April 18, 2019

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 4/18, we began by going over the Caperton case. We looked at the tests for recusal proposed by Justice Benjamin, and then how the Court had a different test for when recusal was mandatory. Having created a test, the Court then defined what the test required in the circumstances of this case. Having defined the circumstances, the Court then applied that definition to the actual facts of the this case. I then went over a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court case, Williams v. Pennsylvania, in which the Court had to decide what circumstances required recusal of a justice of the state supreme court when that justice had previously been the District Attorney in the prosecution of the same defendant now appearing before the state supreme court. We then moved on to Chapter 3 of the text, and began our discussion of NFIB v. Sebelius. We went over how Congress (unlike the state legislatures) needs a particular grant of power in order to legislate in an area, and how the Court, although rejecting the interstate commerce clause as that grant, did agree that the taxing power worked as the source of the power. (We also discussed recent developments about the repeal of the tax.) We will pick up next Tuesday with the analysis of why the interstate commerce clause was rejected, as well as look at the dissents from that part of the opinion.
The assignment for Tuesday 4/23 is to review NFIB v. Sebelius, and to read in addition through p. 109 of the text (including Butler and Dempsey).


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Thursday 4/18, I first collected the Rucho papers. I hope that I'll be able to grade them this weekend, and to return them on Tuesday. For Rucho, we discussed what the Court is likely to do with the case, as well as what the class thought that it should do.
I then distributed three handouts from the census case, Dept. of Commerce v. N.Y.: the Commerce brief, the N.Y. brief, and the Commerce Reply brief. I went over the layout of that that case.
The assignment for Tuesday 4/23 is to read the 3 handouts from today. The oral argument in the case is scheduled for the morning of Tuesday 4/23.