February 8. 2018

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 2/8, I distributed two handouts: a list of the current Justices of the Supreme Court, and the Maine sentencing statutes. We first went through the three dissenting opinions in Miller, and saw especially how Roberts' dissent differed from Thomas'. I then went over the 2016 case of Montgomery v. Louisiana, regarding retroactive application of the Miller decision. We went through the votes in Montgomery, and discussed how the lineups only had one change from the lineup in Miller. We also talked about how the Court in Montgomery was basically doing the same task that we do in a case brief: figuring out exactly what a court has held. We then looked at the Maine sentencing statute handout, and saw what Maine thinks of mandatory life sentences. We also went over statutory citation form. We then began our discussion of Glucksberg (previously assigned) by looking at the 5th Amendment and the 14th Amendment due process clauses. I talked about the strange history of the 3 protections of the 14th Amendment, including the creation of substantive due process. We will begin our discussion of the actual Glucksberg opinion on Tuesday
The assignment for Tuesday 2/13 is to write out (though not to be handed in or graded) a case brief of the majority opinion in Glucksberg, following the format of the case brief template and the case briefs that I have handed out to the class.


POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Thursday 2/8, I distributed three handouts: my version of the Carpenter outline, and both Carpenter's and the U.S.' Summary of Argument in the briefing for the current Supreme Court appeal of the Carpenter Court of Appeals decision. We first finished our discussion of Jones by reviewing the differences between the Scalia and Alito opinions, and the significance of Sotomayor joining Scalia's opinion but agreeing as well with Alito's privacy analysis. We discussed at what point the search began, for the two camps. We talked about the concept of what a "search" is (in legalese, as opposed to English), and I talked about the Supreme Court opinion in Florida v. Jardines, a drug-sniffing dog case, in which the Court found a search because of a property interest, even if there was no expectation of privacy.
We then turned to Carpenter, and its view of the holding in Jones. We talked about mandatory versus persuasive authority, and the concepts of following versus distinguishing authority. We discussed how Sotomayor's agreement with Alito's opinion in Jones meant that there was a majority for the proposition of a privacy interest in long-term surveillance (even though Sotomayor didn't vote with Alito). We then turned to the task of outlining the Carpenter opinion. We will pick up next week with the outline how the Court of Appeals followed some authority and distinguished other authority.
The assignment for Tuesday 2/13 is to review both your and my versions of the Carpenter outline, to read today's Carpenter summaries. In addition, both read and listen to the oral argument in Carpenter. One site at which to watch it is
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-402