January 29, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Friday 1/29, I distributed two handouts: some hypothetical variations of the facts in Warren v. Reis, and a selection of quotations from three Maine cases that touched on the defense that Reis tried unsuccessfully to run (that an oral contract is void and unenforceable). We finished our review of the Warren case brief, and the format for the case briefs that you'll be producing. I talked about the concept of res judicata, proper Maine statutory citation form, and also legal research through LEXIS working from statute to case law. We ran through the variations in my hypotheticals, asking at what point the other side would be sufficiently alerted, and whether Reis' problem was more one of timing, or of bulk of argument. We then started examining the question of what the result would have been if Reis' issue had been properly raised, and talked about the concept of unenforceable contracts. We looked at the remedies in the HCCA itself, and we started looking at the private remedies available under the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act (UTP). We will start on Monday by looking at those UTP remedies in the statute, and then talk about the cases that have touched on the HCCA and UTP remedies. We will then turn to the previously assigned pages 1-14 of the text. The assignment for Monday 2/1 is to review the Maine HCCA and UTP statutes, read the handout with the selection of quotations from those three cases, and review the assigned pages from the text.


POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Friday 1/29, we first finished up going over the outline of Birchfield. Regarding the question of whether there was a "search", we talked about the failure of the N.D. Court to give a clear answer. They did, though, distinguish the U.S. Supreme Court cases that said that there was a search in other circumstances. We also talked a bit about the meaning of "search" in the English language. We turned then to the question of whether the search (assuming that there was one) was "reasonable". I talked about how the U.S. Supreme Court usually ties the reasonableness of a search to the existence of an exception to the usual necessity of a warrant. We saw how the Birchfield court used a different test of reasonableness, based on a weighing of the governmental interest versus the suspect's interest. I then talked about the 4 different opinions in Missouri v. McNeely, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that rejected the proposition that the dissipation of alcohol in the blood creates an automatic emergency that justifies blood draws without a warrant. The assignment for Monday 2/1 is to read in the text pp. 464-471 (Katz).