Constitution Now

PLA 2880Project

Why it Matters

Most coverage of a constitutional fight reports the score: who won, who lost, and which side is angry about it. The score goes stale in a week, while the question underneath it, which provision governs and what the precedents say it means, decides the next fight too. This capstone asks you to tell two current stories the way a legal journalist would, with that question doing the work: one about the structure of government power, one about an individual right. The pairing follows the course, which taught Structure and Function before Rights, and it asks you to use both halves in one piece of work. A reader should finish each story knowing the constitutional question it raises and why the answer is contested.

Current Context

The Supreme Court’s October 2025 Term closed on June 30, 2026, with major rulings on both of this project’s tracks, collected in the National Constitution Center’s term review (opens in a new tab). On structure, the Court decided Learning Resources v. Trump on tariff power and Trump v. Slaughter on removal. On rights, it decided Trump v. Barbara on birthright citizenship, Chatrie v. United States on digital searches, Chiles v. Salazar on speech, and Wolford v. Lopez on carrying firearms. In June 2026 the Court also agreed to hear Kian v. Florida (opens in a new tab) on the size of a criminal jury, a case still pending for the term that opens October 5. Genalo v. Black (opens in a new tab), granted the same day on prolonged immigration detention, shows the risk in a pending case: the parties agreed to dismiss it on September 11, 2026, a month before argument.

Key Concepts

Structure and Function

The course’s first track: how the Constitution divides power among the three branches and between the national government and the states. Your Topic 1 event comes from this half of the course, Activities 2 through 6, and its core doctrine is in Activities 4 and 5.

Individual Rights

The course’s second track: the protections a person can assert against the government, from speech and religion through due process, criminal procedure, and equal protection. Your Topic 2 event comes from this half, Activities 7 through 12.

Constitutional Issue

The precise legal question inside a news story, stated as a provision plus a doctrine. “The order was controversial” is politics; “whether the order exceeds the President’s Article II authority” is a constitutional issue. Finding it is the project’s first move.

Precedent

The earlier decisions that frame how a new dispute will be argued and decided. Tying your event to at least two cases from the course shows the story has legal roots. A misattributed holding is the fastest way to lose a reader’s trust, so every claim about a case gets checked against the opinion.

Levels of Scrutiny

The three tiers of review, taught in Activity 8, that recur across speech, religion, due process, and equal protection. If your rights story has a court weighing a law against a right, name the tier in play, because the tier usually predicts the outcome.

Verified AI Insight

An AI-generated observation you feature only after checking its factual claims against an authoritative source and documenting the check. The course’s standing rule holds for the capstone too: the model drafts, you verify, and the documented check is part of the work.

Resources

US Constitution (Constitution Annotated) (opens in a new tab) (Every story must name the provision it turns on; locate it here first.)
Browse the Constitution Annotated (opens in a new tab) (Clause-by-clause Library of Congress essays; the fastest way to confirm which doctrine governs your event.)
The Supreme Court in Review: Another Landmark Term (National Constitution Center) (opens in a new tab) (A one-page map of the October 2025 Term’s major rulings; a hunting ground for both topics.)
SCOTUSblog (opens in a new tab) (Case files and plain-language analysis for pending and recent disputes; use it to confirm the current status of anything you feature.)
Oyez (opens in a new tab) (Background and argument audio for the landmark cases your events connect to, for getting your bearings. Check any holding, year, or vote you use against the opinion itself.)
Google Scholar (opens in a new tab) (Full opinions when a summary is not enough; Westlaw via the Daytona State College library (opens in a new tab) also works.)

What to Do

The project asks for everything the course practiced, in one piece of work. Spot the constitutional issue in a live story, connect it to doctrine, verify what the AI hands you, and tell the story so a smart general reader wants to finish it. You will do that twice, once for each half of the course.

Part 1: Choose Your Two Events

Pick two events from the last one to two years, each raising a genuine constitutional question. Topic 1 is Structure and Function, the ground Activities 2 through 6 mapped. It is an event about federalism, separation of powers, executive authority, the role of Congress or the courts, emergency powers, or a clash between a state and the federal government. Topic 2 is Individual Rights: an event centered on a constitutional right. It can be a right the course covered in depth: speech and religion (Activity 8), due process (9), search, self-incrimination, counsel, and juries (10), or equal protection (11). It can also be one the course touched more lightly, such as the Second Amendment or the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Use the Event Scout to generate candidates, then confirm each event is real and accurately described before committing to it. An event you cannot verify is not an event you can cover.

