September 28, 2017

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 9/28, I distributed one handout, my version of the Speelman case brief. We first went over a case that we had briefly mentioned on Tuesday, Pavan v. Smith, in which the Supreme Court ruled on a follow-up to Obergefell about equal treatment for same-sex couples regarding birth certificates. This was another illustration of the Court's power to not only decide what the law is, but also to decide what it was that had been decided in previous cases. We went over the Speelman case and case brief, and then the Speelman hypotheticals. Along the way we discussed mandatory versus persuasive authority, and following versus distinguishing precedent.
The assignment for Tuesday 10/3 is to read in the text through p. 43, and to write out for yourself (not handed in or graded) a case brief of Katko v. Briney.


POS 383 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
In class today, Thursday 9/28, we started with the text of the taxing clause of Article I §8. I talked about a case (from the text, p. 553) that I had not assigned, Stewart Machine v. Davis, and its interpretation of the use of Congressional spending as it relates to coercion of the states. We then went through South Dakota v. Dole and NFIB v. Sebelius, and saw how the test for coercion got created in Dole, and applied in NFIB.
The assignment for Tuesday 10/3 is to continue working on Assignment #1 (due Thursday 10/5) and to read in the text pp. 399-407 (preemption) and to read the constitution itself, at least up to the Bill of Rights.