May it please the court, the fourth day of trial preparation is usually a bit of a down day. Yet, despite the some low energy, the prosecution and defense finished their opening and closing statements. We worked on direct examination and learned about cross examination. We took advantage of the beautiful weather to spend some time with second grade students on the playscape. Ali immediately made fast friends with a number of the students we met. We learned a little psychology this morning, as well. We learned about the “Marshmallow Experiment” from Stanford and finished the day learning about an economic experiment about whether payment can incentivize ninth grade students to improve grades. We learned all the objections of the mock trial universe. Tomorrow, we will practice all aspects of our case in preparation for the trial on Friday.
Lawyer Spotlight: Thurgood Marshall
“In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.”
“I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. …We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”
“We cannot play ostrich. Democracy just cannot flourish amid fear. Liberty cannot bloom amid hate. Justice cannot take root amid rage. America must get to work. In the chill climate in which we live, we must go against the prevailing wind. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust.”
“History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.”
Thurgood Marshall by Polski, public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.
From Wikipedia: “Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court’s first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he was an attorney who fought for civil rights, leading the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Marshall was a prominent figure in the movement to end racial segregation in schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, culminating in the Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which rejected the separate but equal doctrine and held segregation in public education to be unconstitutional. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. A staunch liberal, he frequently dissented as the Court became increasingly conservative…
…Marshall’s jurisprudence was pragmatic and drew on his real-world experience. His most influential contribution to constitutional doctrine, the ‘sliding-scale’ approach to the Equal Protection Clause, called on courts to apply a flexible balancing test instead of a more rigid tier-based analysis. He fervently opposed the death penalty, which in his view constituted cruel and unusual punishment; he and Brennan dissented in more than 1,400 cases in which the majority refused to review a death sentence. He favored a robust interpretation of the First Amendment in decisions as in Stanley v. Georgia.”