Steel Seizure Case

[John Bonine (U of O)]

This semester I decided to stop asking students to understand the Steel
Seizure case historically and to wrestle through the arguments that might be
relevant to their grandparents' lives, with a promise that it is all still
important.  Instead, I decided to teach separation of powers "upside down"
or "backward," starting with the present.

We started with the Dec. 22, 2005, letter from the Department of Justice
defending domestic spying, moved to the Prize Cases and Youngstown, and
brought Attorney General Gonzalez and VP Gore into the classroom via clips
of their Monday appearances.  We tore apart the logic in the Dec. 22 letter
and then did the same thing to the mere Constitutional assertions contained
in Larry Tribe's and the 14 professors' letters.  We briefly noted examined
Curtiss-Wright and Dames & Moore, but will now move on to Hamdi and Padilla
with a look at how various opinions have used and abused the Youngstown
categories, The Prize Cases, the Japanese internments, and C-W and D&M.

We will also examine some excerpts from the DoJ memo distributed yesterday
and the letter of the former CIA General Counsel from last week, again
looking at how they all discuss, use, or manipulate the old chestnuts.

In other words, I have decided to approach the big cases in a "look back"
mode instead of a "building blocks going forward" mode this semester.  That,
of course, is what lawyers do.

Oh, and we'll get around to Marbury and U.S. v. Nixon next week as well --
both delayed until the third week of the semester when maybe the students
will see how the issues raised in them are relevant right now, this month,
in their lives.

John Bonine
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           John E. Bonine, Professor of Law
    1221 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403 USA
                 Tel: +1 541 221 3011
                 Fax: +1 541 346 1564
              mailto:jbonine at uoregon.edu
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