United States Supreme Court Confirmation Simulation: Learning through the Process of Experience

Abstract

The traditional process of educating undergraduates is often relegated to the passive lecturing format. One means of engaging students in active learning is through the use of simulations. Students were asked to take on the roles of United States senators and a Supreme Court nominee during a United States Supreme Court confirmation hearing simulation. Each student participated by researching a sitting senator and the nominee selected and engaged in a question-and-answer session as is done in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Students came away from this valuable experience by not only learning a great deal about the operation of the confirmation hearing as well as the substantive material learned but participating in a process that few people will ever actually experience.

Teaching public budgeting in the age of austerity using simulations

“…They are well suited to the social sciences (Queen, 1984)-including political science, public policy, and public administration-and have become the subject of much pedagogical research within these disciplines (Chetkovich and Henderson, 2014;Goodman, 2008;McCarthy and Anderson, 2000;Schafer, 2016). Simulations increase student motivation to learn, enhance information retention, and can be used to learn both content and process (Auerbach, 2013;Dekkers and Donatti, 1981;Smith and Boyer, 1996) Though role-playing tends to be more effective, both role-playing and role-thinking serve important functions. In role-thinking, students are asked to take on another mindset and reason through decisions that they would make given a specific scenario.…”

Negotiating the Transatlantic Relationship: An International, Interdisciplinary Simulation of a Real-World Negotiation

“…On topics ranging from trade (Switky and Avilés 2007) to interstate conflict (Newmann and Twigg 2000) to US Supreme Court confirmation (Auerbach 2013), teachers report benefits from games in which “the student becomes the lab rat and then gets to discuss the experiment” (Asal 2005, 360). For those who are new to games, Wedig (2010) includes a useful schematic for deciding whether and how to integrate them.…”

Institutions and Arguments: Simulating the US Policy-Making Process

“…In American government courses, several simulations have been developed about discrete political institutions and processes, including Congress (Ciliotta-Rubery and Levy 2000; Sands and Shelton 2010), the judiciary (Fliter 2009;Williams and Chergosky 2019), and elections (Alberda 2016;Carpenter and Dunn 2018). However, few simulations of an interactive process among multiple institutions have been published, despite findings that simulations in US politics courses can be especially useful to illustrate how multiple political institutions interact to shape law and policy (Auerbach 2013;Kahn and Perez 2009). Moreover, no published simulation (to our knowledge) has integrated multiple interacting political institutions with insights from normative political arguments and detailed subject matter on a specific policy issue.…”