January 16, 2012

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 1/16, I first took pictures of the class, (but I messed them up, so we'll need a redo on Friday). We then began our discussion of Mills v. Wyman. We talked about the relationship between running a legal system and justice (or, in this case, injustice). We went through the order of the parties in the caption of the case, who the parties were, and the objectives and cause of action of the plaintiff. We talked about civil law versus criminal law, statutory law versus common law, and the reliance on precedent. We will continue with our discussion of Mills v. Wyman on Friday. The additional assignment for Friday 1/18 is to read in the text pp. 1-14 and 58-59.


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Wednesday 1/16, I first took pictures of the class. I distributed one handout, the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision of U.S. v. Lee. We began our discussion of the Korte decision by going over the structure of the federal court system, and the the parties, plaintiff's objectives and causes of action, and prior proceedings in the case. We started our discussion of the substantive issues in the case, getting through the government's first argument (that none of the plaintiffs were burdened in their free exercise of religion at all, because of the corporate structure). We will pick up at that point on Friday. The additional assignment for Friday 1/16 is to read the case of U.S. v. Lee.