September 23, 2008

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Tuesday 9/23, we began by finishing up the Katko case with a discussion of how the dissenting opinion differed from the majority. We then looked at the Maine criminal statute regarding justification for using force to defend your place, or your possessions. We went through the beginning of a case brief of the Suggs case. On Thursday, we will finish our discussion of Suggs, and then go on to Chapter 2 of the text. The assignment for Thursday 9/25 is to read and prepare to discuss through p. 79 of the text.

CMJ 375--Mass Media Law
In class today, Tuesday 9/23, we began by finishing up the four categories of personal injury liability, and discussed from the textbook the Hitman case, the two Soldier of Fortune cases, and the Planned Parenthood case. We went over the concept of jury nullification, and the concept of summary judgement. We began our discussion of defamation by seeing how that tort differed from other torts, and then discussed the New York Times v. Sullivan case that began the process of infusing 1st Amendment law into state law defamation cases.The assignment for Thursday 9/25 is to read and prepare to discuss through p. 130 of the text, and to read the Milkovich case on p. 77 of the casebook.