Vassal Lane Eighth Grade Mock Trial Group Argues Free Speech Case At Moakley United States Courthouse
The
Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston was the venue for a recent
First Amendment case on the issue of whether a school can limit its
students’ freedom of speech and expression.
It was a mock trial, a revisiting of the seminal United States
Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines, and 22 VLUS Eighth graders -
including this author - took on the issue, half the group preparing and
arguing the case for the school district and the other half for the
plaintiffs, who were students who said their First Amendment right to
freedom of speech had been violated by the school.
VL Monthly interviewed Mock Trial member Jackson Morre-Otto about the visit. His interview follows.
“The program was sponsored by Discovering Justice, a
Boston-based civic and justice education nonprofit organization, whose
mission is to enhance students’ awareness of the value of the justice
system and their civic responsibility through programs connecting
classrooms and courtrooms.
The first part of the trip was a tour of the Moakley Courthouse. The
second half consisted of the students preparing to argue and then
arguing a case in a courtroom before a judge.
A lawyer for the First District Court of Appeals acted as the judge for our case.
The
case we were arguing before the Court - a Constitutional Law case - was
hypothetically taking place before the Supreme Court, which it did in
real life. Tinker v. Des Moines was a free speech case, brought
by students who were told by their school that if they wore black
armbands in school (in protest of the Vietnam War) they would be
expelled until they agreed not to wear the armbands. They continued to
wear the armbands, and were expelled. In response to their expulsion,
the students’ parents filed suit against the school, claiming a
violation of the students’ First Amendment rights to free speech. The
school said the students’ actions disrupted the school’s mission of
learning. The case eventually reached the United States Supreme Court.
In the actual case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the students,
stating ‘It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed
their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the
schoolhouse gate’.”