Summary: Every year there are approximately 120,000 jury trials in the United States. The right to trial by jury is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. This video explores the origins of the jury trial, explains the jury's crucial role in our judicial system, and introduces students to the courtroom and the process of a trial. The program is divided into the following sections: The History of Jury...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: In this program, various legal experts explain pretrial and trial procedures, pointing out along the way differences in juvenile proceedings. Judges and lawyers navigate the pretrial process, beginning with the establishment of probable cause and formal charging by grand jury. Indictment, pretrial release, bail, and arraignment are also discussed. Such concepts as an alibi, burden of proof, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: In November of 2006, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts sat down with ABC News legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg for his first network television interview-which happened to take place before 3,600 spectators at the University of Miami. This ABC News program documents that conversation, presenting Roberts' behind-the-scenes story of his nomination and offering a glimpse of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Who determines what the Constitution means: the Supreme Court, Congress, or the President? This 1803 case established the judiciary's authority to interpret the Constitution. Marshall's insistence on the principle of "judicial review" of acts of Congress brought him into conflict with President Thomas Jefferson, but established the court's responsibility.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: How has the Supreme Court reinforced the Constitution's requirement for a strong federal government? Can the states interfere with or tax the legitimate activities of the federal government? This unpopular decision dealt a blow to states' rights by reaffirming the validity of the federal government to charter a bank (in Maryland) and striking down the state's attempts to tax this federally...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Chemerinsky, Erwin
Summary: "The Supreme Court's decisions on constitutional rights are well known and much talked about. But individuals who want to defend those rights need something else as well: access to courts that can rule on their complaints. And on matters of access, the Court's record over the past generation has been almost uniformly hostile to the enforcement of individual citizens' constitutional rights. The...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Yale University Press 2017
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 347 CHEToobin, Jeffrey.
Summary: Drawing on interviews with the Supreme Court justices and other insiders, a look at the powerful, often secretive world of the Supreme Court offers profiles of each justice and how their individual styles affect the way in which they wield their power.
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Doubleday 2007
Copies Available at Fife Lake
1 available in Adult, Call number: 347.732 TOOSummary: Does the Constitution give the states or Congress the right to regulate commerce? In 1818, a steamboat was ordered to leave New York waters because it had no license to operate within the state. In this case, the Marshall court ruled that the federal government did have the power to regulate commerce and in so doing laid the foundation for a unified American common market.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: In the 1954 legal case Hernandez v. Texas, defense lawyers forged a daring strategy - one arguing that Mexican-Americans did not fit into a legal structure which recognized only white and black racial categories. This American Experience episode interweaves the story of that landmark case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, with the broader narrative of the civil rights movement....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1991, Rick Walker was wrongly convicted of murder and spent the next 12 years in prison. This program tells the story of his exoneration and the political struggle to secure financial compensation for him from the state of California. In addition to an interview with Walker himself, the film presents detailed conversations with key players in his case and the partisan budget battle over...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: The conclusion of United States v. Burr.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the summer of 1964, two black teenagers, Charles Moore and Henry Dee, were found murdered in Louisiana. The atrocity was soon eclipsed by the "Mississippi Burning" case and forgotten. Forty years later, Moore's brother Thomas and CBC documentary filmmaker David Ridgen reignited a quest for justice. This award-winning film documents their investigation, which included the remarkable discovery...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: The size and shape of American government is due in no small part to Chief Justice John Marshall. This biography focuses on his contribution to the status of the Supreme Court, his implementation of judicial review, and his advocacy of strong central authority for the protection of the new nation and its ideals. Outlining Marshall's youth on the Virginia frontier, the program describes his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the years since the U.S. Supreme Court's legalization of abortion, the political scene has changed dramatically enough to threaten this landmark decision. On the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this ABC News program surveys the current landscape of opinion and political alignment, examining the shift of momentum concerning abortion rights. Correspondent Dave Marash reports from Minnesota,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: How much faith do we really place in the institutions that settle our disputes and, at times, determine the fate of individuals? Are there other ways of finding a proper outcome besides the Western system of courts and prisons? Does might make right, and-even if the answer is no-has any society on the planet created a true alternative? This program looks at concepts of justice in various...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: If a person is deemed mentally unfit to stand trial for a capital crime, should the state be allowed to administer drugs so the person is healthy enough to be tried and sentenced to death? In this program, ABC News correspondent Chris Bury reports on this legal paradox in the case of Russell Weston, a paranoid schizophrenic who allegedly killed two policemen in 1998 and whose lawyers have kept...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: With every ruling, the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court shape the judicial landscape of America—and the lives of its citizens. In this NewsHour program, Robert MacNeil and other esteemed journalists take a close look at several renowned jurists and their decisions. Episodes include…* Remembering Harry Blackmun: Robert MacNeil considers the Blackmun legacy with Kathleen Sullivan,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Robert Jackson, a 53-year-old Supreme Court Justice from New York, appeared before the Nuremberg Tribunal on November 20, 1945. He was the chief prosecutor in the first-ever trial to put an entire national government in the dock. While governments and armies had been waging wars for centuries—an action not punishable according to international law—the actions of the German Nazi party during...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The vast majority of criminal cases end in plea bargains. No one argues that this is the most just way-only the most efficient. This program examines what happens when the deal is struck: who gets out of jail, who doesn't, and who decides what kind of deal to make. Filmed behind the scenes, deep inside the nation's criminal justice system, it presents an ugly picture that has little to do with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Does the American justice system treat people differently based on their race? In this ABC News program, correspondent Michel Martin reports on the startlingly disparate outcomes of two almost-identical drug-related cases tried one after another in a Boston court. In one case, the judge sentenced an African-American defendant with no prior record to prison time on the insistence of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program examines how TV has influenced our justice system. Experts and crime victims discuss how tabloid-style news coverage, cameras in the courtroom, and dramatized movie versions of scandalous crimes all conspire to corrupt justice. Host Bill Kurtis examines how the media affected several sensational cases, including those of Pamela Smart, the woman who convinced her 15-year-old lover...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1993
View online at AVOD
Summary: The second part of United States v. Burr.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Formed in 1966 as part of President Johnson's War on Poverty, Legal Services provides free legal assistance in civil matters to those who cannot afford counsel. Using New Jersey as a microcosm of the condition of the impoverished throughout America, this program highlights the crucial work of Legal Services and its basic premise: without equal access, there is no equal justice. Case studies...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The only case in this series not decided by the Supreme Court, this John Marshall decision was handed down in Federal Circuit Court in Richmond, Virginia, in 1807. Once again, it placed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in direct opposition to President Thomas Jefferson. Former Vice President Aaron Burr was being tried for treason; although the evidence against Burr was tenuous, Jefferson,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007