February 7, 2012

POS 282--Introduction to American Law
In class today, Tuesday 2/7, I distributed one handout, my version of the Katko v. Briney case brief. We began by finishing our discussion from last week of the Smith case. I talked about the aftermath of the Smith case in Idaho. I also discussed one Supreme Court case regarding what process is due, the school suspension case of Goss v. Lopez. I stressed that the "Issue" in my case brief format should be in the form of "Under (law) A, is there (the legal question) B, when (the circumstances are) C". We began going through the case brief for Katko, getting as far as Appellant's Contentions. We will finish Katko on Thursday. The additional assignment for Thursday 2/9 is to finish reading Chapter One of the text. Do case case brief (not handed in) of the Suggs case on p.42. Also, I plan to distribute on Thursday your first graded case brief assignment, which I plan to have due a week later, on Thursday 2/16. I also plan to give Exam #1 in the week of February 21.

POS 359--The Current Supreme Court Term
In class today, Tuesday 2/7, I handed back the Hosanna-Tabor papers, and we went over them and the case some more. We also discussed a current cert. petition regarding the Catholic Church's attempt to claim First Amendment immunity from a civil charge of negligence in not removing an abusive priest. We talked about U.S. v. Jones, getting to the question of whether the placement of a GPS on the car constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. We'll continue with that discussion on Thursday, which gives you another temporary reprieve from homework (unless you'd like to read the U.S. v. Jones opinion...)