March 29, 2017

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Wednesday 3/29, I distributed one handout, excerpts from Maine and federal statutes regarding hindering apprehension, the creation of common law crimes, misprision of a felony, and mandated reporting of child abuse. I went over again the format of how to write issues for your Williams case brief, and clarified that the paragraphs about the dissenting opinions just should focus on the ways in which the dissent disagreed with the majority. We went through all 4 parts of today's handout, looking at the relationship of each law to the concept of morality. I talked to the class about the Florida Supreme Court case of Holland v. Florida. We began our discussion of Lawrence v. Texas with a look at Kennedy's statement that the majority may not impose its morality on others, and talked about how that principle would negate most of what legislatures do.
The assignment for Friday 3/31 is to finish your Williams case briefs (due at the beginning of class) and review Lawrence v. Texas, previously assigned.


POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Wednesday 3/29, we first talked about how the free speech cases like Reed might impact a current Maine legislative proposal to limit campaign contributions from lobbyists (speaker-based restrictions, in the vocabulary of Reed). We then finished our discussion of free speech with a review of the Williams case, in which the Supreme Court upheld the federal law that criminalized the distribution of (otherwise protected) material if the seller tried to pass it off as illegal material. We then began our discussion of the protection of privacy. We talked about Olmstead and Lochner as privacy cases, and began talking about Griswold
The assignment for Friday 3/31 is to review Griswold, previously assigned.