December 3, 2015

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 12/3, I distributed one handout, the Maine Long-Arm statute. We talked about the Walden case brief (due next Thursday) in terms of citation form, cause of action, and especially the argument of the Plaintiffs as to why Nevada should have jurisdiction. In that context, I read the class an excerpt from the Calder case that's discussed in Walden, and we also looked at the language of the Maine Long-Arm statute. We then went through the Swoboda case, and put it into the format of our case brief. The assignment for Tuesday 12/8 is to continue working on the Walden case brief, and to read in the text pp. 123-129 (subject matter jurisdiction).



POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Thursday 12/3, we first finished off our discussion of Casey. We talked about the flow chart of Casey, the two prongs of "undue burden", and the line between making things a little more difficult versus making them a lot more difficult. We also matched up the concurrences and dissents to figure what became the law of the land with shifting majorities of the Court. We then compared the WWH v. Cole statement of the questions presented in the clinic's Petition versus the state's Opposition, as each side tried to position itself as the correct interpreter of Casey. We did a little vote counting, and speculated about the role of Justice Kennedy. We left off in the Cert. Petition with the question of how, according to the clinic, the ASC requirement left abortion clinics in a more restrictive regulatory world than ASCs themselves. That's the point at which we'll pick up next week. The assignment for Tuesday 12/8 is to review both the Cert. Petition and the Brief in Opposition, looking especially for the points at which the two sides clash with each other.