January 12, 2012

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Thursday 1/12, I distributed one handout, the template for the case briefs that I will be asking you to write later in the semester. We went over three concepts from the introductory part of Chapter One that I had assigned: common law (law made by Judges in the absence of enacted law); injunctive relief (as opposed to money damages); and separation of religious authority from secular law. Regarding the religious separation tradition, I went over one case that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. In that case, the Supreme Court said that certain church employees were not protected by anti-discrimination laws that otherwise would have protected employees from discrimination by their employers. I also went over the organization of the federal court system, including citation formats for all three levels of federal courts. We began our discussion of the textbook case of VSDA v. Schwarzenegger on p. 15, getting through the text of the First Amendment and the justification offered by California about why they wanted to forbid the sale of violent video games to minors. We will continue that discussion next week. The additional assignments for Tuesday January 17 are 1) to try to fit the Court of Appeals decision into the brief template that I distributed today (not handed in or graded) and to read the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the violent video case. The case was now called Electronic Merchants Assoc. v. Brown, and it can be found by going to the Supreme Court website as follows:
go to http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/opinions.aspx
select 2010 Term Opinions
select R- 81 6/27/11 08-1448 Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn.
Read all of the opinions of the various Justices.

POS 395-- The Current Supreme Court Term
In class today, Thursday 1/12, we first discussed the three articles that I had distributed on Tuesday. We went over the organization of the federal court system, and we also discussed three institutional power conflicts that were among the underlying subjects of the three articles: federal power versus state power; individual rights versus the coercive power of government; and separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. We didn't quite make it back to going over the recent Supreme Court oral arguments, but the semester is still young. The assignment for Tuesday 1/17 is to read all of the opinions in a religious freedom case that the Supreme Court decided yesterday, 1/11/12, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, which can be found at www.supremecourt.gov.