Political Science Homework Help

Prochnow V Prochnow

1. This case requires the Court to interpret several statutes. Which are they? The case also involves a procedural rule that differentiates the work of appellate courts from that of trial courts. What is that rule? 

2. Which factual assertions about this dispute did the trial court accept as proved? Which factual assertions did it reject? 

3. What are the social background facts at issue here? What choice did the appellate court have to make about social background facts to decide this case? 

4. Does not the majority’s decision to reject the conclusive proof of the blood tests rest on some value choices? What values do you think are involved in this case? Does the Court articulate them? Does this decision depend on a religious conviction that God can always alter nature if God wishes? Or might the Court have believed that, in the interest of giving the child any father at all, it was best to assign paternity to Robert despite science?

 5. Why was the law ambiguous in this case? 

6. Do you find that the majority or the dissenting opinion does a better job of legal reasoning? Why?

 7. How does this opinion change the law? That is, if the dissent had prevailed in this case, how would the reading of the rules of law at issue in this case change?