December 4, 2018

POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Tuesday 12/4, I distributed one handout, Thomas' dissenting opinion in Whole Woman's Health. The class voted that when we have our 75 minute exam number 2 on Tuesday 12/18, we will begin at 9:30 and end at 10:45. I also urged all students to fill out the online evaluations that have been sent to your emails. We finished up our discussion of Casey by going over the Blackmun, Stevens, Rehnquist and Scalia opinions. We then turned to Breyer's opinion in Whole Woman's Health. We got as far as ¶14, in which Breyer discussed what was wrong with the legal standard used by the Court of Appeals. We will pick up at that point on Thursday.
The assignment for Thursday 12/6 is to review Breyer's opinion in Whole Woman's Health, and then read Thomas' dissent that was distributed today.


POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Tuesday 12/4, the class voted that when we have our 75 minute exam number 2 on Thursday 12/20, we will begin at 9:30 and end at 10:45. I also urged all students to fill out the online evaluations that have been sent to your emails. I talked about a textbook case that I had not assigned, Strunk v. Strunk, that raised the question of what a court is to do when there is no precedent on point to help the court decide a difficult common law question. We then went to today's assigned cases, Hubbard v. Greeson and Land v. Yamaha. We talked about how the forum state (the state where the case is brought) follows its own choice of laws rule to determine which state's substantive law applies. In Hubbard, we saw how the Indiana Supreme Court changed its choice of laws rule, much to the detriment of the plaintiff. In Land v. Yamaha, we saw how the federal district court in diversity cases applies the choice of law rules of the state in which the federal court sits to determine which state's substantive law applies. The federal court ending up applying Indiana choice of law rules to then apply the substantive Indiana Statute of Repose, again much to the detriment of the plaintiff.
The assignment for Thursday 12/6 is to read in the text from p. 116 to 129 (including Finstuen v. Crutcher and Cheap Escape v. Haddox).