August 31, 2017

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 8/31, I distributed one handout, a template for the case brief that I'll be having you produce. We went over the Blier case in detail. We talked about how the Maine Supreme Court appears to have switched the focus from what the trial court and the parties had looked at; the text of the 4th Amendment, and the use of suppression of evidence as a remedy for violations of the that Amendment; the level of suspicion needed for an arrest (probable cause) versus an investigatory (traffic) stop (reasonable, articulable suspicion); all you'd ever want to know about wig-wag lights; and the right of the state to appeal from unfavorable trial court rulings. Along the way, we talked about the organization of the Maine court system (including the Unified Criminal Docket), appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, and three basic levels of suspicion under the 4th Amendment: probable cause, reasonable suspicion, and a hunch. We left off working on the task of figuring out exactly what question(s) the Maine Supreme Court was trying to answer, which is where we'll pick up next Tuesday.
The assignment for Tuesday 9/5 is to review Blier (we've still got lots to cover) and to try your hand at creating a case brief for the Blier case, using the template (not handed in or graded).


POS 383 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
In class today, Thursday 8/31, we first talked about some aspects of the Articles of Confederation, including how the states each had one vote, that states paid the salaries of their own representatives, restrictions on emoluments, and how the federal government got its money. We saw how the Constitution gave the federal government both the power and the structure to succeed, but how the tension between federal and state sovereignty persisted. We then turned to the textbook and went over the Darby case (p. 367), National League of Cities (P. 368), and we began our discussion of Garcia. In Garcia we counted votes to see what had changed sine National League of Cities, and we looked at how the arguments made the parties were not the arguments that the Court ruled on. We discussed how the test created in National League of Cities was rejected, and we left off with the question of what constitutional principles would replace the National League of Cities test. Along the way, we discussed three possibilities regarding the treatment of prior Court opinions (precedent): overruling; following; and distinguishing.
The assignment for Tuesday 9/5 is to review the pages previously assigned (through p. 381), and to read in addition the Printz case (through p. 387).