January 22, 2015

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 1/22, I distributed two handouts: one had the Maine sentencing statutes and the Maine juvenile code, and the other was an article by James Swift about the aftermath of the Miller decision. I started with four cases about punishment of juveniles that preceded the Miller decision: Thompson v. OK (1988); Stanford v. KY (1989); Roper v. Simmons (2005); and Graham v. FL (2010). We then went through Kagan's opinion in Miller. concentrating on the structure of her opinion. We went to Breyer's concurrence. We talked about the difference between concurring in a judgment, versus concurring in the opinion. We also talked about the four mental states, in Maine, that go to the level of culpability: intent, knowledge, recklessness, and negligence (as well as strict liability). We finished with Roberts' dissent, and will begin on Tuesday with Thomas' dissent. The homework for Tuesday 1/27 is to review the remainder of Miller, read the two handouts, and read in the text through p. 34 (Glucksberg).


POS 383 AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
In class today, Thursday 1/22, I distributed two handouts: one article by David Graham regarding "nullification" (of gun laws, and same-sex marriages), and the other about the "true threats" case of Elonis v. U.S. We began our discussion with a look at a 2014 case that touched on the hierarchy of the Supremacy clause authority, Bond v. U.S. (the chemical weapons case). We also talked about judicial review, the Supremacy clause, and the article about nullification. We then went on to the First Amendment. We discussed the religion clauses as possibly being just a prohibition against the Congress interfering with what the states wanted to establish or prohibit, and also whether it covered executive power as well as legislative power. I talked about the recent decision in Holt v. Hobbs, which dealt with the Muslim prisoner who claimed the right to have a beard in a prison that forbade it. We started our discussion of Elonis v. U.S., about threats on Facebook. We will pick up with Elonis on Tuesday. The assignment for Tuesday 1/27 is to read in Epps through p. 147 (the rest of the Bill of Rights chapter).