February 17, 2011

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term 2011
In class today, Thursday 2/17, we finished going over last part of King's brief, in which Drake argued that acceptance of the "lawfulness" standard would lead down a slippery slope of evasion of the warrant requirement. In our discussion, I also reviewed the cases of Brigham City (2006) and Fisher (2009), as a demonstration of how the slippery slope might operate in successive Supreme Court cases. We did not really get the amicus brief of the U.S., and so we will start with that brief on Tuesday. The additional reading assignment for Tuesday 2/22 is to listen to and read the Supreme Court oral argument in this case, available from the Supreme Court website and from c-span.org.

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Thursday 2/17, I began the class by announcing that the first exam in the class will be on Thursday 2/24. The exam will be open-book, open-handout, open-note (but, in each case, only your own). I gave a sample test, with four multiple choice questions. In addition to the multiple choice questions on the exam, there will also be some short answer questions. We went over several concepts that will be important for the exam, including understanding: the holding of the court; court organization; federal jurisdiction; types of authority; treatment of precedent; and citation form for both legislation and court decisions. We then began our discussion of Gregg v. Georgia, going through Justice Stewart's opinion. We will pick up next Tuesday with the dissenting opinions in Gregg, and then also discuss the previously assigned Connecticut v. Doe. The additional assignment for Tuesday 2/22 is to read the remaining case in Chapter 1 of the text, Suggs v. Norris on pp. 54-57.