February 19, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Friday 2/19, we first went over the Obergefell excerpt that I had previously distributed. I talked about some of the previous marriage cases, in which states had criminalized or forbidden interracial marriage, or marriage by prison inmates, or marriage by men who owed child support. We looked at how Kennedy said that the description of the right involved in those cases was not limited to a "careful" description, and thus Glucksberg's requirement of a "careful" description did not apply to marriage cases. We also looked at how Kennedy said that the Court should not defer to the legislative process. We also talked about Roberts' dissent, in which he accused the majority of effectively overruling Glucksberg, and how he said that the state laws passed the low-hurdle test. We then moved back in time to Lawrence v. Texas. We started doing a case brief of the case, getting up to the issues. Along the way, we talked about the role of both trial court and appellate courts regarding findings of fact, and talked about trial "de novo". We looked at the provisions of the Texas law, and talked about how Lawrence raised both equal protection and due process objections to the law, as well as why Kennedy chose the attack that he did. We looked at the language used by Kennedy in terms of low versus high hurdles (fundamental rights or not), which is where we'll pick up on Monday. The assignment for Monday 2/22 is to continue work on your Ayotte case brief (due next Wednesday 2/24) and to review Lawrence v. Texas.


POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Friday 2/19, I first went over a part of the Rodriguez outline that I guessed needed some clarification, Ginsburg's and Thomas' Part III (regarding which issues the Supreme Court should properly reach). I then talked about two dog sniff cases that form the background to Rodriquez, U.S. v. Place (1983) and Illinois v. Caballes (2005). We looked at whether a dog sniff is a "search", and, if not, how could Jardines and Rodriguez itself have come out as they did. Next week we will return to the DNA case, Maryland v. King. The assignment for Monday 2/22 is to continue working on your Roderiguez outlines, and to review the previous handout of my Maryland v. King outline.