September 6, 2011

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Tuesday 9/6, we began by reviewing the Maine voting residency statute that I had distributed last class. I went over some concepts that were discussed in the Introductory section of the text, including natural law, common law, and equitable relief. I went over the structure of the Maine state court system, with the Maine District Court, Maine Superior Court, and Maine Supreme Court. We began going over the Dearborn ordinance that was at the heart of the AAC v. Dearborn case. The assignment for Thursday 9/8 is to reread the AAC v. Dearborn case. Read it once to go paragraph by paragraph and decide what the role of each paragraph is--what is the Court doing in each paragraph. Read it again to decide exactly which questions the Court is answering--what issues are they dealing with. Prepare to discuss these questions, but there is no writing that will be collected.

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term
In class today, Tuesday, 9/6, I distributed one handout, excerpts from the briefs in the upcoming Douglas cases. We went over the federal and state court systems, federal jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court cert. process, and we discussed the Supremacy Clause issue in the Douglas case. The assignment for Thursday 9/8 is to read the Douglas handout, especially as it relates to the "original intent" of the Supremacy clause as discussed in the Burns book.