January 27, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 1/27, I distributed one handout, my version of the Warren v. Reis casebrief. We went over the format and the substance of the brief, getting up through the formulation of the issue (through the winner's facts). We will continue on Friday with the loser's facts, and the Facts, Holding and Disposition segments of the casebrief. After we finish the briefing we will also go over HCCA itself (previously handed out) and the remedies provided under it and under the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act. We will also explore some variations of the facts to speculate about whether those variations would have made a difference to the Court's decision. In addition to preparing for those discussions, the assignment for Friday 1/29 is to read in the textbook pp. 1-14 (up to Miller).

POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Wednesday 1/27, I distributed one handout, my version of the Birchfield outline. We continued going over that outline, moving from the part that discussed whether the case had already been decided (precedent) to the part in which the court analyzed whether there was a constitutional "search". We got through paragraph 15, so we'll pick up with 16 on Friday. We discussed precedent that was "mandatory" versus "persuasive", as well as treatment of precedent as "following" versus "distinguishing". The assignment for Friday 1/29 is to review today's handout, review the rest of Birchfield, and to read in the text pp. 459-463.