November 11, 2014

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Tuesday 11/11, I began with a discussion of last week's 6th Circuit opinion which for the first time had a U.S. Court of Appeals uphold the constitutionality of state laws that limit marriage to a man and a woman. We then finished our analysis of Glassford v. BrickKicker, going through the different issues that the Court tackled. We also contrasted this Vermont case with the Maine case law that we looked at last week. We began our discussion of the the Caperton case, looking at the 1927 Tumey case and what it held. We will continue with Caperton on Thursday. The additional assignment for Thursday 11/13 is to read and prepare to discuss through p. 98 of the text (NFIB v. Sebelius).


POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Tuesday 11/11, we first went over both the format and some substance of the Davis outline. That outline is due at the beginning of class on Thursday. We then talked about the October 1, 2014 Third Circuit decision of U.S. v. Katzin. We looked at how the majority and the dissenting opinions disagreed on what the holding in Davis really was. We also looked at how the 4th Amendment jurisprudence develops, both in terms of whether there's any incentive (reward) for bringing a successful 4th Amendment challenge, and whether the 4th Amendment issue even gets reached (if suppression can be decided before the substantive 4th Amendment issue). The assignment for Thursday 11/13 is to finish work on your Davis outlines, due at the beginning of class on Thursday. If for any reason you cannot be in class on Thursday, you should e-mail your paper to me by the beginning of class, and make sure that you get a confirmation that I received and could read your outline (no confirmation, no credit).