The Case of Mandatory Basic Law Education: Legal Literacy in Public Schools
Ani Shakhbazyan
02/02/2026
High school graduates in America enter college with knowledge of math, science, and literature. Their level of basic legal knowledge, however, is often insufficient to navigate the decisions that arise in early adulthood. Law governs routine transactions, institutional interactions, and encounters with state authority. Legal literacy remains largely disregarded in K-12 schools. This matters because many teens have to make important legal choices before they graduate, often under stress and without clear information. The harm is not equal: students in marginalized and under-resourced communities face these situations more often and have fewer chances to learn the skills that would help them. As a result, legally unprepared youth are at a higher risk of being exposed to exploitation and injustice.
This paper advances a policy claim: states should require a basic legal literacy module embedded within existing civics or social studies coursework, preferably in grades 9–10, supported by professional development and partnerships with legal education organizations. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, it specifies the domains in which adolescents encounter legally consequential situations, such as police questioning, school discipline, and digital contracting. It explains why adolescent informational constraints make these domains high risk. Second, it synthesizes evidence indicating that adolescents often misunderstand core legal protections and procedures, and that these misunderstandings are associated with harmful outcomes. Third, it proposes a scalable policy intervention: a mandatory legal literacy module integrated into existing civics/social studies instruction, supported by structured teacher training and community partnerships.