Current Event Analyses
As a writing-intensive course, we will have several opportunities to practice our critical thinking and analysis skills in the form of brief written assignments. The goal of these current events summaries is to help you become familiar with different sources of law and public policy news and the full backstory to what you read. Unlike a typical current events analysis, these papers require you to provide a cross-political analysis, meaning that you will need to have at least one source from a liberal news outlet or journal, one from a conservative news outlet or journal, and at least one neutral background source (this must be a “scholarly” source, as defined below). Your goal is to take a recent court decision or event in the news and:
Summarize the topic that you selected as neutrally as possible;
Provide a neutral analysis of the issue referencing your scholarly sources;
Identify the liberal and conservative positions on the issue using your selected sources as support;
Provide concluding remarks about any bias that you saw in your readings about this topic.
Each summary paper should be between 1 and 2 pages in length, double-spaced, and must clearly reference the news source that you relied upon, including a link to the article. Assignments must be submitted via the course portal in Canvas for grading.
IMPORTANT: The topic for your current events analysis must relate to the subject we are discussing in the week it is assigned. For instance, for the Economic Policy week, you would look for a topic related to the economy or business. The topic must be no older than three months.
Suggested sources:
Conservative: Fox News, Breitbart, Heritage Foundation, the Federalist, the Drudge Report
Liberal: New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer
Neutral Scholarly Sources: CRS Reports, CATO Institute, Brookings Institute, Journal Articles (you may also use NPR here)Current Event Analyses
As a writing-intensive course, we will have several opportunities to practice our critical thinking and analysis skills in the form of brief written assignments. The goal of these current events summaries is to help you become familiar with different sources of law and public policy news and the full backstory to what you read. Unlike a typical current events analysis, these papers require you to provide a cross-political analysis, meaning that you will need to have at least one source from a liberal news outlet or journal, one from a conservative news outlet or journal, and at least one neutral background source (this must be a “scholarly” source, as defined below). Your goal is to take a recent court decision or event in the news and:
Summarize the topic that you selected as neutrally as possible;
Provide a neutral analysis of the issue referencing your scholarly sources;
Identify the liberal and conservative positions on the issue using your selected sources as support;
Provide concluding remarks about any bias that you saw in your readings about this topic.
Each summary paper should be between 1 and 2 pages in length, double-spaced, and must clearly reference the news source that you relied upon, including a link to the article. Assignments must be submitted via the course portal in Canvas for grading.
IMPORTANT: The topic for your current events analysis must relate to the subject we are discussing in the week it is assigned. For instance, for the Economic Policy week, you would look for a topic related to the economy or business. The topic must be no older than three months.
Suggested sources:
Conservative: Fox News, Breitbart, Heritage Foundation, the Federalist, the Drudge Report
Liberal: New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer
Neutral Scholarly Sources: CRS Reports, CATO Institute, Brookings Institute, Journal Articles (you may also use NPR here)Current Event Analyses
As a writing-intensive course, we will have several opportunities to practice our critical thinking and analysis skills in the form of brief written assignments. The goal of these current events summaries is to help you become familiar with different sources of law and public policy news and the full backstory to what you read. Unlike a typical current events analysis, these papers require you to provide a cross-political analysis, meaning that you will need to have at least one source from a liberal news outlet or journal, one from a conservative news outlet or journal, and at least one neutral background source (this must be a “scholarly” source, as defined below). Your goal is to take a recent court decision or event in the news and:
Summarize the topic that you selected as neutrally as possible;
Provide a neutral analysis of the issue referencing your scholarly sources;
Identify the liberal and conservative positions on the issue using your selected sources as support;
Provide concluding remarks about any bias that you saw in your readings about this topic.
Each summary paper should be between 1 and 2 pages in length, double-spaced, and must clearly reference the news source that you relied upon, including a link to the article. Assignments must be submitted via the course portal in Canvas for grading.
IMPORTANT: The topic for your current events analysis must relate to the subject we are discussing in the week it is assigned. For instance, for the Economic Policy week, you would look for a topic related to the economy or business. The topic must be no older than three months.
Suggested sources:
Conservative: Fox News, Breitbart, Heritage Foundation, the Federalist, the Drudge Report
Liberal: New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer
Neutral Scholarly Sources: CRS Reports, CATO Institute, Brookings Institute, Journal Articles (you may also use NPR here)
