January 29, 2015

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 1/29, we first finished of our discussion of Miller, looking especially at how Roberts' dissent differed from Thomas' dissent. We talked about how they differed in the basic question of what questions to ask in order to figure out the meaning of the words of the constitution. We then looked at the Maine statutes regarding sentencing and binding-over of juveniles. I went over correct Maine citation format for statutes, including titles, sections, sub-sections, paragraphs, and sub-paragraphs. We then turned our attention to the 14th Amendment, starting with the text. We discussed the dismal fate in the Supreme Court of the privileges and immunities clause and the equal protection clause, and the creation of "substantive" due process. We will begin our discussion of Glucksberg (previously assigned) on Tuesday. The assignment for Tuesday 2/3, is to try to put Glucksberg into the format of the case brief template (not handed in or graded).


POS 383 AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
In class today, Thursday 1/29, I distributed one handout, a short article about the constitutionality of the House Speaker's invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to speak to Congress (or is this a power reserved to the executive?). We then went back and finished our discussion of the Elonis "true threat" case, and compared the federal statute with the Maine statute outlawing criminal threatening. We then visited the 4th Amendment, and the current Supreme Court case of Rodriguez v. U.S., in which the Supreme Court will decided on the constitutionality of a traffic stop that is prolonged solely for the purpose of bringing in drug-sniffing dogs. Finally, we talked about the current Supreme Court case that asks whether Oklahoma's cocktail of lethal injections works so poorly that it violates the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments. The assignment for Tuesday 2/3 is to read in the Epstein textbook pp. 325-345.