CompuLEGAL Home Page

CompuLEGAL presents the Project LEGAL teaching method of Law-Related Education through the use of landmark Supreme Court cases. CompuLEGAL helps develop advanced problem-solving and critical thinking skills and increases knowledge and comprehension of the U.S. legal/judicial system.

The Structure of CompuLEGAL

Method 1: Analysis of cases from the Project LEGAL case library

You will examine a case from beginning to end.

First, you will be given a brief summary of the facts of the case in question.
Then you will be able to look at a visual of the case.
Next, you will be asked to list the actions, values, and legal bases of the competing parties. This will assist you in forming the issue question for the case you chose. Directions are provided.
You will then be asked to decide which side you favor in the case, and why. This is the reasoning page. Directions are available on that page as well.
Then you will examine the actual judicial decision reached in that case.
Then there will be an opportunity for you to examine and research additional cases and scenarios.
IMPORTANT If you click on a link which takes you out of the case you were working on and into another web page, you need to click the "Back" button in your browser's tool bar in order to get back to the page you were on.

Method 2: Analysis of a case not in the case library.

You will analyze a case chosen by you or your teacher. This case can be one previously decided by the U.S. Supreme Court (Other Visuals), one that is pending or not yet ruled on by the Supreme Court, a lower court case, or even a hypothetical (made up) case.

After going over the facts of the case (either provided by your teacher or found on the Internet or through other sources), you will use CompuLEGAL to form the issue question. Then you will examine the precedents for your case and develop arguments for that case.

IMPORTANT: The Project LEGAL case method and CompuLEGAL will only work with a Bill of Rights or 14th Amendment type case in which an individual or group's rights are being abridged, denied, ignored or by the state, one of its agencies, or another group.

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