January 15, 2014

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 1/15, I distributed two handouts: a Case Brief Template, and a blank case brief. We began putting Mills v. Wyman into the case brief format. We discussed citation form, the parties, the plaintiff's objective, the plaintiff's cause of action, and the defendant's trial court defense. We talked about the limited set of things that the plaintiff might want (objective) and the limited set of things that entitle the plaintiff to get what he wants (the cause of action) We talked about the relationship of breach of contract to the common law rules regarding contract formation, and the past and present proceedings. We got to the first of the appellant Mills' contention on appeal, that there was good consideration for this contract, arguing that the satisfaction of a moral obligation provides the needed consideration. That's the point at which we'll pick up on Friday. The assignment for Friday 1/17 is to finish working on the Mills case brief, trying to finish it based on the Case Brief Template (not handed in or graded). In addition, read through p. 14 of the textbook.


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Wednesday 1/15, I distributed three handouts: an article about Obama's plans regarding future phone metadata collection, and two U.S. District Court cases regarding the NSA'a current phone metadata collection, Klayman v. Obama and ACLU v. Clapper. We started our discussion of Smith v. Maryland. We briefly went over the strange history of the 14th Amendment (that eventually turned most of the Bill of Rights into protections against the state, as well as federal, government). We went over the interpretation of what constitutes a "search", both before and after Katz. We got as far in Smith as the review of Smith's contentions that he had an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy. We will pick up on Friday with the discussion of whether any actual expectation of privacy would have been reasonable. Along the way, we discussed citations for the Supreme Court, the difference between the judgment of the Court and the opinion of the Court, and the difference between the holding of the Court versus dictum in the Court's decision. The assignment for Friday 1/17 is to review the reminder of Smith, read the article about Obama's policy, and, as time permits, read both Klayman and and ACLU.


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Wednesday 1/15, I distributed one handout, the list of the three Questions Presented in the Noel Canning case. We began by going over some of the mechanics of the Supreme Court: the qualifications for a Justice, the granting of cert., and assignment of decision-writing. We started our journey through the Noel Canning oral argument, examining the opening salvo of argument (by Verrilli), attack by Roberts, and rescue by Ginsburg. We will pick up with Scalia's new line of attack at 6:2; conflict between practice and text. The assignment for Friday 1/17 is to review Verrilli's argument, and to read, as time permits, the remainder of the oral argument.