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06/05/2026

The colonial courts mostly acquitted the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre.

That outcome frustrated many patriots who wanted a guilty verdict. But as Hannah Nolan of the University of Maryland explains in Episode 15, others actually welcomed it, because it showed that colonial courts were capable of separating justice from public pressure. The rule of law held, even in one of the most emotionally charged cases in colonial history.

Which is exactly why the Administration of Justice Act of 1774 landed the way it did. The Act allowed cases involving British soldiers to be moved outside Massachusetts if a fair trial couldn't be guaranteed, a justification colonial courts had just proved unnecessary.

Patriots like John Hancock saw it clearly: if soldiers knew their cases could be relocated away from the communities they'd harmed, accountability became optional.

Grievance 15 is a fantastic episode for teaching the rule of law as a principle rather than a procedure, and for raising a question the episode explicitly names as unresolved.

Discussion question: How do you ensure justice is fairly administered after a clash between law enforcement and citizens? What does fairness require, and who decides?

Discover every grievance at Constitution Day Live: https://bit.ly/42cJB0M

New episodes Mon / Wed / Fri 🎬

In 2025, BRI ran 315 professional development programs across 27 states and Washington, D.C., reaching 8,099 teachers. T...
06/04/2026

In 2025, BRI ran 315 professional development programs across 27 states and Washington, D.C., reaching 8,099 teachers. The programs we're most proud of aren't the ones with the highest single-day turnout. They're the ones where we're still showing up years later.

Our PD is built around the Founding documents — the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights — and the civic principles that come up in every election, every courtroom, and every classroom debate. We design programming to compound: each session builds on the last, and each year gives teachers a deeper foundation to teach from.

With America's 250th here in just a few weeks, there's no better moment to build something that lasts beyond it.

What would your district's civics program look like with a PD partner for the next 3 years, not just the next 3 weeks?

🔗 Request a program: https://bit.ly/4fZoZ46

06/03/2026

Ask your students why the Third Amendment exists and watch what happens.

Most can recite the First. Most know the Second and the Fifth. But the Third, no quartering of soldiers without consent, tends to draw blank stares. Grievance 14 is the answer.

C. David Carlson of Trinity Academy South Bend uses Episode 14 to connect the Quartering Acts of 1765 and 1774 directly to that amendment. Parliament required colonists to provide food and shelter for British troops at their own expense in barns and uninhabited buildings, not typically private homes, but the distinction mattered less than the principle.

During a crisis already spiraling toward open conflict, colonists were being compelled to support what many understood as a hostile occupying force. On their own dime.

The Third Amendment resolved that grievance so thoroughly that it's almost never been litigated. Which makes it a great teaching moment: sometimes the most effective constitutional protection is the one that never needs to be invoked.

Discussion question: Why would the Founders include an amendment protecting against something that seems unlikely to happen? What does that tell us about how they thought about government power?

Discover every grievance at Constitution Day Live: https://bit.ly/42cJB0M

New episodes Mon / Wed / Fri 🎬

06/01/2026

Grievance 13 brings three of the most-taught Acts of the colonial era into one frame, and connects them to a single constitutional argument.

The Stamp Act taxed paper goods and legal documents. The Sugar Act taxed molasses, sugar, coffee, and wine. The Intolerable Acts closed Boston Harbor, deployed additional troops, and tightened Crown control across the colonies. Each one cost the colonists money and autonomy.

Together, Jennifer Seiter of the UVA Democracy and Capitalism Lab argues, they represented something bigger: a Parliament the colonists believed had exceeded the constitutional authority it was supposed to be limited by.

Useful for connecting your Stamp Act, Sugar Act, and Intolerable Acts units to the Declaration's cumulative argument. Strong pairing with any taxation and representation discussion.

Join us for Constitution Day Live: https://bit.ly/42cJB0M

05/29/2026

Your students know separation of powers as legislative, executive, judicial. Grievance 12 is a good moment to extend that frame.

In 1774, King George III appointed Thomas Gage as both royal governor of Massachusetts and Commander in Chief of British forces in North America. One person. Two unelected roles. No check on either. The consolidation of civil and military authority in the same office was exactly the kind of power concentration the Enlightenment had identified as a precondition for tyranny.

BRI's Dr. C.C. Borzilleri uses this grievance to expand how students think about separation of powers, not just as a feature of three-branch government, but as a principle that extends to civil-military relations. The constitutional response is direct: the president cannot declare war unilaterally. Congress holds that power. That constraint traces back to what colonists experienced under Gage.

