February 1, 2017

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 2/1, I distributed one handout, my version of the Miller v. Alabama case brief. We finished going through that case brief, both regarding the format, and the substance. We also went over the contention raised by the juveniles that was not dealt with in Kagan's opinion. We talked about Breyer's concurrence, and discussed the difference between a concurrence in the opinion versus a concurrence in the judgment. We got through Roberts' dissent, and will pick up with with Thomas' dissent. On Friday I also plan to talk about four juvenile sentencing cases that preceded Miller, and one case that followed it.
The assignment for Friday 2/3 is to review the Thomas and Alito dissenting opinions in Miller.


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Wednesday 2/1, I first reviewed the Rehnquist dissent in Central Hudson Gas. I then talked about a 2011 Supreme Court case, Sorrell v. IMS, in which the Supreme Court struck down a Vermont law that restricted the flow of information to and from pharmaceutical sales companies as they tried to influence the prescribing practices of doctors. We discussed how the line of commercial speech cases might come into play in Lee v. Tam. We then turned to hateful speech and Snyder v. Phelps. I went over the cause of action in the case (the common law tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress) and how the involvement of the government in such cases was somewhat different from the legislature-created rules that were challenged in the previous cases that we looked at. I went over the history of 1st Amendment protection in such tort cases, beginning with New York Times v. Sullivan (protections for speakers against suits brought by public officials). We discussed the later expansion of 1st Amendment protection for speakers if the plaintiff was a public figure, and the state of the law regarding matters of public concern. We began going through the majority opinion in Snyder by outlining the structure of Roberts' opinion. We covered the first broad section (the test for how to decided if the speech here is protected as being on a matter of public concern) as well as the first question dealing with how that test was to be applied, the content of the speech. We will continue with the context of the speech on Friday.
The assignment for Friday 2/3 is create an outline of both the majority and dissenting opinions in Snyder (not handed in or graded), using the outline format to highlight the structure of the opinions. Also review Alvarez, previously assigned.