October 28, 2008

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Tuesday 10/28, I should have, but didn't, remind the class that the Maine Supreme Court will be at Peakes auditorium at Bangor High School tomorrow Wednesday 10/29, starting oral arguments at 9:45, and the public can attend. I did remind the class that I will assign a new casebrief on Thursday (10/30) which will be due a week later (11/6). We began our discussion of Chapter 3, and I gave two charts that I thought might be helpful in terms of the power relationships within our governmental structures. We discussed the Gonzalez v. Raich case, and I added a discussion of a more recent case, Gonzalez v. Oregon. The assignment for Thursday 10/30 is to read up to the Strunk case on p. 136 of the text.

CMJ 375--Mass Media Law
In class today, Tuesday 10/28,we began our discussion of Chapter 5 of the text. I talked about 3 Maine cases regarding the right of privacy, Berthiaume v. Pratt, Nelson v. Maine Times, and Muratore v. Scotia Prince. We went over appropriation, and got part-way through public disclosure of private facts. We discussed the McNamara case from the casebook, but did not get to the Diaz case, which is where we'll start on Thursday. The assignment for Thursday 10/30 is to read pp. 187- 198 of the text, and to read the Shulman case on p. 110 of the casebook.