MARSHALING THE FUTURE

Armed with a belief in the value of civic knowledge, Suffolk Law students are entering Boston high school classroom to teach the next generation of constitutional scholars.

By Jane Whitehead

Should juvenile offenders be sentenced to life in prison without parole for a non-homicide crime? That's the day's topic as third-year student Monika Bandyopadhyay and second-year student Elizabeth Burke lead one of their final classes in constitutional law at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester on a May morning. Teenagers are not notably responsive at 9 a.m., so it's not surprising that the students, mainly seniors, need encouragement to focus on the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision in the case of Graham v. Florida.

"Who can give us a little recitation of the facts?" prompts Bandyopadhyay, who before law school spent two years developing her teaching skills and a commitment to education in a fourth-grade class in rural Arkansas, working for Teach for America.

Bandyopadhyay and Burke extract the main details of the case from the students, with occasional assists from Brandon Slaughter, their social studies teacher. In 2003 Terrance Graham was retroactively sentenced to life imprisonment by a Florida court for an armed burglary committed at age 16, after he was arrested at age 17 for two further offenses while on parole. The case raised the issue of whether a juvenile life-without-parole sentence for a non-homicide offense violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

"What happened after his first arrest? What kind of sentence did he get?" asks Burke. Slowly the teens come alive as they connect the real-life case with theories of punishment and interpretations of the Eighth Amendment, and discuss why the law might treat juveniles differently from adults. "Peer pressure," says one. "They're not mature," suggests someone else.

Referencing the national picture of states that imprison juveniles for life for non-homicide offenses—Florida is one of 11 that do so—a female student in the back row points out, "Most states think it's not the right thing to do." Bandyopadhyay and Burke consistently push the students to back up their ideas with reasons. "The world expects you to be able to explain yourself," says Bandyopadhyay.

"It's so crucial to have some working knowledge of the Constitution, to be an active citizen," Burke later says.

Burke High School is one of seven sites—six in Boston and one in Cambridge—where Suffolk University Law School students are bringing critical legal questions into the classroom. The Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, a national initiative based at American University's Washington College of Law, aims to spark young people's interest in politics, law, and government by sending law students to teach high school students about aspects of constitutional law that directly impact their everyday lives. These issues range from students' rights of free expression on political and religious matters to school authorities' rights to search students' lockers or demand urine or blood samples.

With generous financial support from alumni Paul E. Mitchell JD '87 and John C. DeSimone JD '87, Professors Michael Avery and Kim McLaurin launched the project at Suffolk Law in September 2010 under the banner of an innovative yearlong course, Constitutional Justice in School. Bandyopadhyay and Burke were part of Suffolk Law's first cohort of 16 Marshall-Brennan fellows, chosen from 23 applicants.

Excerpted from the Winter 2012 Suffolk Law Alumni Magazine.