September 11, 2014

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 9/11, we first went over the concept of authority. We looked at primary authority and secondary authority, and then divided primary authority into mandatory and persuasive authority. We also expanded out previous discussion of citation form to include the four ages of Maine citation form, as well as citations from other states. We also discussed the hierarchy of enacted law (constitutions and statutes, federal and state). We went through the Judy Harrison BDN article regarding Ormand Alley and discussed several ways in which statements in the article might be either incorrect or at least misleading. We went over the engagement ring case, O'Brien v. Hudock, focusing on the level of Court that decided the case, and the authority cited by the Court for its statements of law. The assignment for Tuesday 9/16 is to read in the text through p. 23.

POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Thursday 9/11, I first went over Alito's concurrence in the Riley case. We then discussed conflicts between the Maine Attorney General and Governor that can arise under under system of constitutional officers. We went through the Katz case, going over the previous tests of whether there was a "search" and Katz's revised question regarding that question, as well as whether a search was "unreasonable". We went over Harlan's concurrence, and discussed the difference between subjective and objective tests. Finally we went over Black's dissent. The assignment for Tuesday 9/16 is to read through p. 475 of the text.