October 15, 2012

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Monday 10/15, I distributed two handouts, my version of the Bragg case brief, and the Key to my Comments on your Bragg briefs. I returned your Bragg case briefs, and we went over some of the more frequent comments. I then gave the class a sample test, in preparation for the Friday open-book, open-note test. The assignment for Wednesday 10/17 is to read and prepare to discuss the remaining two cases in Chapter 1 of the text, Smith (p. 34) and Suggs (p. 42).

POS 359 FEDERALISM
In class today, Monday 10/15, I handed back the Necessary and Proper papers, and we briefly talked about them. We then started our next major section, the Commerce Clause, by discussing Gibbons v. Ogden. We went over the idea of strict construction, and then the definitions of "commerce", "among" and "regulate". In that last section, we did not get to the concept of the "dormant" commerce clause power, which is where we pick up on Wednesday. The additional assignment for Wednesday 10/17 is to read pp. 279-291 of the text.


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Monday 10/15, we started out discussion of Petitioner's Brief in Fisher. Specifically we looked at how Fisher tried to distinguish Grutter in terms of "compelling interest"and also in the creation of a "necessary" hurdle. We will continue with the discussion about narrow tailoring on Wednesday. The additional assignment for Wednesday 10/17 is to read and prepare to discuss the Respondents's Brief in Fisher, available through the supremecourt.gov website.