April 3, 2013

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 4/3, I distributed two handouts: Assignment #2 (copied below) and an edited version of Davis v. U.S., 564 U.S. ___ (2011). We went over that assignment, which will be due Friday 4/12. We finished our discussion of Gonzales v. Raich, discussing the due process issue left unaddressed in this opinion, as well as the federalism and separation of powers views of the dissent. I went over the 9th Circuit decision in the 2007 remand of Raich, (500 F.3d 850) in which the Court of Appeals addressed Raich's due process argument. We will pick up on Friday with a discussion of the Law Court's decision last month in the Sex Offender registry case regarding ex post facto prohibition (see text, p. 99). The assignment for Friday 4/5 is to begin work on the Davis brief, read the discussion on retroactivity (p. 105-106) and review Butler (p.103), previously assigned.


Assignment due Friday, April 12, 2013

The assignment (graded) is to do a Case Brief of the case of Davis v. U.S., 564 U.S. ____ (2011). I have distributed an edited version of this case to the class. If you are not in class and need that edited version, email me for it.

For the Facts, Issue and Holding, I am looking for you to brief only the retroactivity issue (Part IV of Alito’s opinion).
In addition, I want you to add the Issue as Breyer sees it.

Follow the format from the Sample Briefs that I’ve distributed. Remember that the Legal Question is (usually) copied from the Appellant’s Contention. Everything and only those things that 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 to each other, 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 specific questions about the brief. The more time that I have to answer your questions, the more likely it is that I can be helpful.

If you cannot be in class on Friday 4/12, 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. If you have questions, ask me.

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.


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Wednesday 4/3, I first went over the planned scheduling of the next assignment, which will be due April 26th. We finished our discussion of Chaplinsky, looking at how the N.H. statute was interpreted by the state court to limit its reach, and then how the U.S. Supreme Court approved the statute as interpreted in that way. We then went over Harlan's opinion in Cohen, getting up to the portion of Harlan's opinion that discussed the downside if there were a ruling in favor of the government. We watched a video from Jonathan Turley's blog that featured an offensive adjunct professor of law (but not me) and we will discuss on Friday whether his words/actions are protected as Free Speech. The assignment for Friday 4/5 is to review the remainder of Cohen as well as Hill, (previously assigned).