January 18, 2011

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term 2011
In class today, Tuesday 1/18, I distributed one handout, the Summary of the Argument from the briefs of the ACLU and of 48 of the states. We continued our discussion of Snyder v. Phelps, and I also gave the story for two of the cases that form the background of our case, Gertz and Hepps. The assignment for Thursday 1/20 is to read Snyder's Reply Brief (available through the Supreme Court website) and to read the summaries that I distributed.

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Tuesday 1/18, I distributed two handouts; my own sample brief of the AAC case, and excerpts from the Augusta and Bangor parade ordinances. We continued with the briefing of the AAC case, getting up to the issue of the vagueness of the "organized group" section of the Dearborn ordinance. I went over a Supreme Court case, Coates v. Cincinnati, which dealt with whether an ordinance that outlawed behavior that was "annoying" was too vague to pass constitutional muster. The assignment for Thursday 1/20 is to review my AAC brief, and then to examine the Augusta and Bangor ordinances. Be prepared to discuss whether those ordinances meet the standards for constitutionality set up by the Sixth Circuit in the AAC case.