April 10, 2008

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Thursday 4/10, I first distributed the assignment for next Thursday, which is copied below. We discussed the rest of the cases through the end of Chapter 4 of the text. The assignment for Tuesday 4/15 is to read and prepare to discuss through page 204 of the text, as well as to begin work on the assignment below.


Assignment due Thursday, April 17, 2008

The assignment is to do two abbreviated case briefs: the first is of the case of Brown v. Thaler, 2005 ME 75 and the second is of Ireland v. Carpenter, 2005 ME 98. The cases can be found on the website of the Maine Supreme Court.
To access the case, go to

http://www.courts.state.me.us/opinions/supreme/index.html

--select “2005 Opinions”

--select 2005 ME 75, Brown v. Thaler
--select 2005 ME 98, Ireland v. Carpenter

For the Ireland case, only brief Section II (B) of the opinion, “Service on Loyen”. Just to clarify what I understand to be the situation, Loyen and Carpenter share a duplex house, which means that there are two different addresses on the house, one for each half of the duplex.

What I mean by ”abbreviated case brief” is that I want you to do only the Citation, Parties, Appellant’s Contentions, Facts, Issues, and Holdings. Your briefs will be evaluated on the format, as well as the specific content.

These are both cases in which the brief is more useful if you utilize an “even though...” portion of the Issues, and Holdings (and include any facts used there in your Facts section). This means that you include the opposite argument (opposite to what the Court holds) to show what the other (losing) side was arguing. For example: “Under the rules of our class, may a student make cell phone calls during the class when such calls are disruptive, even though there was no specific prohibition on such calls in the syllabus.” The “Facts” would include both “ such calls are disruptive” and “there was no specific prohibition on such calls in the syllabus”.

Please make two copies of your brief, one to hand in at the beginning of class, and the other for you to have during class for our discussion.

You may e-mail me if you have questions about the brief. The more time that I have to answer our questions, the more likely it is that I can be helpful.

If you cannot be in class on Thursday 4/17, you should still e-mail me your brief by the beginning of class time. If you do that, you will not have any grade deducted from your grade for the brief. If you do not, you should still contact me as soon as possible to see what options are available to you. (Generally, I do not want to accept assignments after we have discussed them in class). See the Syllabus for the class rules regarding late papers.

IMPORTANT: If you e-mail your brief to me, I will reply to confirm that I have received your assignment. If I do not reply, then I have not received the assignment.

CMJ 375--Mass Media Law
In class today, Thursday 4/10, we continued going over the concepts in Chapter 7 of the text. We were discussing "Access to Proceedings", and will continue with that section and the rest of the Chapter on Tuesday. The assignment for Tuesday 4/15 is to review and prepare to discuss through the end of Chapter 7 of the text.