The “Southworth Project”: A Collaborative Approach to Teaching Judicial Reporting

Abstract

Coverage of the courts -- particularly the U.S. Supreme Court -- has long been criticized as inadequate and superficial. Journalists and the news media have been accused of being sloppy, inaccurate, imprecise, shallow, misleading and sensational. Attorneys and judges in turn have been blamed for being inaccessible, self-interested, overly legalistic and out of touch with any sense of what a lay audience wants or needs in terms of judicial coverage. 1 usual approach to confronting such problems and attempting to improve press-bench-bar understanding has been to hold conferences and workshops for attorneys, judges and reporters, often with special focus on fair trial-free press issues. But wouldn't it make a great deal of sense to bring prospective journalists and prospective attorneys together while both are students to learn from each other and build better awareness and understanding from the outset? That is precisely what we attempted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during fall semester 1999 with what we called The Southworth Project was, we believe, a unique effort to bring together a small group of law students and journalism students to generate in-depth coverage of a Supreme Court case involving students, the University and the First Amendment.2 This article examines the Southworth Project in detail. It begins by describing the legal case that became the occasion for the Project. Then it explains how the Project idea developed, its goals and the activities that were part of it, the products that resulted and their impact, and how the participants evaluated it. It concludes with an overall assessment of the Project and thoughts about where the idea may lead in the future. Southworth: Case In 1996, Scott Southworth and several other students at the University of Wisconsin- Madison sued the University, claiming their First Amendment rights were violated by the school's mandatory student fee system. More specifically, they complained that the system forced them to subsidize groups which engaged in political and ideological expression and activities with which they disagreed. This, they asserted, was a form of unconstitutional compelled speech and association. Under the University's system, students are required to pay fees each semester (in addition to tuition), some of which are used for such services as the student health center, but some of which are used to fund as many as several hundred diverse student organizations. These latter allocable fee dollars are distributed by student government. Southworth stipulated for purposes of the litigation that the actual distribution was done on a viewpoint-neutral basis.3 A federal district court agreed with the students and declared the mandatory allocable fee system unconstitutional.4 Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed,5 the University appealed, and on March 29, 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.6 implications for the University, for hundreds of student organizations, and for thousands of student fee payers were enormous. These stakes were multiplied many times over, given that whatever the U.S. Supreme Court decided would affect every public university in the country. situation begged for in-depth journalistic attention, particularly on the Madison campus. Southworth Project responded to this obvious opportunity. Southworth: Project Daily Cardinal is one of two independent student newspapers serving the University of Wisconsin-- Madison campus. In late April, Jeff Smoller, a member of the Cardinal's board of directors (and a communication specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources), contacted me and Brady Williamson, an attorney and adjunct faculty member in the law school, with a fascinating proposition. Would we be interested, he wondered, in trying to put together some type of special project involving student journalists from the Cardinal and law students who would work together to cover the Southworth case and receive academic credit for the effort? …