From the Homeschool Front by Colleen Hroncich...100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know

I’ve always been interested in law, history, economics, and politics. So when I saw a book titled An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know, I was immediately intrigued. By a stroke of luck, I was in Washington, DC recently when the authors were giving speaking about their book and the multimedia platform behind it.

Randy Barnett, professor at Georgetown Law and Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and Josh Blackman, professor at South Texas School of Law, developed An Introduction to Constitutional Law to innovate how constitutional law is studied.

Purchasing the book gives you access to an online library of 63 videos featuring photographs, maps, and even audio from the Supreme Court that bring the 100 cases to life. Blackman says he uses the platform to flip his classroom; the students read the chapters and watch the videos before coming to class. Then he can focus class time on discussing the importance of the decisions and really digging deep into the issues at play.

The book is roughly chronological, but it’s primarily organized around key constitutional principles, such as enumerated powers, federalism, equal protection, and specific constitutional rights. Since it includes background and supporting information for each case, the program also provides a great history and civics education.  

The authors emphasized that the book is meant to be widely accessible. While it is great for law students, it is equally valuable for high school and college students. Given our participation in speech and debate, I correctly assumed my kids would be pretty interested when I showed them the book and the video library. We’ve only just begun digging into it.

Barnett describes the book as “an overarching story [constitutional law] about 100 individual stories [the cases].” He says the best way to understand the story, which starts at the founding and continues to the present, is to learn about them in the historical context in which they were decided. 

With most Americans lacking even basic knowledge about our constitution, this program could be an important step toward improving constitutional literacy. 

PS from izzit.org – Randy Barnett is one of the Constitutional experts in our new video, Becoming Equal Under the Law, which explores how the Constitution has changed over the years to give civil rights to more people. Watch it now!

Colleen Hroncich loves that homeschooling allows her to learn right alongside her children. A published author and former policy analyst, Colleen’s favorite subjects are economics/public policy and history. She has been active in several homeschool co-ops and is a speech and debate coach.

From the Homeschool Front...Competitive Speaking by Colleen Hroncich

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my goals in educating my children at home is to raise adults who can think critically. While there are many tools that I use to help accomplish this objective, competitive speech and debate probably tops the list. Whether you are a professional teacher, a homeschooler, or a concerned parent, I urge you to look into speech and debate opportunities for your children/students.

The most obvious benefit of competitive speaking is that the kids become better public speakers. (Duh, you’re probably thinking!) No one who knew my oldest daughter in elementary school ever would have predicted that in her sophomore year she’d be top speaker out of 56 debaters at a tournament drawing kids from throughout New England. My younger kids have followed her lead and are better public speakers (at ages 14, 12, and 10) than many adults.

While public speaking proficiency is important, the ability to analyze what they read, look at issues from multiple sides, draw conclusions based on in-depth research, quickly evaluate a question or argument and formulate a response, and remain friends with opponents after a heated debate are equally valuable takeaways from speech and debate. Although I must admit that it can be disconcerting when your child spots the flaws in your reasoning and calls you on it!

If you’re a homeschooler, there are several leagues you can consider: NCFCA, Stoa, and CCA are three with which I’m familiar. For teachers at public or private schools the leagues I know of are NSDA and NCFL. Homeschoolers can form teams in NCFL (we did that this year), but they have to go through their local public school to compete in NSDA. Different leagues are more popular in various regions of the country.


If you’d like more information, please let me know in the comments. If I don’t know the answer to your questions, I can probably direct you to someone who does.

Colleen Hroncich loves that homeschooling allows her to learn right alongside her children. A published author and former policy analyst, Colleen’s favorite subjects are economics/public policy and history. She has been active in several homeschool co-ops and is a speech and debate coach.