Constitutional Battle

It’s 11 p.m. on a school night, and the teenagers in Seoyoung Kim’s living room aren’t even close to bedtime.

Scott Esposito and Harvard Pan have just walked in with a bag of tacos and tall cups of blue-colored slush to fuel them for the long night ahead. The fun begins.

For this group of high school seniors, that means talking about things like their favorite Federalist Papers.

Kim names one of the 85 essays without hesitation. “Seventy, definitely,” she says, prompting quick approval from Jennie Wang. “Oh yeah, 70’s a great one,” Wang agrees, even though the essay on the role of the presidency was written by Alexander Hamilton.

The group’s fave founding father, you see, is James Madison, though Hamilton at least beats out John Jay. “Jay? That guy only wrote, like, three Federalist Papers,” says Wang. That’s strictly second-team in her book.

Jay, in fact, wrote four Federalist Papers, but it’s still a pretty good analysis for a 17-year-old high school senior. Watching these teenagers pore over law school case books, one gets the sense that if they had fake IDs, they’d use them to vote.

The students are members of Arcadia High School’s state champion Constitution team, and today they are in Washington vying for the national title in an interscholastic competition on constitutional principles.

The Arcadia team will be among 1,200 students from the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the national tournament. While the popularity of the competition demonstrates the vitality of the Constitution, the Arcadia team reflects the vitality of the nation.

Many of the team members are Americans by choice: Most of them are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, and five are not yet U.S. citizens.

That fact will be in the back of Annie Chung’s mind this weekend as she and her teammates try to give the best answers to such questions as: “According to James Madison, what is necessary to sustain civic virtue ?”

As a green card holder who is not yet a citizen, Chung says, she will be showing how she and her team “are a good and strong example of what minorities can do.”

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Members of the team point out that constitutional questions continue to surface, in everything from California ballot measures to Paula Jones’ sexual harassment suit against President Clinton.

“You can’t form opinions with no knowledge of government, and if you have no opinions, you’re letting people in charge make all the decisions for you,” Wang says.

Ask Sasha Trifunac why being on the Constitution team is important, and he will tell you that a society cannot function without citizens who are aware of and inspired by democratic ideas.

Underscoring his point, he paraphrases one of his heroes, jurist Learned Hand: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women, and when it dies, no Constitution can save it.”

Such passion has propelled Arcadia to three state titles as well as the 1993 national championship.

Constitution teams emerged 10 years ago as part of a federally funded program called “We the People.” Teams compete using texts and questions prepared by the Center for Civic Education, a nonprofit group based in Calabasas.

The squads range in size from 12 to 45 students. Each team is divided into six smaller units, with each focusing on a different topic. The students face a panel of judges who ask questions from a standard national list and score the answers using a formula devised by the Center for Civic Education.

Strategy, as much as knowledge, will push a team to the top, according to Ron Morris, the team’s government teacher and coach.

“I always tell them to pace themselves, to think of themselves as a relay team,” said the towering former football lineman and track coach.

The results of the team’s hundreds of hours of training are obvious at a practice run in the Arcadia City Council chamber.

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Robert Garrett, a Pasadena lawyer who is one of four volunteer assistants, asks this:

“My community wants to ban Joe Camel [cigarette advertising] billboards within 1,000 feet of schools. Discuss the constitutionality of the proposed restriction.”

Susan Fu leads off, explaining that advertising does not have the same protections as other forms of speech. People don’t have the same protections while trying to sell something as they do expressing ideas, she explained.

While citing various legal precedents, she buys precious time for partner Jonathan Barker to think of an answer. Wrapping up her reply, Fu looks over to Jonathan, giving him a visual cue.

He shoots: You can restrict where a billboard can be placed but are limited in controlling what it says, he explained. “You can use a time-place restriction, like banning billboards within a certain distance, but it’s got to be content-neutral. Therefore, if you ban Joe Camel, you have to ban the Marlboro man and all the others.” He scores.

Teaching such bright students, Morris said, makes him feel like “one of the luckiest people alive.” Morris, who has coached the team for nine years and taught at Arcadia for 28, proudly points out that three former team members are now at Harvard Law School, and all “are terrific citizens.”

But Morris’ students say they are the lucky ones. In addition to history and government, Morris has taught them about the importance of commitment to others and dedication to one’s work.

This is a guy, they note, who spends his vacations in Bosnia, Kyrgyzstan and Turkestan training teachers to teach democratic principles.

Now in their final stretch, the Arcadia team will compete in preliminary rounds today and Sunday, and 10 finalists will compete for the championship Monday.

But Morris already got his prize.

After a practice session in the council chamber, Gary Kovacic, a lawyer and advisor to the team, calls for the team’s attention.

“You’re all graduating, and many of you are going on to become doctors and lawyers and other fancy things,” said Kovacic who is also an Arcadia city councilman. Gesturing toward Morris, he continued: “But remember, one of the greatest things you can be is a high school teacher.”

The young women and men shoot to their feet, and give their teacher a standing ovation.