September 5, 2017

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Tuesday 9/5, I distributed one handout, my version of the Blier case brief. We continued our journey through the Blier opinion by pinpointing the issues decided by the Maine Supreme Court, as well as the resolution of those issues. We identified the exact parts of the trial court suppression order that were reversed by the Law Court. We also put those issues into the format of the case brief template that I had distributed last week. Along the way today we also went over the concepts of objective versus subjective beliefs, and dictum in a court opinion versus the holding of the court.
The assignment for Thursday 9/7 is to review today's handout of my version of the Blier case brief, and to read in the text pp. 1-14.



POS 383 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
In class today, Tuesday 9/5, we finished our discussion of Garcia (majority and 2 dissents) and began discussing N.Y. v. U.S. We counted votes in New York, seeing whether there were any changed votes, where the new Justices (new post Garcia) landed, and where Kennedy stood(since he's the only Justice still on the Court). In O'Connor's majority opinion in N.Y., we got as far as how her discussion about how the federal authority had expanded, but how the states retained a core of sovereignty that can't be reduced by Congress (left-hand side of p. 377).
The assignment for Thursday 9/7 is to review New York and Printz, all previously assigned.