March 31, 2011

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term
In class today, Thursday 3/31, I went over the background and procedural history of the case we're tackling next, Ashcroft v. al-Kidd. I also went over several legal vocabulary terms, such as a "Bivens" action, and Rule "12(b)(2)" and "12(b)(6)" motions to dismiss. At the end of class I also went over yesterday's 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Connick v. Thompson. The assignment for Tuesday 4/5 is to read the Ninth Circuit's decision in the al-Kidd case. That decision can be found through the Lexis/Nexis research site on the Fogler Library website. The citation to the case is 580 F.3d 949. (I'm only assigning the majority decision for Tuesday, but I'll be assigning the dissent next, so feel free to continue to that portion if you have more time on the weekend than you will during the week.)

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Thursday 3/31, we finished our discussion of Gonzales v. Raich, including the outcome of the case in the Court of Appeals (after it was remanded for a decision on the substantive due process claim). We discussed also the power distribution questions underlying the Court's decision, including federal v. state power, and the power of the Court v. the power of Congress. I then gave some examples of some of the topics covered in the chapter, talking about Rowe v. N.H. Motor Transport in terms of the supremacy clause and preemption, and the ex-post fact cases of Smith v. Doe (U.S. Supreme Court) and State of Maine v. Letalien (Maine Supreme Court). We discussed the concept of dictum from the Butler case in the text, including the follow-up 1971 U.S.Supreme Court case of Harris v. New York. We left off with with an introduction to the concept of retroactive v. prospective application. The assignment for Tuesday 4/5 is to read and prepare to discuss through p. 143 of the text.