April 9, 2014

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 4/9, we began by going over the Gonzales v. Raich dissent. We went back to Part V of the Stevens opinion, in which he sent the substantive due process claim and the medical necessity defense back to the Court of Appeals. We discussed Raich v. Gonzales, the Court of Appeals decision on remand that dealt with those two issues. We also talked about how, given the Court's upholding of Congressional interstate commerce power, there still are openly operating marijuana dispensaries. We the went over the 2012 Supreme Court decision in NFIB v. Sebelius, in which the Supreme Court ruled on whether Congress' power over interstate commerce allowed it to impose the individual mandate to be covered by health insurance. We looked at the different views on the Court about this, and we also discussed it in terms of holdings and dictum. We talked about federal supremacy, and about ex post facto prohibitions. We will begin with the Butler case (p.103) on Friday. The additional assignment for Friday 4/11 is to read in the text pp. 108-112 (Strunk) (skipping over Dempsey, p. 106, as it's too hard to follow).


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Wednesday 4/9, I distributed three handouts: the questions presented in the Drake cert petition, an op-ed piece about the Drake case, and New Jersey's Brief in Opposition to the Cert Petition. I first mentioned my plan to assign the second paper on 4/18, to be due 4/25 (tentative). We talked about the policies involved in gun control in light of today's school stabbings in Pennsylvania. We discussed the Drake Cert Petition, including the process of granting cert, the New Jersey law at issue, and picking a good plaintiff. We looked at Scalia's statement in Heller about prohibitions on the carrying of concealed weapons, and discussed what that statement might mean. The assignment for Friday 4/11 is to read the handouts regarding questions presented, the op-ed piece, and pp. 1-4 (at least) of the Opposition to the Cert Petition.


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Wednesday 4/9, I first clarified that, for the six specific prohibitions that are a part of the Free Exercise assignment, all those laws (including the one against kosher and halal butchering) are written as laws of general applicability. They do not name and single out any specific religious practice as being prohibited. I then started talking about the background to the recent McCutcheon v. FEC Supreme Court decision. I went over the 1907 Tillman Act and how some corporations welcomed it. We talked about the first disclosure laws. We went over the 1971 FECA, and then Watergate in 1972, and the 1974 amendments. We finished with the 1976 case of Buckley v. Valeo. That case differentiated contribution limits (constitutional,and subject to intermediate scrutiny) from spending limits (subject to strict scrutiny, and unconstitutional). We will continue on from there on Friday. The assignment for Friday 4/11 is to finish up work on your Free Exercise paper, due at the beginning of class on Friday.