October 8 2015

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 10/8, I collected the Kimball case briefs, and we went over them. I plan to grade them this weekend, and return them when we next meet on Thursday 10/15. I also told the class of my plan to have our first exam on Thursday 10/22. After finishing our discussion of Kimball, we dove back into the Katko case, looking specifically at the types of authority relied on by the Iowa Supreme Court. We looked at primary authority versus secondary authority, mandatory versus persuasive authority, and following versus distinguishing authority. When we resume next Thursday, we will go over overruling versus disagreeing with authority, as well as looking at the view of the dissenting Justice in Katko. Then we'll look at the Maine criminal statute previously distributed to the class that sets the rules for defense of premises. The additional assignment for Thursday 10/15 is to read and prepare to discuss through the end of Chapter 1 of the text (including Suggs v. Norris).


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Thursday 10/8, we discussed Schenck, Abrams and Gitlow. We looked at some recurrent themes that ran through the cases: the outlawing of words versus of actions; the substantive evil sought to be avoided by the law; how likely it is that the substantive evil would be brought about by the words; how imminently the evil would happen; whether the circumstances involve times of war; and whether the objection by the defendant is an evidentiary objection or a legal one. We searched (mainly in vain) for consistency in terms of the Court opinions overall, as well as simply within the opinions of Holmes. The assignment for Thursday 10/15 is to read in the text through p. 225 (including Dennis and Brandenburg). I also announced that my plan is to give the class Exam #1 on Thursday 10/22.