April 9, 2009

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term
In class today, Thursday 4/9, we continued watching the video of the Nurre v. Whitehead ("Ave Maria") oral argument. I also went over the recent Supreme Court decision in State of Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The assignment for Tuesday 4/14 is to listen on the internet to the oral argument of a 2000 Supreme Court case, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe. Here's how to find it:

Go to oyez.org/cases/1990-1999/1999_99_62/argument

From that screen, first select the Santa Fe case(the tenth one down) and then select "expanded view"

This should give you the version of the oral argument that has the audio synchronized with the transcript, and which also identifies each of the Justices. (It will take a little while to load, so be patient).

After you have listened to the oral argument and thought about where each Justice is headed, read the case itself at 530 US 290.

CMJ 375--Mass Media Law
In class today, Thursday 4/9, I distributed one handout, which included both the enacted version of the Maine Reporter's Shield Law, and the earlier version that was not enacted. We continued our discussion of a journalist's right of access to court proceedings, and we looked at the Maine closed-court statutes that I had distributed on Tuesday. I talked about one Maine Supreme Court case, in re Bailey M. The assignment for Tuesday 4/14 is to read in the text pp. 296-323 and the Feist case on p. 179 of the casebook.