Teaching the Law?

This year I am happy to be teaching American history. I absolutely love it. But, I also find myself teaching a constitutional law class. I like this class as well. The class focuses on court cases related mainly to the 1st amendment and towards cases affecting teens. The students are great and I am lucky to have 3 law students from one of the local universities who do most of the teaching.

The law students found us some local attorney's that were willing to come speak to the class. I like speakers. Well, I usually like speakers. The speakers we had yesterday and today have me confused.

The goal was to have the speakers talk about what they do and talk about how they help protect their clients rights(as we deal mainly with issues affecting peoples rights in our class). But, that's not exactly how the conversations have gone. For the last 2 days I have been listening to these local attorneys explain to the class how to beat the law, or have the best chance of beating the law, faced with a drinking and driving or drug possession charge.

Now, I will give them credit that they are talking about the rights of the accused but I'm not pleased with the the fact that we are teaching the kids how to beat the system. Of course, the kids are all interested, awake, and engaged.

Listening to these speakers makes me like attorneys a little less. It makes me feel like lawyers are less intersted in upholding the law and are more interested in defeating the law.

I'm aggravated by this, but at least I know how to beat the charges now.