November 3, 2011

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Thursday 11/3, I distributed one handout, the Maine statute saying that all crimes are codified (no common law), and the Maine statute that mandates that some people report some specific crimes. We started our discussion of the Johnson punitive damages case, and will continue with that case next Tuesday. The additional reading assignment for Tuesday 11/8 (election day--don't forget to vote) is to read through p. 121 of the text.

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term
In class today, Thursday 11/3, we started going over the U.S. Brief in the Jones case. I gave a brief history of the Katz case and its progeny. The assignment for Tuesday 11/8 is to read the case of U.S. v. Knotts, 460 US 276 (1983) and the Circuit Court decision in our case, U.S. v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544 (D.C. Cir., 2010). Both decisions are available from the Lexis database on the Fogler Library site by entering the citation of the case (e.g. "460 U.S. 276").