Thursday, September 25, 2008

September 25, 2008

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Thursday 9/25, we finished going the Suggs case. and began our discussion in Chapter 2 of the Gregg case. I distributed the first homework assignment, due Tuesday October 7, and is copied below. On Tuesday September 30, the class will watch the first part of the PBS series about the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. The reading assignment for Thursday October 2 is to read through the Holland case which starts on p. 79 of the text.

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW Sol Goldman September 25, 2008

Assignment due Tuesday, October 7, 2008

The assignment is to do a Case Brief of the case of Goss v. Lopez. The case can be found on the website of our textbook.

To access the case, go to

http://college.hmco.com/pic/schubert9e

select “student companion site”

select “general resources”

select “additional cases”

select “Chapter 1”

select “Goss v. Lopez”

The Brief should be in exactly the format used in the Sample Brief Template distributed in class, and the two Case Briefs distributed (Glucksberg and Klatko).

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 Tuesday 10/7, 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 paper 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 9/25, we continued discussing the elements of defamation. I distributed the first homework assignment, due Thursday October 2, and which is copied below. On Tuesday September 30, the class will watch an interview of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee with PBS's Jim Lehrer.

CMJ 375 Assignment #1 Sol Goldman September 25, 2008

This assignment is due at the beginning of class on Thursday, October 2, 2008

First, read in the textbook through p. 148, and read the Connaughton case on p. 68 of the casebook.

Assume that you are the assistant editor for the Maine Campus newspaper. The editor has received a Letter to the Editor, and is wondering whether the paper can get in trouble for publishing this letter. Knowing of your keen interest in and understanding of the law of defamation, the editor has asked you to write him a memo regarding the question of whether publishing this letter appears to be defamatory. The editor knows almost nothing about the law, and so you are trying to explain to him the law involved, how it applies to this letter, and any recommendations that you have about how the paper should proceed.

You should first read the letter carefully, (ignore the fact that it was in fact published) and spot which exact parts of the letter might be most problematic regarding potential defamation.

You should then address each one of the six elements of the tort of defamation (as outlined on pages 113-114). Some of the elements won’t require more than a sentence; others will need more explanation.

Your memo has the task of explaining the law (like the Milkovich case) to your editor, and analyzing what legal questions would be asked, and your analysis of how they would be answered. You do this by comparing your situation with the situation of the case that you are explaining.

You should specifically address three thorny issues:
¶ defamation by implication,
¶ the practical standard for how “malice” is shown as discussed in the Connaughton case
¶ dealing with “opinion” as discussed in the Milkovich case.

In addition to comparing your facts to those of the cases in the text and casebook, and analyzing how the similarities and any differences would affect your potential liability, you should specifically give any recommendations that you might have regarding what work the paper might do before publishing the letter. (An example: “In this case, these were the words used. In our case, these are the words used. Our case has greater potential liability because...We could reduce our exposure by...as explained by this statement in this case.”).

You can assume that the officers in question are public figures--(University of Maine Police, unlike some campus security agencies, are empowered to make arrests without calling in the local police force). Assume that the officers would claim that the allegations and implications are false and that the officers are injured in their jobs and reputations by the letter. But also assume that the editor wants to publish controversial material, doesn’t want to just play it safe, and wants to go right up to the line of what’s permissible to publish.

If there are questions that you would need to find out the answers to in order to figure out if the paper would be on the hook, you should let the editor know what the question would be , and how the answer would affect your analysis of whether the letter is ok to publish.



Work by yourself (not collaboratively); use your own language ; use short quotations where appropriate, but just snippets-your editor has little patience for legalese; and write in good English (you are a reporter, after all). The memo should be about 2-3 pages long.

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

Since I will not be in class on Tuesday 9/30, I will post any general clarifications on the class blog (goldmanmaine.blogspot.com) and, Even if you have been in class, you should check the blog to see if there have been any such clarifications.


If you cannot be in class on Thursday 10/2, you should still e-mail me your paper by the beginning of class time. If you do that, you will not have any grade deducted from your grade for the paper. If you do not, you should still contact me as soon as possible to see what options are available to you.

IMPORTANT: If you e-mail your paper 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.

If you have not received a copy of the Letter to the Editor itself you should
1) go to http://www.mainecampus.com/ 2) click the link to “Back Issues” 3) click the link to February 7, 2008 4) Under “Soap Box” click the link to “Public safety officers risk loss of students' trust with secretive Facebook accounts”

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