March 26, 2014

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 3/26, we went over Lawrence v. Texas. We talked about treatment of precedent, the two constitutional issues that the Court could have tackled and how they chose which one to tackle, the flow chart of questions, strict scrutiny v. rational basis review, and the role of morality in legislation. The only piece of Lawrence that we didn't get to discuss was the question of gay marriage, which is something I'll start with on Friday. The assignment for Friday 3/28 is to read through p. 75 of the text (Reardon).


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Wednesday 3/26, we went over both the O'Connor and Souter opinions in Virginia v. Black. We talked about the flow chart that R.A.V. created, and how this law fits into that flow chart. We discussed the points on which O'Connor and Souter agreed, as well as the point at which they disagreed. We also talked about the level of detail needed in the outline, and the overall length. I shared with the class that my outline for both opinions was 2 pages. The assignment for Friday 3/28 is to finish up work on your outlines, due at the beginning of class on Friday.


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Wednesday 3/26, I distributed one handout, a cartoon of what might happen if your employer's religion determines what kind of health insurance you get. We discussed whether a religious objection to doctors and standard Western medicine would necessarily fare the same as Hobby Lobby's objection to contraception. Along the way I went over the history of how we got to an employer based health insurance market, the ACA innovation of government telling employers what must be covered in the insurance plans, the biology of different methods of contraception, the role of both Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services in making the current contraceptive coverage rules, and why Hobby Lobby made a good plaintiff for the case. We talked about the acceptance of the employer's invocation of a sincerely held religious belief, and left off with the parallel question of the acceptance of the employer's invocation of how much of a burden the government is placing on the religious belief (complicity). We will begin on Friday with that question, and with the 1982 case of U.S. v. Lee. The assignment for Friday 3/28 is to read the Respondent's brief in Hobby Lobby.