April 24, 2017

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Monday 4/24, I first clarified what I was looking for in Issue #2 in Gaeth. I went over how there were three strands of the due process issue: 1) whether the problem was publication only in a Lincoln County newspaper (as opposed to a Kennebec County paper); whether the problem was publication only in a Maine newspaper (as opposed to a Massachusetts newspaper: and 3) whether the problem was if service by publication was justified at all, as opposed to making further efforts to locate and serve Deacon personally in Massachusetts. I explained that, in terms of the case brief, you could choose any strand or combination of strands that you feel best reflects the Court's holding. The requirement is just that your choice must be pretty consistent with the opinion (e.g. the Court couldn't be saying that #3 alone is the holding, because they would never have talked about where notice was published if they had decided that service by publication was not proper in the first place. But whatever you decide that the holding is, you must make sure that your legal question (which needs to be as specific as possible) and winner's facts and loser's facts all match up together (i.e., no talking about Deacon as a Massachusetts resident if you think that the holding is only about which Maine county should publish the newspaper notice).
We then finished Chapter III of the text by going over Finstuen v. Crutcher. We followed that by discussing the excerpt from Obergefell that I had distributed last week. Finally I talked about the concepts of personal jurisdiction and subject matter jurisdiction.
The assignment for Wednesday 4/26, is to continue work on your Gaeth v. Deacon case brief (due this Friday 4/28) and to read in the text through p. 129 (Cheap Escape v. Haddox).


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Monday 4/24, I handed back the WWH outlines, as well as my version of the outline and my comment key to the comments that I wrote on your papers. We talked about the evaluation of pretextual reasons offered by a legislature, both in the abortion context and in the context of voter id laws. We then continued with our free exercise cases. We finished Yoder and Douglas' dissent. We talked about three cases in which the government prevailed despite high hurdles, Bob Jones, Lee, and Goldman. We then talked about the Smith case. We saw how the Court distinguished, rather than overruling, the prior cases that had subjected governmental restrictions to strict scrutiny. We will pick up on Wednesday with Scalia's view of the protection of minority rights in Smith.
The assignment for Wednesday 4/26, is to review Smith, and to read in the text through p. 131 (including Boerne v. Flores).