The Law-Related Education Program of the State Bar of Georgia has announced the launch of a new online educational resource, the Virtual Museum of Law, at www.thelawmuseum.org. 

The website will take students, educators and other visitors inside the physical Museum of Law housed at the Bar Center Headquarters in downtown Atlanta without leaving their schools or homes. The Virtual Museum of Law, like the physical museum, has four "walls," each devoted to a significant period or category of legal history. 

Each of the four walls, named "Freedom's Call: The March for Civil Rights," "An Independent Judiciary," "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" and "Famous Georgia and U.S. Trials," covers several significant cases –30 in all –ranging from Dred Scott and Brown v. Board of Education, to Marbury v. Madison, to Furman v. Georgia, to Leo Frank and the Scopes "Monkey" Trial.

"While designed to offer the same experience for those who cannot travel to Atlanta, the Virtual Museum of Law is not just a recreation of the physical museum," said Director of Law-Related Education Deborah Craytor. "Over the course of the next five years, short animated videos exploring each case in greater detail will be added to six case pages per year."

The videos for 2015-2016, which have been posted to the new site, are Brown v. Board of Education (civil rights), Marbury v. Madison (independent judiciary), Furman v. Georgia and Gregg v. Georgia (cruel and unusual punishment), and the Leo Frank Trial and the Lincoln Assassination (famous trials). Visitors are able to "tour" each wall to see the cases covered on that wall or click on a wall name to go directly to that wall's cases.

Exploring each case's page is only half of the fun, though, according to Craytor. All 30 cases are currently supported by teacher-access-only LiveBinders, containing lesson plans, links to current events, and other resources related to that case and the key legal issues it raises. 

The civil rights, independent judiciary, and cruel and unusual punishment walls also have their own general LiveBinders. The LiveBinders are updated on a regular basis to reflect new developments and thus serve as a terrific starting point for teachers exploring legal themes in their classrooms. In addition, each video added to the site will be accompanied by a brief online quiz, with which teachers can assess their students' understanding and members of the public can test their knowledge.