Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Program will teach students rule of law
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Dozens of lawyers and judges will fan out across middle schools in Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem today to talk to students about the rule of law.
Students in seventh and eighth grades are reviewing the three branches of government in their civics classes, which makes a discussion on the law in American life particularly relevant, said Mike Pace, a managing partner at Gentry Locke Rakes & Moore, who has organized the initiative.
"The rule of law exists for two purposes: one it reaches up and it will pull people who don't obey the law down to protect the public interest," Pace said. "At the same time, that rule of law will reach down and pull people up to protect the liberties that are granted to us in our Constitution and our Bill of Rights.
"No person rules us. The law rules us," he added.
Pace, the former president of the Virginia Bar Association, came up with the project last year, after a dinner-table conversation with his middle-school-age daughter.
"It's clear the teachers were doing a wonderful job of teaching them about the Constitution and the three branches of government, how that works, but what was missing from the conversation was the rule of law," he said.
Pace got Virginia Supreme Court justices and a former governor, Gerald Baliles, to record a DVD narrated by a middle school student. He also reached out to school superintendents and teachers in Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem to see whether lawyers and judges could visit classrooms. Finally, he signed up about 60 lawyers and judges to speak with roughly 2,000 students in every middle school in the three school districts. Participants attended a short training session to go over the day's curriculum.
Pace and U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, will be at Andrew Lewis Middle School in Salem. Roanoke Mayor David Bowers will speak to students at Breckinridge Middle School in Roanoke.
The program's Web site, www.ruleoflaw-vba.org, is also supposed to go live this morning.
The goal, Pace said, is to take the project statewide next year, using the Virginia Bar Association to help coordinate it.
"We are having the pilot program here," Pace said, whose mother was a teacher for 33 years and whose wife is a teacher.
"This idea of lawyers and teachers has resonated for a while," he said.
