April 21, 2011

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term 2011
In class today, Thursday 4/21, I briefly went over yesterday's Supreme Court decision in Sossamon v. Texas, regarding waiver of sovereign immunity. We then went through Ashcroft's Reply Brief, once again labeling the sub-sections of the brief, and also filling in some of the substance within those sections. We also tied some of those arguments in the briefs to questions asked and positions taken during the oral argument. I've already assigned the oral argument in this case, and so review it (looking for where the argument deals specifically with our corner of the case). Other than that, the assignment is to continue working on the previously assigned paper, which is due Thursday 4/28 at the beginning of class.

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Thursday 4/21, we went over the Edwards case and the Ruhrgas case from the textbook. I also discussed two Maine Supreme Court cases, Landmark Realty v. Leasure, 2004 ME 85, and Hawley v. Murphy, 1999 ME 127, and one U.S. Supreme Court case, Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 207 (2007). These cases dealt with various aspects of the concept of subject-matter jurisdiction. Next Tuesday I will talk a little about the subject of the last two cases in Chapter 4, the amount in controversy requirement for federal court diversity jurisdiction. The assignment for Tuesday 4/26 is to read in the text pp. 189-204.