A. Topic Selection: You are to research a topic of interest in the area of the Ethics in the American Court System. There are many potential topics that are presented in the text. It is expected that your paper will take that topic deeper and utilize other resources (scholarly journals or publications) all of which you can access via BVU library. Websites are not considered scholarly publications. However, you may use the websites in your paper as long as the website is referenced properly but the website will NOT count as one of the required references.

B. Length of Paper: Your paper will be 3 to 5-typed, double-space pages. You are to have 1 inch margins on all sides. Use 12-point font for the typeset. You must also include a bibliography or reference page with your paper. Reference pages and title pages are not included in the page count.

C. References: You must use at least 4 references. These references may be books or journals (including online scholarly journals). You may include reputable websites (e.g., government websites, professional association websites) as references; however, these do not count towards the 4 references required. Note that user-controlled websites like Wikipedia are NOT appropriate for this (or other academic) assignment. The textbook (Schmalleger) can be cited but cannot count towards the 4 references.

D. Citing Your Sources: If you take information from another source (the textbook, a scholarly journal article, an encyclopedia, a website, etc.) you must give the authors proper credit for using their ideas and writing. This means that you need to cite the source (in APA format, using both in-text citations as well as a reference list) even if you do not use direct quotations. Any information that is not your own thought should be cited. Note that if you do use direct quotations, you must also give the author credit for using their words - by using quotation marks in addition to appropriate citations. Please also note that you should not rely heavily on verbatim text in the final paper - quotations are fine to supplement the material you are presenting, but should complement your own paraphrasing.

Plagiarism is the intentional presentation of another person's works as though it were you own. Acts of plagiarism are considered a violation of ethical standards of behavior. Plagiarized papers will receive a score of zero. You must give credit to authors of all the material you use in your paper. You can do this through the use of citations or quotations. There are a number of examples throughout your text on how to properly document the sources you use to write your paper. Failure to properly cite your sources will have a severe impact on your paper score.

All papers will be submitted to a plagiarism detection source. Those papers which have been plagiarized will receive a score of zero.

E. General Comments: Please proof read your papers before you turn them in. You paper will be evaluated on your spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Remember, spell checkers do not check for proper word usage. They only check for spelling errors.

F. General Format for the Paper:

Introduction
Identify topic
State why you chose the particular topic
Body
Define the topic and/issue

This description must be comprehensive and must give enough detail that the reader can get a true understanding of your topic.

Discuss why this topic is important in the American court system and what the main issues are for the parties involved (states, governments, society, etc....)

Include detailed information about your topic that you found from outside resources that added to your knowledge beyond what was in your textbook

Possibly share what some States or the Federal government, or agencies are doing about your topic, and share what the outcomes have been or are hoped to be.

Include criminal court landmark cases.

Summarize the information you learned/found about your topic

Discuss and summarize any solutions (potential or otherwise) or issues, programs, etc.. you discovered during your research

Discuss future implications if appropriate to your topic

Conclusions

Summarize what you have learned about your topic

Other general ideas, opinions, observations, that you may have about your topic