More than just child's play: Enhancing the class experience through role‐playing in children's law.

Issues impacting children, families, and communities involve an array of weighty interests rooted in a variety of consequential historical, legal, and political precedents. For more than 30 years, students in the course Child Rights and Remedies have explored these precedents while honing their critical thinking and advocacy skills through role play. Students are each assigned a role for the duration of the semester—a child advocate/child's attorney, a parent advocate/parent's attorney, a state attorney, among others—from which to analyze cases relevant to children. Students are asked to identify the strongest legal and policy arguments supporting the position of someone in their assigned role and to prepare to raise and defend the position in class. A recent innovation—developed as a result of mandated virtual instruction— expands student exploration of child‐ and family‐related topics through contribution to a current events blog. This article will briefly discuss the benefit of role play in legal education followed by detailed guidance on using the approach to explore four key child rights cases. The article also includes the blog assignment description as well as example blog entries and responses. Key points for the family court community: The use of role play in the law school classroom can enhance knowledge and promote acquisition of practical skills.Students engaging in role play in the child rights or family law classroom sharpen legal analysis and oral advocacy skills as they examine assigned cases from the perspective of an attorney crafting an argument for a particular party or relevant interest.Investment in a role raises the stakes for students to creatively construct a persuasive argument based either in favorable precedent or a compelling alternative.This article provides lesson plans detailing the use of role play in the cases of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Michael H. v. Gerald D, Smith v. OFFER, and Wisconsin v. Yoder.A valuable formative assessment for use in the child rights or family law classroom is a class current events blog, which provides an alternative method of dialogue for students as well as a space in which to apply the course material to present controversies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]