Locker searches. Free speech. Dress codes. Zero-tolerance. School prayer. Title IX. Drug testing.


Teenagers confront the lengths and limits of their legal rights on a regular basis, yet as US Representative and former AUWCL law professor Jamie Raskin (D-MD) realized years ago, very few have the constitutional grounding to advocate for the issues that affect them the most. In 1996, aſter helping Montgomery County (Maryland) students overcome administrative resistance to airing their debate about gay marriage on a public access show, he took action to empower more students—first locally, and now nationally.


This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, a program Raskin founded at the AUWCL that trains law students to teach teenagers how the law is relevant to their lives and livelihoods.


“The crisis of civic illiteracy has manifested all over the country and has come to infect our politics in a big way,” said Raskin, who deals with constitutional confusion on a daily basis.


Recognizing a need for better resources for teaching the US Constitution to high school students, he wrote the textbook We the Students: Supreme Court Cases for and About Students. Now in its fourth edition, the book and its corresponding high school course cover the landmark cases that most directly affect teenagers: free speech, sexual harassment, police searches and seizures, principles of equality, and the right to vote, among others.


In the Project’s first year, 23 AUWCL Marshall- Brennan Fellows were trained as substitute teachers and partnered with host teachers at eight public, DC-area schools.


“ My participation was life- changing, both in terms of my career and my personal life,” said Maryam Ahranjani. “Working with young adults in different settings . . . and speaking about their rights gives me purpose, inspiration, and focus.”


“I was frankly skeptical that local public schools would allow us to come in and empower their students by teaching them about the rights they could then assert within their schools and against their school administrations,” said Steve Wermiel ’82, AUWCL professor of law who was integral to the Project’s formation and served as associate director from 2005 to 2009. “But understanding rights is so fundamental to a democratic society, to voting, to civic engagement, to governance, that the schools appreciated the value of the program.”


Learning is not limited to the high school scholars, however.


“The teaching fellows are also strengthening their knowledge of legal concepts,” said Camille A. Thompson, adjunct professor and director of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project. “They are


synthesizing the material and learning to teach it in a way that is palatable to high school students.”


As a 3L student, Maryam Ahranjani (’01) served as a Marshall-Brennan Fellow at Roosevelt High School in the District’s Ward 4.


“My participation was life-changing, both in terms of my career and my personal life,” she said. “Working with young adults in different settings and writing, teaching, and speaking about their rights gives me purpose, inspiration, and focus.”


From 2009 to 2014, Ahranjani was associate director of the Marshall-Brennan Project, overseeing 250 Fellows who taught more than 1,000 high school students. She also saw the Project spread to more law schools nationwide, hosted and expanded the National High School Moot Court Competition, and built partnerships with the US Departments of Education and Justice and the Metropolitan Police Department, among others.


“The most rewarding part of my involvement with the Project has been the deep and lifelong relationships I have formed through a shared commitment to increasing constitutional and civic literacy,” said Ahranjani, who now teaches public education and the Constitution at the University of New Mexico School of Law and serves as faculty advisor for its Marshall-Brennan chapter.


AMERICAN UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON COLLEGE OF LAW 27


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