September 12, 2013

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 9/12, we continued with our discussion of Mockus. We went through the rest of Mockus' contentions and the Court's response to each, the authority upon which the Court relied, as well as how the result could have come out differently. Along the way we went over the 1980 Maine Supreme Court case of State v. John W. (disorderly conduct), and we discussed the universe of "authority" as being divided into primary authority (law, subdivided into mandatory authority versus persuasive authority) versus secondary authority (non-law, such as treatises). We will start on Tuesday 9/17 with two cases that I didn't have time to discuss today, Town of Greece v. Galloway and Snyder v. Phelps. The assignment for Tuesday 9/17 is to read and prepare to discuss pp.14-22 of the text.


POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Thursday 9/12,we started with a review of Katz, going over the big three definitional questions addressed: whether a conversation is protected (as a "person, house, paper or effect"); what question to ask regarding whether something is a "search"; and what question to ask regarding whether that search is "reasonable". I went over a 1984 case regarding whether open fields fall with the protection of the 4th Amendment, Oliver v. U.S. We then finished up our discussion of Smith, going over the Blackmun, Stewart, and Marshall opinions. The assignment for Tuesday 9/17 is to read and prepare to discuss the Jones case (pp. 471-475 of the text). Read it, read it again, and then read it again, asking yourself the kinds of questions that we tackled in Smith.