November 2, 2017

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 11/2, we went over the Holland case about common law crimes and misprision of a felony. We talked about both the decision of the Florida Supreme Court that they had the discretion to not adopt the English common law crime of misprision (despite the Florida statute adopting the English common law), and then the policy discussion by that Court to choose whether or not to make misprision a crime. We then examined last week's statutory handout about the Maine legislature's view of common law crimes, and the duty to report in two specific instances. We also looked at the federal misprision statute and examined what two specific actions trigger that law. We then turned to Lawrence v. Texas. I talked about the 1986 case of Bowers v. Hardwick and the two theories involved in Lawrence, equal protection and due process. We looked at the way that Kennedy criticized how the Bowers court characterized the right asserted. We left off at how Kennedy dealt with the history and tradition of laws aimed at sodomy, which is where we'll pick up next Tuesday. Throughout our discussion today, we looked at the role of morality in making judgments about how people should be encouraged and/or required to act.
The assignment for Tuesday 11/7 is to review the rest of Lawrence and to read in addition through p. 77 of the text (including Glassford v. BrickKicker).


POS 383 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
In class today, Thursday 11/2, I distributed one handout, my version of the NLRB v. Canning outline. We finished our discussion and outlining of NLRB v. Canning, both the majority opinion and the Scalia concurrence. We discussed dictum in the opinions. In relation to the next subject in the text, the power of removal, I began talking about the current controversy regarding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (created in the wake of the 2008 recession) and the desire by the President to remove the head of that agency.
The assignment for Tuesday 11/7 is to outline the majority opinion in Myers (previously assigned- not handed in or graded) and to be ready to discuss the dissenting opinions as well.