. Although I believed that the decision was unconstitutional with five other students, we were convinced by the other half of the class that it was constitutional because of rules in the Constitution document and not our feelings. It took about an hour to decide unanimously that it was constitutional. Going through this procedure was mind-blowing because the Supreme Court does it all of the time. it must take an unimaginable amount of skill to listen and articulate other's thoughts.
For the Action Project, I focused on a court case called Grutter v. Bollinger that affects many juniors in high schools. I chose to research this court case because I am going to apply to college in a couple months. The admissions process is very tedious and taken seriously by families and students worldwide.