GRADE 10, UNIT 3
INDEPENDENT LEARNING SELECTIONS
The Independent Learning selections will reside in the Interactive Student Edition in time for
back-to-school 2016. Students will be able to engage with these texts by highlighting, taking
notes, and responding to activities directly in the Interactive Student Edition.
Until that time, the selections are available in this document. This unit includes:
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Law and the Rule of Law
Misrule of Law
Harrison Bergeron
Credo: What I believe
Law and the Rule of Law
What Is a Law?
“Don’t run with scissors in your hand!”
“Don’t drive your car on the sidewalk!”
“Do not steal your neighbor’s property!”
How many times a day does someone tell you what to do? How often do you have to stop
yourself from doing what you want, because you know that this action is prohibited or
wrong?
In the United States, it seems like we have laws, rules, and regulations to oversee just
about everything. We don’t always like these rules, since they often mean that someone is
telling us what to do, or keeping us from doing what we want. Yet to live in a civil
society, we must have some rules to follow.
Who gets to make these rules? Where do they come from? What happens when we break
them? These are the questions this page will seek to answer for you.
LAW
Laws are rules that bind all people living in a community. Laws protect our general
safety, and ensure our rights as citizens against abuses by other people, by organizations,
and by the government itself. We have laws to help provide for our general safety. These
exist at the local, state, and national levels, and include things like:
Laws about food safety. At the state and local level, health departments have guidelines
that restaurants follow for how to store and prepare food in a healthy manner, so that
diners won’t get sick. At the national level, the Department of Agriculture and other
federal agencies inspect food production plants to be sure that the food that shows up in
your supermarket is safe to eat.
Speed limits and traffic laws exist so that we drive in a safe manner.
Licensing for doctors and nurses ensures proper training of the people who look after us,
and who often have our lives in their hands.
We also have laws that protect our rights as citizens, and which include things like:
Laws that come from the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, that guarantee our basic
freedoms like freedom of speech, religion, and the press.
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Laws that protect us from discrimination because of our race, gender, age, or because of a
disability.
The Rule of Law
President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Ours is a government of liberty, by, through
and under the law. No man is above it, and no man is below it.”
Rule of Law 1
The American commitment to the rule of law means that every citizen is governed by the
same laws, applied through a fair and equal judicial process to resolve disputes
peacefully.
Rule of Law 2
Faithfulness to the rule of law allows us to live in a civil society in which everyone’s
rights are respected; where each of us is guaranteed liberty and equality of opportunity.
Rule of Law 3
As citizens we respect the laws because they are clearly communicated and fairly
enforced. Everyone is held accountable to the same laws, and those laws protect our
fundamental rights. This is the foundation of the rule of law in the United States.
Rule of Law 4
The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are engraved on the front of the United States
Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. . . . These words embody the ideal of the
RULE OF LAW, which is at the heart of our American Democracy.
Rule of Law 5
In the United States, we have written laws in place to help us settle disagreements
peacefully through a fair system of justice. It is the job of the courts to interpret the laws.
It is up to judges and juries to decide if we have indeed broken the law.
Where Do Laws Come From?
In the United States, the Constitution is the ultimate source of the law. However, it was
never designed to address every specific legal question. Within the boundaries of the
Constitution, there are two primary sources of law, common law and statutory law.
Common Law
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This law comes from the judicial branch. Though the courts do not pass laws, they do
interpret them. This means that the judiciary bases their legal decisions on what is written
in the Constitution, and on previous court rulings in similar cases. This is a process called
stare decisis, which in Latin means “let the decision stand.”
Statutory Law
Statues are laws created by the legislative branch through the lawmaking process.
Statutes are written, discussed, argued, and voted on in Congress or in the legislature of a
state. The courts then apply and interpret these statutes on a case by case basis.
Laws Over Time
The thing about living in a democracy is that the laws change over time. The laws needed
in 1789 when the Constitution was born, and in 1890, 1950, or 1990, are different from
the laws needed today. The legislative branch of government must seek to update laws as
needed, and the judicial branch has to interpret the laws so that they apply fairly to
society at the time.
For example, laws about bullying or stalking have had to be updated to consider social
networking sites, cyber bullying, and cyber stalking. The original laws didn’t take the
internet into consideration.
More About Laws
The laws of our nation generally arise out of our shared values and morals. In our nation
we have laws at both the national and state levels. As citizens, we tend to be most
familiar with state and local laws, since these are the laws we encounter most in our daily
lives. These laws protect us against crimes like murder, robbery, rape, and assault. They
also ensure that we don’t drive too fast, that we mow our lawns, and keep our dogs on
leashes. In the United States, we also have a national government that makes laws. On the
national level, we have laws about internet crime, narcotics, treason, as well as things like
copyright and patents.
Laws are sometimes controversial, and citizens do not always agree on what should be
illegal. Though laws tend to come out of our shared values as a society, not everything
that is immoral is illegal.
