Final Project Guidelines

For your Final Project, you will argue a position for or against a state or federal policy using statutes (legislative), regulations (executive), and court cases (judicial) to bolster your argument.

(This issue should be present in at least two of the three types of primary sources.) Then, you will utilize the legal research resources you learned about in the course to research the issue you selected.

Your project should include a description of the resources you found to be useful in researching the issue; an explanation of how they helped you understand the issue; a summary of the current state of the issue; an explanation of your predictions about potential policy shifts and trends; and finally, your position on the policy utilizing the law.

Your Final Project must be presented as 15 PowerPoint slides (not including references, title slide, and the oral argument), double-spaced, APA-formatted project.

PowerPoint Guidelines

In the Final Project, you will put together 15 PowerPoint slides where you will take a position on a policy issue using federal or state statutory law, state or federal regulatory law, and state or federal case law.

(In doing so, you must provide the correct Bluebook citation for that law cited.) In your PowerPoint presentation, you will describe the policy issue you selected. Explain whether it is a federal or state issue.

Take a position on whether you agree with the policy or not, then cite the relevant federal or state statute, regulation, and case law that supports your position. Include in your slide presentation an oral argument, any future policy shifts and trends you think might occur, and why.

Additionally, include in your discussion whether you think this policy would be subject to any budgetary constraints, the range of resources, and any research strategies you would employ to avoid potential pitfalls with the policy. Identify at least three secondary sources you used to research the issue and explain why each was useful.

Explain how you used secondary resources to identify primary resources related to the issue. Be sure to name the primary resources you identified.

Explain how you used secondary resources to identify primary resources related to the issue.

Be sure to name the primary resources you identified. Embedded in the last slide will be your oral argument that will be 10 minutes in length.