September 15, 2011

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Thursday 9/15, I distributed two handouts; Dearborn's fix to its parade ordinance, and Augusta's fix to theirs. We went through how the holdings of a case should lead to an identification of what is needed to fix a problem, and how Dearborn fixed the First Amendment problems cited by the Sixth Circuit. I talked about a First Circuit case, Sullivan v. Augusta, that raised many of the same issues as had been discussed in the AAC case, and we looked at the Augusta ordinance that I distributed on Tuesday. Next week we will look at how Augusta fixed the problem in their new ordinance, as well as the Bangor ordinance. In addition to looking at the new Augusta ordinance, the other assignment for Tuesday September 20 is to read in the text pp. 47-53, and to write out your own brief of Katko v. Briney (though it will not be handed in or graded).

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term
In class today, Thursday 9/15, I distributed one handout, the Supreme Court's oral argument schedule for October. We went over one case from that docket, the Reynolds case that raises the issue of standing to challenge the federal sex offender registry law. We spent most of the class watching clips from the PBS series on the Supreme Court, which ranged from John Marshall to Sandra O'Connor. The assignment for Tuesday 9/20 is to read chapters 8-9 of Burns.