 Why would we study law and government in our teenage years? It is not that this is the first time you might comprehend the subject, for we learn of rules and procedures in our earliest years in the family. It is not because of the intricacies of law and government that require some sort of near-adult capacities. It is rather that these are the years when young children are shifting from being just passive students to becoming independent and effective adults. It is at this point that you can first really see what you will need to know if you are to be an active and effective citizen of this nation. Welcome to Law and Government, a survey of the knowledge and principles of law designed for effective U.S. citizens of tomorrow. My name is Jesse Brogan, and I am a performance engineer who happens to have a law degree. In a very real sense, the purpose of this course is empowerment of tomorrow's citizens. It is placing the tools of self-governance into your hands and harming you with a perspective of how these tools have been applied in the past and what was accomplished by those who have applied them. It is empowerment because you are the future of the United States. The purpose of this course is to prepare you for effective citizenship and the lessons provided are designed to give you information and perspective to understand the laws and legal foundations that will apply to you and your neighbors. In this, you will become part of that great experiment we call the United States, and it will be up to you, each of you, as future citizens to assume your own part in that experiment, helping one another to learn from the past and to plan for a future. It is the decisions you make as a sovereign citizen that will become the future that you get to pass to the children of tomorrow. It is said that those who have not learned from the past are bound to repeat it. This course addresses the past and the present, following some of the ways that U.S. law and government was intentionally created to be different than all that was before it. This course also presents some of the ways that U.S. law and government are different today than at the time of our nation's founding and how we have come to be the nation in which you live.