ABOTA Foundation Receives Grant From the Texas Bar Foundation for 'Justice by the People' Program

    DALLAS, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Foundation of the
 American Board of Trial Advocates recently received a grant of $50,000 from
 the Texas Bar Foundation to support its Justice by the People education
 program. The grant will fund the continued free availability of Justice by
 the People on the web site of Scholastic, Inc., the largest educational
 publisher in the world.
 
 
 
     The grant will also fund the creation of a new Texas-specific lesson
 plan on the right to trial by jury and provide for broad publicity for
 Justice by the People through e-mail and print promotion to thousands of
 teachers across the nation, including more than 21,000 in Texas.
 
 
 
     Justice by the People is an interactive curriculum for middle school
 teachers and their students to help them understand their constitutional
 right to trial by jury in civil and criminal cases. The Association of
 Educational Publishers awarded Justice by the People its 2007 Distinguished
 Achievement Award for the best middle school social studies curriculum in
 the nation.
 
 
 
     Justice by the People was originally created in 1998, also with support
 from the Texas Bar Foundation, to address the abysmal lack of knowledge
 among young Americans about their rights and responsibilities as citizens.
 Research from the National Constitution Center, the Bill of Rights
 Institute, and many others revealed that civic education was rapidly
 disappearing from America's classrooms and young people had little
 knowledge or appreciation of their constitutional freedoms.
 
 
 
     The original printed curriculum with CD-ROM was revamped in 2006 in
 partnership with Scholastic, Inc., and is now provided in a free,
 downloadable format, aligned with national social studies teaching
 standards, at www.scholastic.com, which is visited by more than three
 million educators each month.
 
 
 
     Additional funding for Justice by the People program has been received
 from the Fellows of the ABOTA Foundation, the Florida Bar Foundation and
 the Georgia Civil Justice Foundation.
 
 
 
     The ABOTA Foundation was established in 1991 to provide education to
 the American public about the right to trial by jury and to promote the
 professional education of trial attorneys.
 
 
 
     The American Board of Trial Advocates, founded in Texas in 1958, is an
 organization dedicated to defending the American civil justice system. With
 a membership of 6,300 experienced attorneys representing both plaintiffs
 and defendants in civil cases (including 685 in Texas), ABOTA is uniquely
 qualified to speak for the value of the constitutionally-mandated jury
 system as the protector of the rights of persons and property.
 
 
 
     ABOTA publishes Voir Dire magazine, which features in-depth articles on
 current and historical issues related to constitutional rights, in
 particular the Seventh Amendment right to trial by jury. ABOTA and the
 ABOTA Foundation's national headquarters are in Dallas.
 
 
 
     Since its inception in 1965, the Texas Bar Foundation has awarded more
 than $9 million in grants to law-related education programs. Supported by
 the State Bar of Texas, the Texas Bar Foundation is the nation's largest
 charitably funded bar foundation.
 
 
 
 
    For more information contact:
     Brian Tyson at (800) 932-2682
     briant@abota.org.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

SOURCE American Board of Trial Advocates