September 21, 2012

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Friday 9/21, I distributed one handout, an opinion piece about assisted suicide. We finished with the Brown v. EMA Supreme Court opinions, going over Justice Alito's concurring opinion, and then the Justice Thomas and the Justice Breyer dissents. Then we got a brief start on the Glucksberg case brief, getting only as far as the first segments of the "Parties" category. We will continue with the Glucksberg case brief on Monday. The assignment for Monday 9/24 is to continue working on the Glucksberg case brief.

POS 359 FEDERALISM
In class today, Friday 9/21, we finished our discussion of MCCullough v. Maryland. We went through the various arguments made by Maryland both about the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the taxing power of the state. The assignment for Monday 9/24 is to read and prepare to discuss the United States v. Comstock (pp. 485-496 of the text). In your reading, be prepared to go paragraph by paragraph to put into English the argument that's being made, and the answer that's being given by the various Justices.

POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Friday 9/21, I distributed two handouts: one was an article by Linda Greenhouse discussing how Constitution Day may be unconstitutional under the June Affordable Care Act decision, and the other was the Official Ballot for the case that the class will tackle. After some explanation of the different cases in the Court's October Term, the class chose the case of Fisher v. University of Texas for "our" case. The assignment for Monday September 24th is to read the case that supplies the grounds on which Fisher will be argued, Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 US 306 (2003). You can Google the case for a number of sites on which the decision is reported. One that I find particularly useful is the Cornell University site (Legal Information Institute) as it separates out the various opinions. Read for Monday at least Justice O'Connor's majority opinion, although we will get eventually get to all of the opinions.