November 28, 2012

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 11/28, we first went over some questions about the Quirion case brief due Friday, mainly having to do with the reminder that some parts of the brief are different when the opinion is that of a trial court, rather than an appellate court. We then finished up our discussion of Full Faith and Credit, comparing and contrasting the decisions in Finstuen and Adar, and figuring out as much as we can in terms of how Maine's statute would deal with issuing new birth certificates to out-of-state adoptions by gay and lesbian couples. We moved on to Chapter 4 and the concept of subject-matter jurisdiction. We looked at two cases, Landmark Realty v. Leasure from the Maine Supreme Court, and Bowles v. Russell from the U.S. Supreme Court, that took contrary positions regarding the definition of what constitutes subject-matter jurisdiction. We began laying out what happened in the Cheap Escape case, and will continue with that case on Friday. The assignment for Friday 11/30 is 1) finish the Quirion case brief, due at the beginning of class, 2) review Cheap Escape, and 3)read and prepare to discuss Robey v. Hinners, through p. 134 of the text.

POS 359 FEDERALISM
In class today, Wednesday 11/28, I distributed three handouts: one more news article about fracking, and two news articles about wind power in Maine. We continued our discussion of the Robertson article, concentrating on concepts such as competition between states, states rights, antagonism toward business collusion, no-man's land in regulation, and corporate campaign contributions. We also watched competition in action by playing the gas station price game. We will continue on Friday with a discussion of fracking, wind power, and federalism, taken from the handouts, which you should read and prepare to discuss.

POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Wednesday 11/28, we continued analyzing the oral argument to tease out the distinct issues that were raised. I then took one of those issues, whether there is a trespass in this case, and looked at the decision earlier this year in the case of Jones v. U.S.. In that case, the Court unanimously held that the government's use of a GPS device constituted a search, but the Court was deeply divided about why this was a search. They did not reach the additional question of whether this search required probable cause (as opposed to reasonable suspicion) and, if probable cause is required, whether a warrant is required. I plan to distribute the Jardines assignment on Friday, with the paper due on Friday 12/7. The assignment for Friday 11/30 is to reread the oral argument, and also to take the list of issues that we've generated and to form them into a more coherent list that can be used as issues that a Justice might confront in writing a decision in Jardines.