May 6, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today Friday 5/6, I reviewed the schedule for Exam #2 (Monday 5/9, 10:30-11:45). If you are missing any handouts, email me with what you need by 9pm on Sunday. The exam is not comprehensive over the entire semester, but rather will only cover the material we have covered since the first test. We first went over the handout from last class, the federal venue statute, and contrasted the federal venue with state court personal jurisdiction (which, unlike federal venue, is grounded in constitutional constraints). We then went over Salmon v. Atkinson. We explored the reason for contingent fee agreements, and the Arkansas Supreme Court's examination of how other states have handled the situation raised by a firing of a law firm that's working on a contingent fee. I then went over the Maine Supreme Court case of Paffhausen v. Balano (not the the first time this semester) which differentiated the theory of quantum meruit from that of unjust enrichment. See you Monday.


POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today Friday 5/6, I reviewed the schedule for Exam #2 (Wednesday 5/11, 10:30-11:45). If you are missing any handouts, email me with what you need by 9pm on Tuesday. The exam is not comprehensive over the entire semester, but rather will only cover the material we have covered since the first test. We finished our discussion of Ohio v. Clark and the Confrontation Clause by going over Thomas' view of the correct question to ask for whether a declaration is testimonial. We then dipped our toes into the murky waters of the Double Jeopardy clause. We started with the question of what constitutes the "same offense". I talked about the Maine Supreme Court case of Ayotte v. State, involving multiple prosecutions for theft. We watched a clip from the movie "Double Jeopardy", in which the issue is whether a person can be prosecuted for shooting a victim when that person has already been convicted of killing the same victim. I talked about Ashe v. Swenson, in which the Supreme Court forbade successive prosecutions for the same basic event after an acquittal for one of the victims. We then talked about the concept of dual sovereigns, and I discussed the current Supreme Court case of Puerto Rico v. Sanchez-Valle, which raises the question of whether Puerto Rico is the same sovereign as the federal government. Finally, I then talked about two cases regarding whether there can be a retrial after trial court error. In
Evans v. Michigan, the Supreme Court found that the defendant may not be retried after an acquittal, even though the instructions to the jury were wrong on the law. In Lockhart v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court allowed a resentencing after the original enhanced sentence was thrown out because of the erroneous submission of a prior offense that had in fact been pardoned by the state Governor. The difference seemed based on the distinction between errors of substance (no retrial allowed) versus procedural errors (retrial allowed).
See you Wednesday.