January 31, 2014

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Friday 1/31, we first had the pleasure of having Senator Anne Haskell address the class on the topic of the Legislative/Court(constitution) interaction. After that, we returned to Glucksberg, going through both the question of how the asserted right is described ("carefully") and then whether that right is "fundamental". We will pick up again on Monday 2/3 in Glucksberg with the question of whether precedent supplies a different answer to the question of whether the asserted right is fundamental, and the assignment for Monday is simply to refine your Glucksberg case brief, as well as to be able to describe what Justice Souter's view is of how the case should be decided.


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Friday 1/31, we discussed the Abrams case. We started with the historical background of the case. We went over how questions of "substantial evidence" differ from questions of "law". We went over the history of these crucial months of 1919 between Schenck and Abrams, for Justice Holmes, and the ways in which the Holmes dissent in Abrams was and was not consistent with the opinion in Schenck. The assignment for Monday 2/3 is to read through p. 211 of the text.


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Friday 1/31, we finished going over McCullen's brief, and began our discussion of the State's brief. We discussed Coakley's brief in terms of Stevens' Hill opinion. We will go through the Mass. rebuttal of McCullen's positions point by point on Monday (viewpoint neutrality, subject-matter neutrality, narrow tailoring, alternatives). The additional assignment for Monday 2/3 is to listen to and read the oral argument in this case. You can access both at the supremecourt.gov site, but you can have them simultaneously at the oyez.org site. Also, I told the class that I plan to distribute the first written assignment on Monday 2/3, to be due 2/10.