February 8, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Monday 2/8, I distributed two handouts: an excerpt from the Maine statutes regarding assisted suicide, and an article by Brittany Maynard about her fight to allow assisted suicide. We began class by finishing Roberts' dissent in Miller. We talked about what makes something "unusual" in Roberts' view, as well as how one knows what are the "evolving standards of decency." We talked about deference by the courts to the decisions of the legislative bodies, and also about the three recurring institutional conflicts that the Supreme Court grapples with: the rights of the individual versus the power of government; the separation of powers between the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches; and the division of powers between the federal government versus the state governments. We then looked at the Maine sentencing statutes (previously handed out) and the impact of Miller on Maine's laws. We also went over proper Maine statutory citation form. I went over the recent SCOTUS case of Montgomery v. Louisiana, which dealt with the question of the retroactive application of the rule in Miller. We went over the difference between new substantive constitutional rules versus new procedures, and how only substantive rules are applied fully retroactively. We looked at the lineup of the nine justices, and how the result in Montgomery largely mirrored the votes in Miller. We saw how the majority clarified the holding in Miller, and concluded that the holding in Miller was a categorical bar with an exception, rather than a procedural rule. We talked about the language that the majority relied on, and how our text had edited out what proved to be the crucial language in Miller. I went over what would likely happen next for Mr. Montgomery. The assignment for Wednesday 2/10 is to read the two handouts from today. Review Glucksberg (previously assigned) and do a case brief of it (not handed in or graded).


POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Monday 2/8, I distributed one handout, my version of an outline of a case that I went over (though not from the text), Florida v. Jardines. I first talked about Sotomayor's concurrence in Jones, which questioned both the need to demonstrate an "extended" use of the GPS, and went on to question the entire limitation of the expectation of privacy in circumstances in which information is shared with a limited number of people (the third party doctrine) such as phone companies, ISPs, banks, etc. I then talked about Florida v. Jardines, a 5-4 2013 case that discussed whether there was a "search" when the police bring a drug-sniffing dog to a suspect's front door. We looked at the line-up of Justices, the definitions of a "search", and the question of precedent regarding implied consent to come to a home's door, as well as prior dog-sniff cases that were held not to be "searches". The assignment for Wednesday 2/10 is to read over today's Jardines handout, and to do an outline (not handed in or graded) of the previously assigned Gates case.