April 17, 2012

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Tuesday 4/17, I returned the Collins case briefs, and distributed the Comment Key to my comments on that brief. We then discussed the textbook Dempsey case. I went over the case of Montana Supreme Court case of Hardy v. Progressive Insurance, which set the stage for Dempsey's discussion of retroactive v. prospective application of a court ruling. I then went over the Maine case of Androkites v. White, which discussed how Maine deals with retroactive v. prospective application of court judgments. We went over Strunk v. Strunk, regarding lack of precedent, and Finstuen v. Crutcher, regarding Full Faith and Credit. The assignment for Thursday 4/19 is to read through p. 135 of the text.

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term
In class today, Tuesday 4/17, I distributed assignment #3, which is copied below. I talked about today's decision about qualified immunity for a person who works with the local government, but is not their employee. We also went over several aspects of the Medicaid argument part of the ACA case. The assignment for Thursday 4/19 is to begin work on assignment #3.

Assignment #3

Good news! In order to foster a more youthful outlook at the Supreme Court, Congress increased the membership of the Court to ten, and you, because of your outstanding dedication to The Law, have been chosen to be that 10th Justice.

Your first job as a new Associate Justice is to write a part of the Court’s opinion in the Affordable Care Act case. You have been given a choice about what part of the case you wish to tackle: you can either write about the constitutionality of the individual mandate, or you can choose to write about the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion.

Here are some guidelines for writing that I want you to observe:

• You should deal specifically with the issues raised by the side that is opposed to your view of the case. What’s wrong with the positions taken by the other Justices?

• You should have at least three specific references to the oral argument. Your citations to the oral argument transcript should give page and line numbers.

• If you write about the individual mandate, you should deal specifically with both issues that were presented in the case; whether Congress had power to pass the law under its Commerce Clause power, and whether Congress had power to pass the law under its taxing power.

• You should deal with other sub-issues as you locate them in the oral argument.

You should use primarily your own words, quoting only in snippets when the particular words of an exchange or a brief are crucial.

Here’s a fictitious example to demonstrate the format that I’m looking for:

This Court rejects the government’s position that the expansion of
Medicaid coverage is a permissible exercise of the power to tax for the General Welfare. At oral argument General Verrilli refused to assure this Court that the Federal government would not cut off all Medicaid funds to a state if the state chose not to participate in the expansion (17:6). The Court can think of no clearer example of impermissible coercion than the threat of such a cutoff in the Medicaid program.

The paper should be a minimum of 3 pages long, and no more than 5 pages. Brevity should be seen as an asset, not a liability. It will be due by noon on Wednesday May 2nd. You should e-mail the paper to me by that time. I will acknowledge receipt of papers--if you don’t get an acknowledgment, that means that I didn’t get the paper. See the syllabus for more information, or if you do not have the paper done on time.

The paper will not be graded on whether I agree with your analysis of how the case should be decided, but rather by how well you identify issues, evaluate them, and support your position. The paper will also be graded on how well you write English, and how clearly you organize your thoughts. Try using an outline. I encourage you to use the UM writing center to help with your English.

The work should be entirely your own, with no collaboration, and no plagiarism.