FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington will observe Constitution Day with a U.S. Supreme Court case review by Jim Melcher, UMF professor of political science and adviser for the UMF pre-law program.
Free and open to the public, the eighth annual Constitution Day will be presented at 11:45 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 17, in the Lincoln Auditorium at UMF Roberts Learning Center. Melcher will discuss five cases from the upcoming Supreme Court term, and five cases from the 2013-14 term:
The 2013-14 cases are:
• Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act.
• Riley v. California, on police searches of cellphones
• McCutcheon v. Federal Elections Commission, on aggregate campaign donation limits
• McCullen v. Coakley, which concerned a Massachusetts law limiting protests outside of family planning clinics.
Upcoming First Amendment cases are Elonis v. United States, Holt v. Hobbs, and Department of Homeland Security v. MacLean.
Opinions on last term’s cases can be found at www.supremecourtus.gov.
Previously known as Citizenship Day, Constitution Day was created by an act of Congress in 2004. The federal holiday was revised to recognize not only those who have become U.S. citizens, but also the ratification of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787. The act mandates that all publicly funded educational institutions provide educational programming on the history of the American Constitution on that day.
UMF’s Constitution Day is sponsored by the UMF Provost’s Office, UMF Pre-Law Program and UMF Department of Political Science.
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