Arcadia High Wins National Bill of Rights Contest

A team of Arcadia High School seniors won a prestigious constitutional law competition Monday night after outshining students from 37 states.

The Bill of Rights Competition required the 29 high school students to demonstrate detailed knowledge and understanding of constitutional case law.

“Having worked with both, the Academic Decathlon doesn’t hold a candle to the intensity of this,” boasted Arcadia High School Principal Dorothy Schneider.

The students from Arcadia High’s advanced placement government class won a regional competition in November, which placed them in the statewide running against schools representing California’s other congressional districts. They took that prize in January and represented California in the national round--three days of constitutional analysis that began Saturday in Washington, D.C., and ended Monday night.

The Washington-based Center for Civic Education sponsors the competition, now in its fifth year, and presents the students with multifaceted questions on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights several months ahead of time, Schneider said.

Since the fall, the Arcadia High seniors have worked in groups of five to analyze and dissect the types of arguments made before the U.S. Supreme Court, Schneider said, and why certain rights were enumerated in the Constitution, while others were only implied.

Each group offered a four-minute prepared oratory on one of two problems they knew to expect in the competition. A three-judge panel then tested the students’ analyses by asking questions on case law and probing their historical and philosophical reasoning.

The students were flying home Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.

“They were carrying these huge volumes of constitutional law with them in Washington, which they had hauled on the plane,” Schneider said. “There was a great sense of spirit, camaraderie and enthusiasm.”

Two years ago, Arcadia High School took the state championship and came in seventh nationwide, Schneider said. “The group two years ago, their goal had been to win the state prize, like the team whose goal it is to get to the Super Bowl, not to win it. But this year, their goal was to win it.”

When the students met with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White’s clerk, he told them that “they knew more than most students in their second and third year of law school,” Schneider said.