This is a neat little game from I Civics where you control a law firm that specializes in civil liberties and rights. Your job is to assemble a team of lawyers with different specialties and then arbitrate between potential clients, turning away those with frivolous cases and directing others to the appropriate lawyer. Winning cases earns you prestige, which you can use to hire new lawyers and diversify the range of specialties you cover, or to upgrade the equipment in your firm. Turning away clients with legitimate grievances, accepting frivolous cases, or mismatching clients to lawyers loses prestige points. Feedback is both immediate and written up as amusing newspaper articles at the end of each workday.
The game is easy to learn and the gameplay itself is simple; a game goes through seven workdays and takes about 20 minutes. Like all the games on I Civics, it is also free, and if you have students register they can save the game midway through and track their performance. The game would work in either a general American Politics course or one themed around civil liberties and rights. The nature of the game makes it better for active assessment than active learning, though—it’s a great way for students to test themselves on their Amendments, but not particularly suited as an introduction to the material. It is also not practical for a group project or an in-class exercise. But I think it could work really well as a practice exercise for students, a review for an exam, or even a quiz (using the standings and achievements to monitor performance).