January 29, 2014

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 1/29, I first went over the U.S. Supreme Court case,, Brown v. EMA, that followed the textbook decision. We went over all four of the opinions in that Supreme Court case. We also looked at how the majority decision used the narrow tailoring portion of the hurdle to find the California law both underinclusive and overinclusive. We then began our journey through the Glucksberg opinion and case brief, getting to Washington's contention on appeal. We briefly discussed three types of institutional conflicts in our system: individual rights v. government, federal power v. state power, and separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers. On Friday, we will be joined in the beginning of class by Senator Anne Haskell, assistant majority leader of the Maine Senate. We will then continue with our briefing of Glucksberg. The assignment for Friday 1/31 is continue working on your Glucksberg case brief.


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Wednesday 1/29 Jim Tierney talked to the class about both Pete Seeger's stand before HUAC, and the present Supreme Court case of restrictions on ant-abortion protests, as examples of civil liberties questions. The assignment for Friday 1/31 is read the Abrams case in the text.


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Wednesday 1/29 we worked through the mechanics of the Massachusetts law, and then looked at the ways in which McCullen argued that this law was distinguishable from the Colorado law in Hill. We talked about the argument that the Mass. law was content-based, both in viewpoint and in subject-matter. We will continue with other ways of distinguishing Hill on Friday. The additional assignment for Friday 1/31 is to read the Respondent's brief in McCullen, at least through the Summary of the Argument.