For this assignment, you will choose one Supreme Court case from either Warren,

For this assignment, you will choose one Supreme Court case from either Warren, Burger, Rehnquist or Roberts Courts. This means you must pick a cased decided after 1953, provided that the case has not been overturned by another case, constitutional amendment or statement from the Court. For instance, you may NOT write a paper on Plessy v Ferguson (1896) because that case was overturned by Brown v Board of Education (1954). Additionally you can’t write your paper on the Dred Scott decision (1857) because it was overturned by the 14th amendment. Finally, you can’t write your paper about Korematsu v US (1944) because the Court expressly overturned the case in 2018. You will write a dissenting opinion on the case in question. Your task will be to write a convincing argument to explain why the Supreme Court’s decision was, in your opinion, incorrect. You must base your reasoning on Constitutional arguments, precedents, and history. It is not enough to say that the decision was wrong and unfair. You must demonstrate your grasp of the issue presented before the Court. This is a 1000 WORD paper with a 10% grace in either direction. You absolutely should be quoting the Constitution, other Court decisions, or other dissenting decisions in Chicago style formatting. If you don’t know how to use Chicago style I’ve attached a sample paper. Please format your paper to look like the sample. If you can’t make footnotes work please let me know and I will help you. While this paper will almost certainly require a citation or two, I am not looking for direct quotes. With only 1000 words to work with you must be presenting your original argument for why the case was decided incorrectly. Prior to beginning your paper you should present your case to the professor to ensure that the case has not been overturned and that there is a decent opportunity to write a dissent. You are not limited to decisions are opinions that predate your case. For instance, you may use current Court opinions and dissents in order to argue a case that was decided years prior. You will see this in the example paper.
Your 1000 word limit does not include your citations. You must cite anything that you needed to look up or anything that is not common knowledge. Even if you learned something in a previous class and therefore do not need look up that information it is important that you cite the information anyway as you are not yet an expert in the matter. Additionally, the requirement of citations (there must be at least 2 separate sources and 3 citations total) helps to ensure that you are writing your paper rather than having a paper generated by AI. Please be aware that you must submit your paper through D2L as it will upload your paper to turnitin.com to check for both plagiarism and AI usage.
In the event that you can’t find a case that you believe to be decided incorrectly please reach out and I can try to point in your the correct direction, but understand that most cases that make it to the Court are not decided unanimously and therefore at least one member of the Court already wrote a dissenting opinion.