April 14, 2011

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term
In class today, Thursday 4/14, I began by going over in more detail the Edmond case, and how it was distinguished from those cases that did allow road checkpoints. We then went through the Ashcroft brief, and put labels on those subparts of the brief that were not labeled; we also sketched in a summary of the substance of the arguments that fit within those subparts. These subparts are the "subissues" that I said would be what I'd be looking for you to discuss in your paper. We then did the same with the beginning of the al-Kidd brief. We got as far as I(A)(1)(a) in that brief. The assignment for Tuesday 4/19 is to finish doing this labeling exercise with the rest of the al-Kidd brief, and to read the Ashcroft reply brief (especially part II(A)) and subject it to the same look for subissues.

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Thursday 4/14, I collected the Flaherty briefs, and we went over them. I plan to return them on Tuesday. I then discussed two more cases regarding personal jurisdiction, Commerce Bank v. Dworman, 2004 ME 142, and Tidwell v. Zawacki, 645 F.Supp.2d 7 (D. Me., 2009). The assignment for Tuesday 4/19 is to read in the text pp. 159-165 and 144-148.