November 5, 2015

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 11/5, we began by putting the issue in Lawrence v. Texas into the format of our case brief. We then worked through the three issues dealt with in the Glassford home inspection case, also using the case brief format. I discussed two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases regarding class actions and arbitration, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant. We also looked at the arbitration clause just presented to me by my credit card company. The assignment for Tuesday 11/10 is to review Caperton (previously assigned) and to read in the text through p. 96 (NFIB v. Sebelius).


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Thursday 11/5, we began by reviewing Stevens' opinion in Hill. We looked specifically at his argument that there exists a right to be let alone, and discussed how that might play out in the context of the Bible Believers. We went through Scalia's dissent in Hill, and his third category of content-based restrictions (in addition to viewpoint-based and subject-matter based, type-of-speech based). We also looked at his analysis of narrow-tailoring. We also looked at how Kennedy's dissent differed from Scalia's. I then talked to the class about the 2014 Supreme Court case of McCullen v. Coakley. This fractured but unanimous decision overturned the Massachusetts abortion clinic buffer zone. We looked at the majority opinion by Roberts in terms of both content-neutrality and narrow tailoring. We looked at Scalia's concurrence, which refused to join Roberts in the narrow tailoring part, but criticized Roberts both for the fact of doing a content-neutrality analysis, and the substance of that analysis. I will finish McCullen next week with Alito's separate concurrence. The assignment for Tuesday 11/10 is to review R.A.V. (previously assigned) and to continue work on your Bible Believers paper, due Thursday 11/12.