September 10, 2012

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Monday 9/10, I distributed one handout, a template for briefing a case. We began with a continuation of our discussion of "justice", and I went over two recent cases argued in Maine, which both had defense counsel arguing that the case against the client should be dismissed because the prosecution did not play by the rules. I then went over the way that I will use the term "common law", and the echoes of the courts of equity that survive into our current court organization. I outlined the Maine state court system. The assignment for Wednesday 9/12 is to try to fit the violent video case from the text (previously assigned) into the case brief template that I distributed today.

POS 359 FEDERALISM
In class today, Monday 9/10, I distributed one handout, an article about Paul Ryan's call to let the states decided for themselves whether to allow school prayer. We then spent most of the class going over the structure of the Bill of Rights (applicable only to the federal power) and the 14th Amendment due process clause (which applied many of those Bill of Rights prohibitions to the state power). The assignment for Wednesday 9/12 is to continue your comparison of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution.

POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Monday 9/10, we continued our discussion of the text. I spent most of the class drawing what I saw as the parallel between the Marbury v. Madison decision, and the recent Obamacare decision, in that both gave the immediate victory to the opposite side, while claiming a larger constitutional power for themselves. Since we haven't progressed that far in the text, the only reading assignment is to review the reading previously assigned in the Greenhouse book.