Consititution Day

FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington will honor 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. This eighth annual observation of Constitution Day features a docket of U.S. Supreme Court cases that discuss last term’s highlights and this term’s coming attractions. Free and open-to-the-public, this event will be presented at 11:45 a.m. Wednesday in Lincoln Auditorium, in UMF Roberts Learning Center.

Melcher will discuss five cases from the upcoming Supreme Court term, and five cases from the 2013-14 term. Among the cases to be discussed from the 2013-14 term 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 and McCullen v. Coakley, which concerned a Massachusetts law limiting protests outside of family planning clinics.

Coming cases include First Amendment cases Elonis v. US, 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 Congress in 2004. This 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. In addition to renaming the holiday “Constitution Day and Citizenship Day,” 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 event this year is sponsored by the UMF Provost’s Office, UMF Pre-Law Program and UMF Dept. of Political Science.