September 6, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Tuesday 9/6, we first reviewed the parts of the Mahmoud opinion that we had covered last week (the propriety of giving any instruction at all on eyewitness identification, whether the evidence generated an instruction of suggestive identification, and whether the instruction given about stress was good enough. We reviewed the idea that the law involved in the case was common law, in that it was a rule made by judges in the absence of enacted law. We finished up Mahmoud with the issue of whether the instruction given about accuracy and the witness's level of confidence was also good enough. We went through the format of the case brief, and we also added the loser's facts ("...even though...") to the last two issues of the brief.
We then turned to the textbook. I talked about the concept of natural law, and we looked together at Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from the Birmingham jail. We talked about uplifting versus degrading human personality, and how those concepts might be involved in a controversy such as the right to abortion.
The assignment for Thursday 9/8 is to read in the textbook through p. 23 (the Miller case). Write out for yourself the Issue or Issues that you think that the Court majority was deciding, in the format of the brief template and sample Mahmoud case brief that I had handed out last week (not handed in or graded, but do write it out for yourself and our class discussion).