Your Supreme Court Justice

• Your group of 4 will collect polling data to determine what kind of Supreme Court Justice would be most acceptable to the American people
• Remember that the Court deals with issues that are challenged on constitutionality: speech/press, death penalty, gun control, school prayer, affirmative action, abortion, rights of corporations and labor unions, etc. -  Make sure your questions deal with relevant topics!
  
• There are two key things that drive the quality of any survey: the quality of your questions and the quality of your survey sample.  Please make sure you do an excellent job on both aspects of this project.
  

Steps in the process:

1. Develop a set of 15-20 polling questions on key issues, legal philosophy, age, gender, professional background, etc. - This will require research into the kinds of issues and decisions that go before the court - Ideally, you should assign a set of topics to each member of your group.  Each group member is then responsible for developing 5-6 questions about their set of topics
   
2. Identify good polling candidates and conduct your poll (mixed demographics required)
3. Compile your polling data in a meaningful way: 1) Create a spreadsheet that breaks down your numerical data for each question, 2) Generate a suitable bar graph or pie chart clearly displaying the data for each question, 3) Paste your charts into a Word document and write 3-4 quality sentences that effectively analyze the data for each question.
4. Use results to define ideal justice (stances on issues, age, gender, professional background)
5. Your justice will then go through the confirmation process, and face questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee :)
   

Writing & Administering Your Poll

• Write questions with clearly defined answers, use data ranges or “strongly agree, agree, neutral…” type scale
• 14-15 issue/legal philosophy questions, 5-6 background questions – no more than 20 total ?s
• Collect data from as wide a sample as possible (location, age & gender – we won’t do income, race, etc.) – use online survey services (such as Survey Monkey) if you like
• Each person in your group is responsible for soliciting 12-15 survey responses

You will turn in (You can turn all of this in electronically - just remember to put your initials at the end of the file names and put your names in the documents):

1. A copy of your survey
2. A spreadsheet that breaks down the numerical data from your survey responses
3. A Word document containing a chart and 2-4 sentences of good analysis for each survey item