November 3, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 11/3, I began by recounting the further adventures of Caperton v. Massey after the U.S. Supreme Court decision. I went over how West Virginia tossed the case out based on the forum selection clause in the contract, and how the Virginia trial court then tossed the case out based on res judicata, a ruling that was then overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court. I then went over the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Williams v. Pennsylvania, in which the Supreme Court ruled on whether the due process clause requires recusal of a justice who had earlier participated in a case as the district attorney. We went over the holding in Williams, the alignment of the Justices, and the two dissenting opinions. I then discussed a Maine Supreme Court case, Board of Overseers of the Bar v. Warren, which discussed the application of the Maine Bar Rule that requires a lawyer to report when another lawyer is dishonest. We discussed the difference between an objective versus a subjective standard of evaluation. We moved on to Chapter 3 of the text. We began our discussion of NFIB v. Sebelius by going over the text of the constitution, the difference between interstate versus intrastate commerce, and the necessary and proper clause. We talked about dictum, and the other (non-commerce clause) issues in the case. We generally discussed the concept of forcing people into commerce, versus regulating existing commerce. We will continue NFIB,and the specific issues addressed, next Tuesday. The assignment for Tuesday 11/8 is to review NFIB, and to read in the text through p. 110 (Butler and Dempsey).