For example:
• Foul language may be offensive to some people, but it isn’t illegal.
• Narcotics are illegal in most cases, yet some people would like them to be legal for
everyone, while others find them to be a threat to public safety and support current laws.
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Recently we have seen state and local governments making some laws that may cause us
to question the limits of government’s power. For example:
• Should a state be able to limit the sale of large, 40-ounce sodas in the name of
supporting good health?
• Should teachers be able to use Facebook? Can they “friend” their students?
• Should a city be able to limit the number of fast food restaurants in a neighborhood, to
try to make residents make healthier food choices?
• Should a municipality be able to tell you how “low” to wear your pants?
Law and the Rule of Law
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Misrule of Law • Aung San Suu Kyi
As I understand it, a kangaroo court is so called because it is a burlesque performance
where the process of the law takes heart-stopping leaps and bounds. Out of curiosity, I
looked up the entry on kangaroos in the Encyclopedia Britannica to see how far these
marsupial mammals can clear in a leap. Apparently the record is 13.5 meters. This is far
superior to the Olympic long-jump record. It is no surprise then that the erratic course of
justice in a kangaroo court is outside the bounds of normal human conduct.
I have written about the challenges that political dissidents in Burma have to face.
Everybody committed to taking an active part in the endeavor to return the country to
democracy has to be prepared to go to prison at any time. It usually happens in the middle
of the night, appropriately, as there can be fewer deeds more akin to darkness than that of
depriving innocent people of a normal, healthy life. The ones most vulnerable to arrest
are members of the NLD. Many of them are already seasoned jail veterans who, at casual
moments, exchange prison yarns and instruct the as yet uninitiated on such matters as the
kind of treatment they can expect at the interrogation sessions and what they should take
with them when the banging on the door comes: a change of clothing, soap, toothpaste
and toothbrush, medicines, a blanket or two, et cetera, all in a plastic bag. Nothing so
respectable as a knapsack or suitcase is permitted. And do not be fooled if the people who
turn up at the door, usually without a warrant, say that they will only be keeping you for a
few days. That could well translate into a twenty-year sentence.
When U Win Htein, a key member of my office staff, was arrested one night last May, he
had a bag ready packed. He had previously spent six years in Insein Jail: he was one of
the people taken away from my house in 1989 on the day I was detained and he was
released only in February 1995. When U Win Htein asked those who had come to take
him away whether they had an arrest warrant, they replied that it was not necessary as
charges had already been moved against him and his sentence had been decided. So much
for the concept of the law that deems a person innocent until proven guilty.
Section 340 (I) of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that “any person accused of an
offence before a criminal court, or against whom proceedings are instituted under this code,
in any such court, may of right be defended by a pleader.” This basic right to counsel is
systematically denied to political prisoners in Burma. They are not even allowed to make
contact with their families. The authorities generally refuse to give any information on
detainees who have not yet been tried. The NLD and the families of political prisoners have
to make strenuous enquiries to find out where they are, with what “crime” they are to be
charged and when and where the trials would take place. Usually the trials of political
prisoners are conducted in a special courthouse within the jail precincts.
Last month a number of political prisoners were tried in Insein Jail. When the NLD heard
that U Win Htein and some others were going to be produced at court on a certain day, a
lawyer was sent to defend them. The Special Branch officer at the jail questioned by the
lawyer said he did not know anything about a trial. But the trial took place while the
Misrule of Law 1 lawyer was waiting at the gate and continued after he left in the afternoon. The next
week, a number of lawyers again went to Insein Jail, accompanied by the families of the
prisoners, on the day they had heard the trial was to continue. This time they managed to
get into the prison courthouse. However, they were only allowed to cross-examine four of
the twenty-four witnesses for the prosecution.
The next morning, the lawyers and the families of the prisoners arrived at Insein Jail at
nine o’clock, as they had heard sentence would be passed that day. The area around the
jail entrance was full of security personnel and all the shops along the road were shut.
The lawyers were refused entry. They were told sentence would only be passed at the end
of the month and were asked to leave. However, as the magistrate concerned with the
case had been seen at the Insein Township Magistrate’s Court, the lawyers were
convinced the trial was scheduled to proceed within a matter of hours and continued to
wait outside the jail. The magistrate eventually arrived and entered the prison precincts at
around two o’clock and came out again after about forty minutes. The lawyers followed
him to the Insein Township Court to ask what kind of sentence had been passed. The
magistrate, very nervous and surrounded by security personnel, would only say that an
application should be made to copy the records of the court proceedings. Some days later
the government media announced that U Win Htein and others had been given seven-year
prison sentences each.
The sight of kangaroos bounding away across an open prairie can sometimes be rather
beautiful. The spectacle of the process of law bounding away from accepted norms of
justice is very ugly at all times.
