November 16, 2010

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Tuesday 11/16, I distributed one handout, the next case brief assignment, which is reproduced below. We started into the concepts of Chapter 4 of the text. I talked about a U.S. Supreme Court case, Burch v. Louisiana, which limited the rights of states to reduce the size and unanimity of juries in felony trials. We compared the federal and Maine requirements for jury size and unanimity. We discussed subject matter jurisdiction and the Edwards case from the text, and we will pick up with the Bohlander case on p. 162. The assignment for Thursday 11/18 is to start on the case brief assignment.

Assignment due Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The assignment is to do a Case Brief of the case of Commerce Bank and Trust v. Dworman, 2004 ME 142, 861 A.2d 662 . The case 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 “2004 Opinions”

--select 2004 ME 142, Commerce Bank v. Dworman.

Brief all of the issues that you determine that the Court ruled on.

Follow the format from the Sample Briefs that I’ve distributed. Note especially that the Facts, Issues, and Holding are copied and pasted. Whatever you put into the Fact section should appear exactly in your Issue and Holding sections as well. Your Issue and Holding sections should be identical, except that the issue is a question, and the Holding is the answer to that question. Your briefs will be evaluated on the format, as well as the specific content.

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 11/ 23, 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. Remember to work by yourselves; do not collaborate.

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.