September 2, 2010

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Thursday 9/2, I distributed one handout, a Sample Brief Template. We then went into a discussion of the ideas in the introductory part of the text. We discussed the recent U.S. District Court decision striking down California's constitutional ban on gay marriage, the concept of "common law", and the idea of equitable relief. I went over the structure of the Federal Court system, and the structure of the Maine Court system. I also went over citation form for the the three levels of the Federal system and the Maine Supreme Court. We then started working together on using the Sample Brief Template to construct a brief of the AAC v. Dearborn case from the text. We got into the "Cause of Action" segment, and will complete the brief next week. The assignment for Tuesday, September 7 is to brief the AAC v. Dearborn case, using the Template to guide you as to what belongs in each segment. The assignment will not be graded or handed in, but it still should be done.