Your final paper will be graded and is a substantial part of your course grade. It should be a minimum of 1000 words of content text (maximum of 2000 words) plus cover page and works cited pages. Use 1 inch margins, 12 pt. font. I prefer Courier New font. You should primarily use scholarly journals and books for your sources. Avoid popular, trade, and other literature when “higher” forms of literature are available. Use APA style (American Psychological Association) with internal citation (including page numbers). (The APA manual is available from the bookstore or the library. The university library keeps a copy available as a reference. There are APA helps on the Web as well; such as at Purdue OWL.) Use no direct quotes or paraphrases unless they are absolutely necessary to demonstrate a point. I.e. do not copy text. I am grading your writing, not someone that you have read.
   
Your paper will be graded on a number of aspects including sources, content, organization, coherence, strength of argument, spelling-grammar-proofreading, and use of APA style. You should write with a clear theme that explains your research question/hypothesis, your conclusion, and the relevant evidence for your conclusion. As a rule of thumb, I will expect to see citations for a minimum of 5 separate strong works* that are used substantively within the paper (i.e. not just thrown in to meet a source “count”) for a passing paper. An A paper is most likely going to have quite a bit more. Your paper should demonstrate rigorous research and critical thinking.
      *A “strong” reference is either a scholarly article, a scholarly book, or an important government report, as well as published appeals court
opinions. “Other” references include trade journal articles, law reviews, government or agency papers, professional presentation papers, theses and dissertations, and other . “Weak” references include most popular literature and most papers or documents found on the internet, and papers produced by advocacy groups. You will want to discuss with me the material that you are finding and the direction of your paper as you work.