December 12, 2012

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 12/12, I distributed one handout, an excerpt from the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure about service of process. We finished going over the Gilmore case and the rules about removal to and remand from the federal court system, and then we went on to Chapter 5 and civil procedure. We covered the Dorsey v. Gregg case, and then I went over what the Maine Rules provide for in terms of service of process. We will continue with Chapter 5 and the previously assigned Clement case on Friday. The additional assignment for Friday 12/14 is to read and prepare to discuss through the case of Utah v. Timmermann, through p. 174 of the text. That's how far the exam on Wednesday 12/19 at 9:30 will cover.

POS 359 FEDERALISM
In class today, Wednesday 12/12, I distributed one handout, an article about the state of Vermont's efforts to regulate the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. We then went back into the preemption cases, finishing PG&E, and Cipollone. We started our review of Medtronic, going over the liberal and conservative lineups and the basic preemption claim. We will pick up on Friday at part III of Medtronic. I plan to also discuss Greier and Wyeth on Friday. The assignment for Friday 12/14 is to finish reading those cases, and to be working on your paper for Assignment #3, due 12/19.

POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Wednesday 12/12, we talked about the two gay marriage cases accepted by the Supreme Court last week. We went over the history of the California Prop. 8 case, the possibilities of either a very broad ruling on the merits, a narrow ruling on the merits, or even a narrow ruling on standing. In Windsor, the DOMA case, we talked about the interplay of federalism questions with gay rights issues, as well as both standing issues and jurisdiction issues (the ability of the federal government to be appealing the Court of Appeals decision, when they basically agreed with the merits of the decision that they appealed). On Friday 12/14, I will hand back the Jardines papers, and we will talk about other current Supreme Court issues of interest.