Game On

My jury trial was cancelled. Class is go.

"The Perils of Going to Law School"

Those of you considering law school should read this.

Class Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 25

This is for both classes. I have been called for jury duty for College Station Municipal Court for Tuesday. As of now, the trial is scheduled to proceed. I will know after 6:00PM tonight I will be able to confirm. If so, I will have to cancel classes.

Please check back tonight for further announcements.

Real Life Establishment Clause

In class, I mentioned that our extensive treatment of the First Amendment's religion clauses reflects my personal belief that issues of free exercise and religious establishment will be increasingly important elements of our national and local political debates. A news report today on recent remarks made by Governor Perry tends to support that claim. Here is the lede:

Rick Perry, speaking on a conference call with Christian conservatives Tuesday, called the separation between church and state a false premise that is advanced by the devil.

He also said that the Obama Administration and court system are working to remove religious references from the American way of life and that is it up to “Christian warriors, Christian soldiers,” to prevent it from happening.

Agenda-Setting in Two-Dimensional Policy Spaces

Here is an old extra credit assignment I offered to students in my Intro to American Politics class. Sadly, there is no credit (extra or otherwise) for you to work the problem, but I will talk about this in class tomorrow. So, working it ahead of time might be useful.

Link to Onassis v. Christian Dior Inc.

Here is a link to the opinion in Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis v. Christian Dior-New York, Inc.

Federalist Papers Video Contest Winners

Here are the winning and runner-up entries in the Federalist Papers Video Contest. First place goes to Mason Badger, Andrea Richardson, Ben Gothman, and Kate Rowland.





Second place goes to Nathan Gutekunst, Sarah Shaffer, and Heather Fox.





I was unable to whittle the set of finalists to just five, so there are four other entries in this category.

Finalist 1: Sarah Camba, Elizabeth Tindle, Natalie Mitchell, and Natalie Marshall

Finalist 2: Hussain Al-Ismail and Ameer Al-Dagher

Finalist 3: Feliper Flores and Luis Flores

Finalist 4: Misty Canet, Luke Pyburn, Payton Duvall-Freymuller, and Jacob Ledbetter

Congratulations to you all. The entries were very good this year, and making selections was very difficult.

I am also grateful to everyone else who entered the contest. It takes a great deal of thought and effort to produce a video, and, as a group, you all showed an incredible amount of work and talent.