Misrule of Law 2 Harrison Bergeron • Kurt Vonnegut
The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before
God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody
else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than
anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213he Amendments to
the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States
Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April for instance, still drove
people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men
took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had
a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in
short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little
mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was
tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would
send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of
their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but
she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a
burglar alarm.
“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.
“Huh” said George.
“That dance—it was nice,” said Hazel.
“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really
very good—no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened
with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one,
seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug
in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be
handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio
scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.
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Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what
the latest sound had been.
“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer, “ said George.
“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel a little
envious. “All the things they think up.”
“Um, “ said George.
“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as
a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named
Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes
on Sunday—just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.”
“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.
“Well—maybe make ’em real loud.” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper
General.”
“Good as anybody else,” said George.
“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?” said Hazel.
“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was
now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.
“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”
It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of
his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding
their temples.
“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa,
so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to
the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around
George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re
not equal to me for a while. “
George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any
more. It’s just a part of me.”
“You been so tired lately—kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we
could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead
balls. Just a few.”
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“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said
George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”
“If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I
mean—you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.”
“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away with it—and
pretty soon we’d be right back in the dark ages again, with everybody competing against
everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?
“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.
“There you are,” said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you
think happens to society?”
If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t
have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.
“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.
“What would?” said George blankly.
“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?”
“Who knows?” said George.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at
first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a
serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the
announcer tried to say, “Ladies and gentlemen—”
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
“That’s all right—” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried
to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so
hard.”
“Ladies and gentlemen—” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been
extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see
that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags
were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.
And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a
woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me—” she
said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.
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“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from
jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a
genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely
dangerous.”
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen—upside down, then
sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of
Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.
The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever born
heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think
them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of
earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make
him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military
neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking
junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber
ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black
caps at snaggle-tooth random.
“If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not—I repeat, do not—try to reason with him.”
There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph
of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the
tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have—for many
was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. “My God—” said
George, “that must be Harrison!”
The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile
collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living,
breathing Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the
uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and
announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
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“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must
do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
“Even as I stand here—” –he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened—I am a greater
ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps
guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
Harrison’s scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The
bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.
He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god
of thunder.
“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the
first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”
A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps
with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful.
“Now—” – said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the
word dance? Music!” he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their
handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes
and earls.”
The music began. It was normal at first – cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two
musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it
played. He slammed them back into their chairs.
The music began again and was much improved.
Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while—listened gravely, as
though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.
They shifted their weights to their toes.
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Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness
that would soon be hers.
And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!
Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of
motion as well.
They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.
It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it.
And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air
inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.
It was then that Diana Moon Clampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio
with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the
Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
Diana Moon Clampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them
they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.
It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the
kitchen for a can of beer.
George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And
then he sat down again. “You been crying?” he said to Hazel
“Yup,” she said.
“What about?” he said.
“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”
“What was it?” he said.
“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.
“Forget sad things,” said George.
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“I always do,” said Hazel.
“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his
head.
“Gee—I could tell that one was a doozy, “ said Hazel.
“You can say that again,” said George.
“Gee—” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.”
Harrison Bergeron
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Credo: What I believe • Neil Gaiman
I believe that it is difficult to kill an idea, because ideas are invisible and contagious, and
they move fast.
I believe that you can set your own ideas against ideas you dislike. That you should be free
to argue, explain, clarify, debate, offend, insult, rage, mock, sing, dramatize and deny.
I do not believe that burning, murdering, exploding people, smashing their heads with
rocks (to let the bad ideas out), drowning them or even defeating them will work to
contain ideas you do not like. Ideas spring up where you do not expect them, like weeds,
and are as difficult to control.
I believe that repressing ideas spreads ideas.
I believe that people and books and newspapers are containers for ideas, but that burning
the people will be as unsuccessful as firebombing the newspaper archives. It is already
too late. It is always too late. The ideas are out, hiding behind people’s eyes, waiting in
their thoughts. They can be whispered. They can be written on walls in the dead of night.
They can be drawn.
I believe that ideas do not have to be right to exist.
I believe you have every right to be perfectly certain that images of god or prophet or
man are sacred and undefilable, just as I have the right to be certain of the sacredness of
speech, of the sanctity of the right to mock, comment, to argue and to utter.
I believe I have the right to think and say the wrong things. I believe your remedy for that
should be to argue with me or to ignore me, and that I should have the same remedy for
the wrong things that you think.
I believe that you have the absolute right to think things that I find offensive, stupid,
preposterous, or dangerous, and that you have the right to speak, write, or distribute these
things, and that I do not have the right to kill you, maim you, hurt you, or take away your
liberty or property because I find your ideas threatening or insulting or downright
disgusting. You probably think my ideas are pretty vile, too.
I believe that in the battle between guns and ideas, ideas will, eventually, win.
Because the ideas are invisible, and they linger, and, sometimes, they are even true.
Eppur si muove: and yet it moves.
Credo: What I believe