Learning Law by Making It: The Case of Nationality Act

Abstract

This paper presents a class activity in which students come together to imagine themselves as policy actors in a fictional country and simulate a law- or policy-making process. The activity is designed to deepen students’ understanding of the law while fostering critical thinking and collaborative decision-making skills. Although the primary focus is...

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Details

Subject Area(s):

Law and Society, Migration/Immigration, Political Sociology, Racial and Ethnic Relations, Social Change

Resource Type(s):

Assignment, Class Activity

Class Level(s):

College 100, College 200, College 300, College 400

Class Size(s):

Medium

Usage Notes

This five-part activity, designed for a 90-minute class held twice a week, takes about two weeks to complete. In the first stage, students learn the basics of nationality law and receive instructions. In stages two to four, they work in groups to draft and revise their own version of the law. In the final stage, they compare their draft to the...

Learning Goals and Assessments

Learning Goal(s):

1. Students will develop an academic appreciation for the study of law as a discipline that is intellectually stimulating, personally engaging, and socially relevant.
2. Students will learn to express their own ideas and interests while also respecting diverse perspectives, fostering skills in compromise and consensus-building.
3. Students will develop a detailed understanding of the specific law examined in the course (in this case, the Nationality Act), including its legal structure, key provisions, and the political debates that have shaped its formation and evolution.

Goal Assessment(s):

1. An identical survey will be distributed on the first and last days of the activity, featuring questions designed to capture students’ perceptions of the law itself and their experience studying it, in order to measure changes in their attitudes.
2. Students will complete a reflective writing assignment at the conclusion of the activity, in which they assess their own and their peers’ contributions to the draft, identify interactional challenges they faced, and evaluate how they addressed or overcame them.
3. After completing the final stage of the activity, each group will compare their draft to a real-world Nationality Act and review the European University Institute’s Citizenship Report for the selected country. They will then write a reflection on the innovations in their draft and the aspects it may have overlooked.