American Legion Boys State delegates from high schools in all 95 counties will participate May 30 in the SCALES Program, an acronym for the Supreme Court Advancing Legal Education for Students. SCALES is a Tennessee Supreme Court initiative designed to educate young Tennesseans about the judicial branch of government.
The 630 students will attend a special Supreme Court session at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville as part of the week-long Boys State program, sponsored by The American Legion. The boys, who are in the top one-third of their high school classes, will hear oral arguments in two actual Supreme Court cases.
Circuit Court Judge John Maddux of Cookeville is coordinating the SCALES Project at Boys State. More than 17,300 students from 386 public and private schools across the state have taken part in SCALES since the Supreme Court initiated it in 1995.
"Many of the Boys State representatives will be leaders in our state and nation in just a few years,” Chief Justice William M. Barker said. “The SCALES Program will equip these young men to be better leaders by allowing them to see first-hand how the judicial branch of government functions and how it affects their lives. The program may even inspire some of them to become lawyers and judges.”
Issues in the cases students will hear at Boys State include whether a defendant in a murder case is mentally retarded as defined by law and, therefore, ineligible for the death penalty, and whether a trial court judge erred in giving a deadlocked jury a supplemental charge in an effort to get a unanimous verdict in a medical malpractice case.
Each SCALES participant will receive a handbook containing information about the state and federal court systems and the two cases. In addition, Maddux and other lawyers and judges will conduct educational sessions with the students.