April 19, 2011

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term
In class today, Tuesday 4/19, the class first did class evaluations. I talked about a case that was being argued in the Court today, American Electric Power v. Connecticut, regarding the ability of states to sue polluters directly under federal common law, rather than relying on enforcement through federal environmental agencies. We went through the labeling of the al-Kidd brief. We will start with the labeling of Ashcroft's Reply Brief on Thursday. If you had any problem finding the Reply Brief through the ABA site, you can access the Reply Brief by looking up the Reply Brief in the Shindler Elevator Company case that got switched with ours, or find it through links through oyez.org or scotusblog.com. The additional reading assignment for Thursday 4/21, is to read the transcript of the oral argument, and highlight those sections of the oral argument that deal with the constitutionality of the Ashcroft policy.

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Tuesday4/19, the class did class evaluations. I returned the Flaherty case briefs, together with the Flaherty comment key, and we briefly went over those papers. We then discussed the Bohlander and Karstetter cases, going over both personal jurisdiction and full faith and credit. The assignment for Thursday 4/21 is to read and prepare to discuss pp. 152-171 of the text (skipping over the pages that we've previously covered).