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Security, Liberty, and the USA PATRIOT Act LLPH

90 min

Lesson Components

National Security and Founding PrinciplesPrimary Sources U.S. National Security Response to September 11 Terrorist AttacksPlacing the War on Terror in a Constitutional Context

Objectives:

  • Students will be able to identify the purposes and limitations of government in the American Founding by interpreting founding and contemporary documents.
  • Students will determine if the Founding principles were consistent with the U.S. government’s response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Students should have access to internet-connected devices so they may explore the documents provided in the handouts as well as the full-text versions, as necessary.

This lesson should be presented after the historical events of 9/11 and the U.S. response have been taught. This lesson is designed to interpret the larger constitutional questions posed by that response.

  1. Students will read a selection of documents from the American Founding in Handout A and answer the analysis questions that accompany the readings.
  2. Students will interpret what the nature of powers were that the Founders intended to give the federal government in matters of national security.

Students will examine some readings from after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 in Handout B.

  • Students will interpret how the USA PATRIOT Act defined the U.S. national security strategy against terrorist organizations hostile to the United States
Students will read the document provided in Handout C.

  • Students will highlight the key criticisms made by the ACLU of the USA PATRIOT Act’s constitutionality in Handout C.

Students will reflect on the arguments made by the ACLU in Handout C, while also considering what was read in Handout A and Handout B. Each student will then decide whether they agree with ACLU’s assertions. Then they will produce a product that expresses their conclusions. They must cite evidence from at least four of the provided documents in supporting their position. The choices of products may include:

  1. an editorial in the New York Times
  2. a draft bill of a law that would clear up any inconsistencies in the law
  3. a letter to a member of Congress urging them to support or repeal the USA PATRIOT Act
  4. a political comic strip that makes the case for the necessity of the act or exposes its unconstitutionality

Student Handouts

National Security and Founding Principles

Primary Sources U.S. National Security Response to September 11 Terrorist Attacks

Placing the War on Terror in a Constitutional Context

Related Resources

George W Bush Declares War after 9 11Lesson

George W. Bush and the War on Terror

3 Activities50 Min

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban government in Afghanistan turn over Osama bin Laden to the US as well as shut down Al-Qaeda training camps in the country. When the Taliban refused, Bush ordered strikes on the country. After hundreds of enemy combatants were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, in the US, and around the world, the question of how detainees in the War on Terror should be treated became problematic. Were accused terrorists criminals, or were they illegal combatants (aggressors guilty of breaking laws of war)? Bush’s answer to that question—that they were illegal combatants not entitled to due process protections of US law, but subject to Military Tribunals—became harder and harder to justify to the American people as time wore on.