This interview was conducted by Darlisa Crawford, a writer for the Washington File, a news service (http://usinfo.state.gov/) of the U.S. Department of State.

Ms. Crawford: How did Street Law come about?

Mr. Roe: Street Law came about at Georgetown Law Center in about 1972 as part of a program in which law students worked with community groups, and somebody had the idea not only to work with community groups, but also to actually teach in high school classes. Four law students taught in two high schools in the District of Columbia, and it was so successful that it soon became a national program.

Question: How does Street Law provide a service to the community?

Mr. Roe: Essentially, Street Law is a course in practical law; its focus is on the law that affects persons' everyday lives.

The Street Law Book contains a general introduction to law and chapters on specific topics, such as criminal law, consumer and housing issues, family law, tort law, and individual rights law. The book also is filled with problems, case studies, and hypothetical situations, which are meant not to be just read as information but to be participated in by the reader and to be taught in an active way. Street Law instructors try to draw information from students about their own values and knowledge, and to build upon that, so that in the classroom a true discourse arises.

But Street Law is more than just practical law. It introduces the grand theories of law and justice, as well as constitutional law; in other words, the foundations of our democracy.

And that's why Street Law is very effective: it draws on students' knowledge, values, and experiences and connects them with the overall framework of the law at the same time. Street Law is discourse-based, in the same way that democracy and civic practice are discourse-based. So you're really using the law to teach fundamental civic, democratic thinking and expressive skills, which makes it a very powerful class.

Question: How does Street Law correlate with the curriculum of public schools?

Mr. Roe: It correlates very closely in many ways. In the social studies curriculum there are required courses in U.S. history, U.S. government, and civics. If you look at those textbooks and the curricular focus in those areas, it always comes back to the law. Even a U.S. history textbook will discuss important Supreme Court cases and maybe even some state court cases. In fact, in the District of Columbia, Street Law often is taught not as an elective, but along with a required government or civics class. Therefore, the kids learn both their regular government curriculum and the Street Law information.

Another important way that Street Law correlates with the curriculum is by its method of teaching in a highly participatory way, with the students having a voice. Street Law helps the students become critical thinkers and participators in government. The Street Law class develops analytical thinking, expressive writing, and logic types of skills.

In role-plays, debates, and mock trials, the students are doing the thinking and the talking. In a well-taught Street Law class, you engage the students in more writing and more articulation, which enhances their literacy skills.

Question: Can you describe the methods of Street Law?

Mr. Roe: The teacher is not the fountain of knowledge, although the teachers have to know the material very well in order to do this. They present themselves as the orchestrators in an exchange of ideas. The primary thing is that the students, for the most part, do the thinking and the talking in the classroom. Course materials for discussion could include judicial case studies, problems, or hypotheticals; current newspaper articles; and — a popular source — videos from movies or television programs.

Street Law is most noted for the popularization of the mock trial as a teaching method. Participants play the roles of lawyers and witnesses in a contest format. In our high school program, we have a 40- to 50-page scenario for a mock trial, with three witnesses on each side, many examples of evidence, and description of certain laws that apply. The kids have to put together all this information, put the witnesses on the stand, and cross-examine them. We give them six weeks to prepare, and it's thrilling to watch the kids do this. Many of the most experienced judges say the kids are as good as many of the people they see in the courtroom. The kids master the technique. At Georgetown University, second- and third-year law students can take a course in which they learn to teach Street Law. Principally, we teach law students the interactive methodology, and the mock trial is perfect for this.

Whatever the methodology — and there are all kinds of teaching techniques — what you try to do is align the method with the topic that you're teaching, so you use the best method to bring out the ideas.

The basic principle is that the materials and the methodology should be engaging to the students. And at the same time, the class should be rigorous and challenging. It should take students some places intellectually and expressively and knowledge-wise and perspective-wise where they've never been before.

We have the Street Law book as a textbook, and we have a huge lesson bank of materials, because we've been running our program for well over 20 years. However, our law students like to custom make and adapt lesson plans to changing law and to their particular students.

Question: Can you explain the mentor program affiliated with Street Law?

Mr. Roe: We thought that it would be very helpful, not only to have law students teaching, but also to have real practitioners get involved. The first step is to find organizations who are willing to put some time in. Our mentors have come from large and small law firms, public interest groups, and government agencies. The Department of Justice, for example, has a branch that serves as a mentor. The Department of Labor for a period of time served as a mentor. Mentors teach classes from time to time on subjects that they're knowledgeable in and that coincide with the Street Law curriculum. The instructor may be an attorney, a paralegal, or other staff member from the mentor's office.

