March 31, 2014

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Monday 3/31, I distributed one handout, the Maine statute regarding ski resort liability and a release used by some of Maine's ski resorts. We went through the Reardon case, and then looked at three Maine cases about the public policy of enforcing releases: Doyle v. Bowdoin College, Emery Waterhouse v. Lea, and Hardly v. St. Clair. We then looked at the operation of the Maine statutes regarding liability for both horse riding stables and ski resorts. The assignment for Wednesday 4/2 is to read and prepare to discuss through p. 80 of the text, Caperton v. Massey Coal.


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Monday 3/31, I handed back the Black outlines, and I also distributed my own version of the outline. I first drew Venn diagrams of possibilities of exactly how O'Connor saw this case: as all cross burnings being threats (and therefore within Scalia's exceptions), or as some cross burnings not being threats (as Souter had said) but with those ideological cross-burnings being not covered by the statute. We then turned our attention to Snyder v. Phelps. I went over the history of the Supreme Court extension of free speech protection to state common law torts like defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. We talked about N.Y. Times v. Sullivan and its progeny, and the reach of First Amendment protection to matters of public concern. We will continue with Snyder v. Phelps on Wednesday. Also today, the class voted on our future direction in terms of civil liberties studies. The class voted to move on to Second Amendment issues; therefore, the assignment for Wednesday 4/2 is to read Chapter 9 of the text (pp. 387 - 396).


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Monday 3/31, I began with a brief synopsis of the recent Supreme Court argument regarding patent protection for certain computer software. We then returned to Hobby Lobby. We concentrated on the first threshhold issue in the case, whether for-profit corporations can exercise religion. We looked at how Ginsburg used the unanimity of the RFRA vote to suggest that Congress couldn't have intended to include for-profits. We also discussed how the issue of who decides the religious conviction of a corporation got discussed, as well as whether a court can question the sincerity of the religious conviction of a corporation. We also looked at Roberts' suggestion to limit this case to closely-held corporations. Behind most of the questioning was the question of how often for-profits might end up using the religious objection to claim exemption from many laws. The assignment for Wednesday 4/2 is to go through the oral argument again and find how the question of whether the contraceptive coverage represents a "substantial burden" was discussed.