April 26, 2011

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term 2011
In class today, Tuesday 4/26, I first went over two Supreme Court oral arguments that are taking place this week. Both involve free speech; one is about the rights of data-mining companies to have access to prescribing information of doctors, and the other involves the rights of a local politician to be free of the conflict-of interest state rules that limit the participation of that politician when his former campaign manager turns into a lobbyist for an applicant before the city government. We then went through parts of the al-Kidd oral argument, looking for sub-issues which you should address in your papers. Those papers are due at the beginning of class on Thursday, and finishing them up is your homework.

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Tuesday 4/26, I distributed one handout, an excerpt from the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure (MRCivP) regarding service of process. I went over the final cases in Chapter 4, about the amount in controversy requirement for federal diversity jurisdiction, and then we went over the Salmon and Dorsey textbook cases. We went over the handout through MRCivP 4(d)(1), and then I also talked about two Maine Supreme Court cases, Brown v. Thaler, 2005 ME 75, and Ireland v. Carpenter, 2005 ME 98. The assignment for Thursday 4/28 is to finish reading Chapter 5 of the text, as well as the remainder of the MRCivP handout.