by Karl Kurtz
If I had been Gideon's lawyer in Gideon v. Wainwright, Wainwright would have prevailed and neither Gideon nor any other accused criminal in state courts would have the right to counsel provided by the state.
Either that or I'm just not a very good online game player (which I already knew).
In Our Courts' new game that teaches about the Constitution, Argument Wars, you can choose to play any of three simulations based on landmark court cases (the other two are Brown v. Board of Education and New Jersey v. TLO).
Because my best education about the Supreme Court came from studying Anthony Lewis', Gideon's Trumpet, I chose the famous 1963 case in which the Court ruled that criminal defendants have the right to counsel even if they can't afford it. The game asked me to fill the shoes of Gideon's attorney and play out the constitutional arguments in front of a scary looking judge who asked lots of difficult questions. I lost the case for Gideon when the judge ruled in favor of Wainwright based on comparing my arguments to the computer-generated case presented by the defendant's lawyer.
Abe Fortas I'm not.
Only after the fact did I read the footnote on the game's home page that says, "Gideon v. Wainwright requires students to examine two arguments and is a more challenging Argument Wars case." Not reading the instructions is one of the reasons I'm not very good at games like these.
I didn't try either of the other two cases. But based on my quick sampling of Gideon, it's an excellent game that both kids and adults can learn from.
We've written about other educational games about government in The Thicket in "The Redistricting Game," "Budget Battle Games," and "Learn Civics Online."
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