We want mentors, however, not only to come in as guest speakers, but to do more participatory things as well. Mentors often bring the high school kids to the law firm or to the government agency, so they can see what actually goes on there in the full practice of law, as well as to see the substance of the work involved. Students may look at case files, as long as they are not violations of confidence, and talk about the cases. They also can interview the staff and find out what the various jobs are at the law firms, because they're not all lawyers. Many of our students are hired by their mentor firms for the summer, and some have worked for them afterwards in various capacities.

The mentors often take the students to legal events in the community. For example, sometimes a law firm has a partner who was a Supreme Court clerk, and they may arrange for an interview with a Supreme Court justice. Mentors may take students to see a court case that the law firm or the government agency is arguing. The mentors are great coaches who provide a lot of time and resources.

Question: How does the Street Law community clinic engage adult learners?

Mr. Roe: It is very similar to the high school approach on some levels. We teach the Street Law community clinic in a number of community settings: in city jails and treatment facilities, homeless shelters, battered women's shelters, HIV and AIDS shelters, juvenile detention homes, and other places. Principally, we teach people who may have had encounters with the law that were potentially adverse or who are in situations where they could use some ideas about how to make the law work for them. Students can't give legal advice in Street Law, because it's an education course and the students aren't lawyers yet. However, they can talk about how the law works and explain statutes and cases, and people can make decisions for themselves about how to proceed.

Adult students look at rules, court procedures, and processes: for example, how to deal with a landlord or how to write a letter of consumer complaint. Topics include housing, family, individual rights, damages, tort law, consumer law, and public benefits. Through these activities students learn that the law is a positive force in society, regulating our behavior, limiting excessive power, and providing a structure for the common good.

Question: How do you adopt Street Law to another language, culture, or environment?

Mr. Roe: I think that the law should be understood in the context of values, culture, and choices. I have considerable experience teaching Street Law in other countries. I've worked in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, England, Istanbul, the Dominican Republic, and Cambodia. They're very different places. The law has to come out of their fundamental values and connect with their culture. The idea of taking Street Law to another country for me is not taking the American system of justice and the American Constitution and the American laws as a wholesale transplant into another setting. It's using fundamental ideas of law that are universal. I also try to understand the country's culture, history, and language, moving the lesson in a way that becomes meaningful in that context. Some parts of Street Law don't need to be modified very much, and some do. If we have to write a whole new curriculum for a country, people from that country usually write it with their own laws and procedures. Regardless, the methodology stays the same.

Question: Has the effort to internationalize Street Law been successful, in your opinion?

Mr. Roe: It's not so much trying to internationalize. It's to take the concept of having the public participate in the law, making the law accessible to the average person. It is having a mission to demonstrate that democracy is based upon participation of citizens in an informed way in the world around them, particularly in areas of governance, but also in the daily transactions of their lives. It becomes a very powerful democratizing process, internationally, because you're able to help people see that the law can be accessible to them.

Every country's situation is different, but there can be a real role for Street Law in some places. For example, people from South Africa have worked very hard to develop their own versions of Street Law, so that it becomes customized to local settings. Laypersons can take it out into the country, and teachers can teach the basic ideas of law and justice; you don't have to have lawyers or law students doing it. Teachers of Street Law often come from government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, or churches. I've made a lot of Street Law presentations for those types of organizations. The idea is to tailor the material to the needs and interests of the people who want it, with a lot of cultural understanding.

Question: How will Street Law evolve in the future?

Mr. Roe: Street Law makes law accessible and democracy accessible to as many people as possible. Street Law gives people a voice that's based on intelligent thinking, expressive thinking, and the values that they believe in. You're not dictating the values to them particularly, except that I think there are espoused fundamental common values. The great ideas of justice and democracy will reach more people, becoming much more meaningful.

In the future more universities and law schools around the world will adopt Street Law programs. Law students will do Street Law as a public service or for credit courses as part of service learning. They will go out into the communities, into the cities, into the villages, teaching about democracy using the laws of their own country.

Secondly, I think that by developing these fundamental principles and using these approaches, the systems of government and government accountability will be improved. It will be a great way to improve the promulgation of justice as more people become capable of maintaining their interest to participate in government to the highest degree.

One advantage of Street Law is that it's actually a very inexpensive program to run. You can create a curriculum and train people in the curriculum, and those people can teach other people to do it.

One important aspect of Street Law is, we believe, that the process of learning is as important as the information learned. What's really learned is not, for example, whether capital punishment is good or bad, but that when learning about any subject — capital punishment, human rights, landlord and tenant matters — students learn to think about what the underlying values are, what the various policy choices are, how the greater good is served, how individual rights are protected. In that way, Street Law engages people into thinking about what can be accomplished through the law.

This works internationally because we don't come in there with any particular subject in mind or any particular bent to teach. We're teaching largely about the fundamental issues of achieving democracy and justice in a society. We're teaching about what those processes and tools happen to be as they could be applied to any subject.

The opinions expressed in this interview do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.