March 27, 2017

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Monday 3/27, I first went over some aspects of the Williams case brief (due Friday). I talked about the Plaintiff's objective, cause of action, the trial court defense, and the prior proceedings. We went over the structure of Kennedy's opinion, and saw how he divided the substantive parts of the opinion into II(A), II(B), and III, which would be your guide to the distinct issues raised and resolved. We then went back to the Caperton case, and I highlighted the structure of the issues addressed in that case: the facts for one issue would turn into the legal question for the next issue. We finished Caperton, and then went over the Mobbley case, and statutory interpretation. I plan to distribute the Maine criminal statute regarding the analogous situation on Wednesday. Also on Wednesday, I'll just talk about the Holland case (p. 65) so I won't assign that as reading.
The assignment for Wednesday 3/29 is continue working on your Williams case brief, and to read in the text pp. 67 - 73 (Lawrence v. Texas).


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Monday 3/27, I distributed 2 handouts, my version of the Reed outline, and the key to my comments on the Reed outline passed in by the class (which I also returned today). We went over the remainder of the outline from where we left off last Friday. We began with Thomas' explanation of speaker based and event based distinctions. We looked again at the Bangor Sign Ordinance, which seemed to have both speaker-based and event-based distinctions, and tried to figure out whether they are content-neutral or content-based. We then talked about the application of strict scrutiny, looking at both the government interest (assumed here by Thomas to be compelling) and the nature of the underinclusiveness problem identified by Thomas. And we went through the three concurrences.
The assignment for Wednesday 3/29 is to review Williams and virtual child porn, and review Griswold (all previously assigned).