February 29, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Monday 2/29, I distributed one handout, the Maine criminal statutes about the use of force in defending your home and your property. We began class by going over the Speelman hypotheticals that I had handed out on Friday. We talked about the responsibility for gathering additional information when the sender learns that the recipient is not at home. I went over a U.S. Supreme Court case, Jones v. Flowers, that raised a similar (though not identical) fact pattern in terms of the due process requirements in sending notice. We also discussed what arguments could be made in a hearing on the merits of the subsidy termination. We then began our discussion of Katko v. Briney. I talked about the relationship between criminal liability and torts (which is the textbook heading for this section of Chapter 1). I discussed the difference between secondary authority and primary authority, as well as the difference between mandatory authority and persuasive authority. We looked at the authority relied on by the Katko court in terms of those categories. Finally, we looked at how the punitive damages issues was handled by the Iowa court. On Wednesday, 3/2, we'll have Exam #1 (see the rules from Friday's blog about requesting any missing handouts).


POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Monday 2/29, I handed back the Rodriguez outlines, and we briefly went over them.
On Wednesday, 3/2, we'll have Exam #1. I gave an in-class sample test in preparation for the exam. The exam is open-book and open-note. If you are using a laptop or similar device, you may not access the internet or do any searches or anything else that gives you any advantage over those with hard copy text and notes. If you are missing any handouts, notify me by 9:00pm on Tuesday 3/1. We then went over some variations of the Safford fact pattern. We also looked at Thomas' dissent. Then we went over Terry v. Ohio. We looked at the government's argument, Douglas' dissent, and how the majority dealt with these two extremes. Finally, we reviewed reasonable suspicion's place in the hierarchy of levels of suspicion, and discussed the implications of the finding that there was reasonable suspicion to believe that the suspects were armed and dangerous.