Instructor Resource
Trager, The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication 6e
CQ Press, 2018
Class Activities
Chapter 1: The Rule of Law
N.B.: For teaching media law and applicable to all textbook chapters, we suggest you access the
Teaching Section of the Law Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication
1. A useful basic exercise for this chapter would be to give students a short list of legal
citations and ask them to find the names of cases and courts in which they were decided.
This simple task will require students either to visit the library or to begin to use online
search tools, both of which will be extremely important to their study of law.
2. Working in small groups, have the class brief Citizens United v. Federal Election
Commission. This will enable students to work together to discern the essential facts, the core
issue(s), etc. Tackling this task for the first time in a group reduces the risk of personal
failure and enables students to see, first hand, how other read the law. Taking this on early in
the term provides a good foundation for student confidence in reading the law.
3. Online news items, newspaper stories, and magazine articles dealing with contemporary
media law controversies should form a routine part of this class as they bring the law to life
and demonstrate how the law affects the students themselves. Students may be encouraged
to scan the news for relevant information they can bring to class as the topic for small group
discussions or debates. As the class progresses, students may be encouraged to present
opposing legal arguments related to the current events dispute in an informal moot court
situation.
4. A game of hangman or charades may be used to help students learn the foundational legal
terminology that abounds in this and many of the early chapters of this text.
5. Hypothetical fact situations drawn from news items or from case law provide a useful focus
for discussion of legal concepts and for instruction into legal reasoning. Regarding the
principles discussed in Chapter 1, students may be asked to conduct statutory construction of
a local or state law. This exercise encourages students to explore the limits of judicial
Instructor Resource
Trager, The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication 6e
CQ Press, 2018
discretion imposed by the canons of statutory construction. In setting up the assignment, first
introduce students to the following key concepts of statutory construction:
a. The legislative intent for the law, as expressed by the plain meaning of the statutes’
words, should determine interpretation of the law.
b. If words are not defined in the law, they should be interpreted according to their
ordinary meaning.
c. The law should be interpreted holistically. Thus, subsections of a law should be
interpreted within the context of the whole statute and ambiguities resolved to achieve
consistency.
d. Only if a statute is not clear on its face, ambiguous, or subject to unreasonable
interpretation should the statute be interpreted using elements outside the law itself. In
such a case, legislative history may guide the law’s appropriate interpretation. (Note:
If this is the case with the law you choose for class, you may “create” a legislative
history or conduct sufficient research to provide this information as the class exercise
unfolds.)
e. If the law’s meaning remains unclear, deference to expert government agencies’
reasonable interpretations may guide statutory construction.
f. If the law eludes interpretation based on the previous five canons, the law may be
unconstitutionally vague.
6. Hold a class debate over the constitutionality of presidential use of executive orders. One
side (conservative) argues restraint on the grounds that the Constitution delegates the power
to make laws to Congress and limits the president’s role to execute the laws. The other side
argues that execution of laws is a matter of interpretation and prioritization that necessarily
require deciding how and how much to execute that a president formally expresses in and
through executive orders. The president is independent of Congress and has no obligation to
follow its priorities.
7. Divide the class into two teams, one supporting the majority ruling in Citizens United, one
favoring the dissent. Have each group select three or four representative quotes about the rule
of law from the chapter’s excerpts of the case. Then hold a round table discussion of the
Instructor Resource
Trager, The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication 6e
CQ Press, 2018
quotations and their implications for consistent application of the rule of law. Then have the
class consider the relationship of the rule of law to its own mandate that laws be clear,
accessible, understandable, able to be followed, etc.