April 16, 2019

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Tuesday 4/16, I passed back the Pagnani case briefs, as well as distributing my version of the case brief, and the Comment Key to my comments on your case briefs. After a few comments on the case brief, we went over Glassford v.BrickKicker. Among the subjects we covered were arbitration clauses and exculpatory clauses, substantive and procedural unconscionability, and severability. I then talked about a recent U.S. Supreme Court case, Epic Systems v. Lewis, in which the Court dealt with different interpretations of the Federal Arbitration Act and its relationship to the National Labor Relations Act.
The assignment for Thursday 4/18 is to read through p. 96 of the text,including both Caperton v. Massey Coal (p. 79) and NFIB v. Sebelius (p. 93).


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Tuesday 4/16, we first decided that exam #2 will be on Tuesday 4/30. I also clarified that the final paragraph of the paper really asks only for clumps of Justices that would join together, rather than actual majorities, concurrences and dissents, as there are only 8 Justices that you're considering, and even within those eight, you're only looking at the two interactions that you've included. I tried to clarify several case references in the Rucho oral argument that you might want to know about. We reviewed the case of the Arizona Legislature v. Arizona Redistricting Commission. In terms of the burden-shifting (e.g. 40:14) I went over the 1977 case of Mt Healthy v. Doyle. And in terms of picking numbers out of a hat, as Breyer suggests at 19:10, I went over the 2014 case of NLRB v. Noel Canning, in which Breyer picked numbers out of a hat in order to define when a "recess" of the Senate was long enough in order to allow a Presidential recess appointment.
The assignment for Thursday 4/18 is to finish work on your Rucho paper, due at the beginning of class on Thursday 4/18.