Part 2: Build the Legal Spine

For each event, state the constitutional issue precisely and connect it to at least two concepts or cases from the course, noting which activity each came from. Run the Case Connector to surface candidate precedents. Then check every case it names against the opinion itself before the case goes into your project. A misattributed holding in a published piece is the error this course spent twelve activities teaching you to catch. If your rights story has a court weighing a law against a right, identify the level of scrutiny in play and say what it predicts.

Part 3: Produce the Presentation

Create a five-page visual and written presentation for each topic, ten pages in all. Each topic’s five pages open with a headline and photo that introduce the event the way a magazine would. A short narrative follows, telling what happened in clear and lively prose and explaining the constitutional issue involved. Each topic must also connect the event to at least two concepts or cases from the course. It must feature at least one verified AI-assisted insight, with a line documenting how you confirmed it. And it closes with a brief reflection on why the story matters to you and what you learned. Write the reflection yourself, in your own voice; it should answer why this story is about the Constitution’s role and not only the day’s politics. Use the Headline Desk for your front pages, and run the Insight Auditor before any AI observation goes in.

Submit the project as a PDF with visuals and text, a PowerPoint or Google Slides deck, a 5–8 minute video with supporting visuals, or another creative format that meets the content requirements. In a PDF you do not need to fill each page with words; get creative with the photography, like a magazine spread.

Include one AI chat link with a 1–2 sentence explanation of what the conversation shows and why you chose to share it.

Suggested AI Prompts

Use these prompts as a starting point, then adjust them to fit your goal. Strong prompting develops through trial, revision, and testing. It’s a foundational skill that grows into more advanced AI work such as context engineering and agent-based workflows.

The Event Scout

You are a legal news researcher helping a college constitutional law student find a capstone story. Ask me which track I am hunting for: a structural event (federalism, separation of powers, executive authority, emergency powers, or a state-federal clash) or an individual rights event (involving the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, or Fourteenth Amendment). Then use your web search tool to suggest two or three real events from the last two years that raise a genuine constitutional question on that track. For each, explain the legal question in a sentence or two and cite the sources you relied on so I can confirm the event happened as described. Prefer events with an identifiable court case or government action at their center over general controversies.

This is source grounding. Requiring live search keeps the model out of its weakest territory, recent events recalled from memory, and the citations make every suggestion checkable before you commit a project to it.

The Case Connector

Here is a brief description of a current event I am covering: [insert]. Identify one or two landmark Supreme Court cases that bear on the constitutional issue this event raises. For each, give the case name and year precisely, explain the holding, and show the connection to my event: does the event apply the ruling, test its limits, extend its logic, or invite a court to revisit it? Flag any case where you are uncertain about the holding or the connection, because I will verify every case you name on Oyez or in the opinion itself before it appears in my project.

Announcing verification changes what the model produces: it hedges honestly instead of asserting everything with equal confidence, and the flags become your checking priority list.

The Headline Desk

I am creating a magazine-style presentation on a constitutional current event for a college audience. Here is a summary of the event: [insert]. Suggest three candidate headlines and, for each, a one-line photo caption that frames the constitutional stakes rather than the politics. Keep each headline under ten words and avoid clickbait. Make at least one of the three lead with the constitutional question itself.

Asking for several constrained options instead of one answer makes the model a brainstorming partner and leaves the editorial judgment with you. The constraints are what keep the options from going generic.

The Insight Auditor

I plan to feature the following AI-generated insight in a published project: [paste the insight]. Extract every checkable claim it contains: case names and holdings, dates, vote counts, quotations, and factual assertions about the event. Present them as a numbered list, rate your confidence in each as high, medium, or low, and name the fastest authoritative source to verify each one (the Oyez summary, the Constitution Annotated essay, the opinion itself, or a primary news source). Do not revise the insight; produce only the audit.

Claim extraction turns a persuasive paragraph into a checklist of separate claims. Keeping extraction apart from correction matters, because checking the primary sources is your job, and the documented check is what makes an AI insight a verified one.