October 12, 2012

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Friday 10/12, I collected the Bragg case briefs, and we spent the class period going over them. On Monday 10/15 I will return them. On Monday I will also give the class a sample test. I plan to give the first exam (open book and open note) on Friday 10/19. On Monday we will also discuss the Smith case (text p. 34) that was previously assigned. The additional reading (pp. 41-44), which we will probably not get to until Wednesday, is Suggs v. Norris, but reading that case this weekend might prevent you from having an idle weekend.


POS 359 FEDERALISM
In class today, Friday 10/12, I collected the Necessary and Proper papers, and I plan to return them on Monday. We spent the class going over the clashes that were at the heart of that assignment, and I also explained the Roberts' use and Ginsburg refutation of the Printz v. U.S. (gun control) case. The assignment for Monday 10/15 is to read Gibbons v. Ogden in the text, pp. 85-94.

POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Friday 10/12, we finished discussing Thomas's dissent in Grutter. I first gave some more background into Thomas' use of the Frederick Douglass quotation at the start of the opinion, and then we went section by section,labeling the argument made in each part of the opinion, and then the points in support of those arguments. The assignment for Monday 10/15 is to review the previously assigned Petitioner's Brief in Fisher, looking especially for those points that either derive from the Grutter dissents, or are different from them.