April 8, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Friday 4/8, we first went over much of the Warren case brief that's due Friday 4/15. We got to the formulation of the legal question in the first issue, and we'll take another stab at that legal question on Monday. We also talked about who makes these lawyer discipline rules, and what procedure is used in their enforcement. I went over the issue that I omitted from the assignment and the handout, the quashing of the subpoena. We then went back to NFIB v. Sebelius. I talked about the very unusual pairing of a "dissenting" opinion with an opinion with which the dissent agreed, and the concept of dictum and how it applied to the discussion of the commerce power of Congress. We went through Roberts' textual argument about why regulation of something must be different from the creation of that thing. We will continue on Monday with Roberts' view about precedent as it regards creation of commerce. The assignment for Monday 4/11 is to continue working on your Warren case brief, and to review all of the opinions in NFIB v. Sebelius.



POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Friday 4/8, we returned to the Ormsby interrogation. We looked at the significance of invocation of rights (to remain silent, and to an attorney) before being in custody, versus after being in custody. We looked at the legal authority for the Court's conclusion that the non-custodial invocation of rights doesn't mean much. We talked about lines of authority between the federal and state courts, the organization of the federal court system, and the citation form for the federal courts. We looked at the ten "custody" factors, and discussed the justification for finding that the factors lead to a conclusion of non-custodial interrogation before the break, versus custodial after the break. We went over the significance of subjective intent versus objective. We finished with a short discussion of the independent (non-Miranda) inquiry into whether the confession was voluntary. The assignment for Monday 4/11 is to review Prescott and Bragg, previously distributed.