February 15, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Monday 2/15, I distributed two handouts: Assignment #1 (reproduced below) and the case you'll be briefing, Ayotte v. State of Maine.
(If you weren't in class to get the case, you can get it by going to the Maine Supreme Court opinion site,
http://courts.maine.gov/opinions_orders/supreme/publishedopinions.shtml
Scroll down to "Previous years' Opinions", select 2015, and select Ayotte v. State of Maine, 2015 ME 158).
We went over the assignment. and I briefly talked about both double jeopardy and effective assistance of counsel. We then went over Souter's concurring opinion in Glucksberg. We examined the Maine statute about assisted suicide (previous handout) and then went through the four mental states (intent, knowledge, recklessness, and negligence) that differentiate crimes in Maine. We began a discussion of the Obergefell v. Hodges handout (again, previously distributed) which presented two very different views about the relationship between Obergefell (same-sex marriage) and Glucksberg (assisted suicide) and the description of the right involved. The assignment for Wednesday 2/17 is to 1) read Ayotte, and come prepared with any questions that you have about the case or how to brief it; 2) review the Obergefell handout; and 3) review Lawrence v. Texas (previously assigned).

Assignment due Wednesday, February 24th, 2016

The assignment (graded) is to do a Case Brief of the case of Ayotte v. State of Maine, 2015 ME 158, ___ A.3d ___ (also distributed today).

Brief all of the issues that you determine that the Court ruled on. Remember that the purpose of the brief is to be useful. Check your holdings to make sure that they give the most useful rules possible. Mere conclusory facts just tell us who won and who lost, but not what circumstances determine the winner and loser.

Follow the format from the Sample Briefs that I’ve distributed, including this: after giving the winner’s facts, give the loser’s facts with a parenthetical phrase that starts “even though...”.

For example: “Under the Maine common law rule that an issue will not be reached if it was raised for the first time on appeal. were the trial court and the opposing party alerted to the existence of an HHCA issue when the defendant did not raise the issue in his answer, or his opposition to the summary judgment, nor did he argue that point in his post-summary judgment motion, (even though he did make a glancing reference to the HHCA in that motion)?”.

Note especially that, after the “Issue” is composed, the “Facts” and “Holding” are copied and pasted. Everything that you put into the Fact section should appear exactly in your Issue and Holding sections as well. Your Issue and Holding sections should be identical to each other, except that the issue is a question, and the Holding is the answer to that question. Your briefs will be evaluated on the format, as well as the specific content.

Please make two copies of your brief, one to hand in at the beginning of class, and the other for you to have during class for our discussion.

You may e-mail me if you have specific questions about the brief. The more time that I have to answer your questions, the more likely it is that I can be helpful.

If you cannot be in class on Wednesday 2/24, you should still e-mail me your brief by the beginning of class time. If you do that, you will not have any grade deducted from your grade for the brief. If you do not, you should still contact me as soon as possible to see what options are available to you. (Generally, I do not want to accept assignments after we have discussed them in class). See the Syllabus for the class rules regarding late papers.

Remember to work by yourselves; do not collaborate. Do not show your work to anyone else; do not look at anyone else’s work. Do not discuss your case brief with anyone but me.

IMPORTANT: If you e-mail your brief to me, I will reply to confirm that I have received your assignment. If I do not reply, then I have not received the assignment.




POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Monday 2/15, we went over some of the recent cases that we've studied thus far this semester (Missouri v. McNeeley; Florida v. Jardines; Navarette v. California, and Maryland v. King), and looked at how the late Justice Scalia voted. We then began our discussion of searches incident to an arrest. We talked about Chimel v. Californis, U.S. v. Robinson, and then the 2014 case of Riley v. California (cell phone searches). We also talked about the definition of "reasonable": meaning not just an open-ended balancing test, but rather a presumption that a warrantless search is "unreasonable" unless it fits within an established exception. The plan for Wednesday is that 1) I'll give the class the first graded outline assignment, with a projected due date of Friday 2/26; 2) I'll talk about Maryland v. King and the collection of DNA samples incident to an arrest; we'll go over the next assigned case. That assignment for Wednesday 2/17 is to read in the text and prepare to discuss through p. 487 (Arizona v. Gant).