January 22, 2014

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 1/22, we first went over from the Mills case the concept of dictum, and also the concept of detrimental reliance. We talked about MLK's Letter from the Birmingham Jail and the concept of what degrades human personality. We went over some vocabulary in the text. We discussed from the introductory materials in the chapter the concept of equitable versus legal remedies, and how an echo of the days of separate court systems is found in the the powers of the Maine Superior Court, as opposed to the Maine District Court. We went over the organization of both the federal and the state court systems. Finally we dipped our toes into VSDA case, discussing the power of the Supreme Court to define the terms of the Constitution. We looked at how the Supreme Court had created some zones of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment (obscenity, fighting words). We will launch into a case brief for VSDA on Friday. The assignment for Friday 1/24 is review the previously assigned VSDA case, creating for yourselves (not handed in or graded) your version of the VSDA case brief.


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Wednesday 1/22, we first decided that the next area of study after NSA metadata would be Free Speech. We discussed the changes that Obama announced last Friday in the methods of the NSA metadata collection and analysis. We then finished up our discussion of Jones by going over the three opinions, and how there were five votes for the concept that the technology of GPS was different enough from the beeper in Knotts that here there was a violation of the reasonable expectation of privacy (and therefore a "search"). We looked at ACLU v. Clapper, and saw how the U.S. District Court judge followed Smith. We also looked at the organization of the federal court system. We will pick up on Friday with the Klayman opinion, previously distributed. The assignment for Friday 1/24 is to review Klayman, trying to pick out each strand of the Judge's opinion that there was a "search" here.


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Wednesday 1/22, we finished up our discussion of NLRB v. Noel Canning. We reviewed Verrilli's arguments, and contrasted them with Francisco's points. We also looked at Estrada's proposed flow chart for how arguments between the branches get worked out. The assignment for Friday 1/24 is to review the abridged Hill v. Colorado, previously assigned.