Strong connection to your separation of powers, constitutional design, and civil-military relations discussions.

Discussion question: Why is it important that civilian government maintain authority over the military? What changes if that line blurs?

Discover every grievance at Constitution Day Live: https://bit.ly/42cJB0M

New episodes Mon / Wed / Fri 🎬

Worse than Valley Forge. Worse than the Battle of the Bulge.That's how historian Steve Vogel describes the conditions at...
05/28/2026

Worse than Valley Forge. Worse than the Battle of the Bulge.

That's how historian Steve Vogel describes the conditions at Chosin Reservoir in November 1950: -30 degree temperatures, weapons and canteens freezing solid, no warming tents, medical supplies destroyed in a Chinese ambush.

Task Force Faith fought in those conditions for nearly a week, outnumbered 9 to 1, before suffering 85% casualties. One officer later said the heroism was so commonplace it almost went unnoticed.

This BRI Scholar Talk tells the story your students probably haven't heard. Perfect for units on the Korean War, military history, or the civic virtues of courage and honor.

Watch it here → https://bit.ly/4dIBUpP

05/27/2026

The Boston Massacre didn't happen in a vacuum. Grievance 11 is part of the context that made it possible.

By the time British soldiers fired on colonists in 1770, troops had been stationed in colonial cities for years. Not on the frontier, where the Crown claimed they were needed, but in the streets of towns where their presence felt less like security and more like occupation. That gap between the Crown's stated justification and what colonists experienced on the ground is exactly what Jefferson captures in Grievance 11.

JJ Nattrass of George Washington University walks through the post-Seven Years' War context, the frontier rationale, and why "standing armies without the consent of our legislatures" was a phrase the Founders took seriously enough to put in the Declaration, and later the Third Amendment.

Worth pairing with any Boston Massacre unit or your Third Amendment discussion.

Join us for Constitution Day Live → https://bit.ly/42cJB0M

05/26/2026

"Swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."

Jefferson knew "swarms" was an exaggeration. So why did he write it?

Grievance 10 is one of the better grievances for teaching the Declaration as a rhetorical document, not just a list of complaints, but a carefully crafted argument designed to persuade. The insect imagery was intentional: it framed British officials as an infestation, something intrusive and impossible to ignore.

But JJ Nattrass of George Washington University is quick to note that the underlying grievance was real. As Britain expanded enforcement of the Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts, appointed officials spread through colonial towns, collecting revenue, enforcing regulations, and interrupting the rhythms of daily life.

Jefferson's word "substance" does a lot of work: financial extraction, yes, but also the disruption of something harder to measure, the colonists' ability to build lives on their own terms.

Strong pairing for a rhetorical analysis of the Declaration, or any unit on colonial resistance and the lead-up to revolution.

Discussion question: When is exaggeration a legitimate rhetorical tool? Does it strengthen or weaken Jefferson's argument here?

Discover more: https://bit.ly/42cJB0M

New episodes Mon / Wed / Fri. 🎬

Some of the most powerful lessons we can give students aren't in a textbook, they're in the stories of people who chose ...
05/25/2026

Some of the most powerful lessons we can give students aren't in a textbook, they're in the stories of people who chose sacrifice over self.

BRI's Memorial Day playlist brings those stories to life: Pat Tillman, Michael Murphy, John Basilone, John Robert Fox, and the selfless defenders of Wake Island.

Each free lesson runs asks students to consider what selflessness actually looks like, both in history, and in their own lives.

billofrightsinstitute.org/playlists/memorial-day/

05/22/2026

Can a judge be impartial if the king is signing their paychecks?

That's the structural problem at the heart of Grievance 9. In 1772, colonial judges stopped being paid by local legislatures and started being paid by the royal treasury. Judges whose salaries depended on the Crown were judges who answered to the Crown, not to the people whose cases they were deciding.

Dr. Melissa Dow of the University of West Florida connects this directly to Montesquieu's principle of separation of powers: law making, law enforcing, and controversy deciding need to be kept in different hands. When they aren't, liberty is the first casualty.

It's one of the strongest grievances for teaching the structural logic behind the Constitution, especially the judicial independence provisions students encounter later.

Discussion question: Why does it matter who pays a judge's salary? What does financial independence have to do with legal independence?

Discover more → https://bit.ly/42cJB0M

New episodes Mon / Wed / Fri 🎬

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