April 26, 2018

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 4/26, we first went over the two Maine statutory handouts from last class, the one about adoptions, and the one about Maine subject matter jurisdiction. We then went over Cheap Escape v. Haddox, and the somewhat weird Ohio statute. I then discussed three other cases regarding the meaning of subject matter jurisdiction: Landmark Realty v. Leasure from the Maine Supreme Court, and two cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, Bowles v. Russell and Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing. Finally I started our discussion of personal jurisdiction by going over 4 bases of personal jurisdiction: service of process within the state, waiver, domicile, and contacts.
The assignment for Tuesday 5/1 is to review Swoboda v. Hero Decks (previously assigned) and to read in addition through p. 141, including St. James Apartments v. Coinmatch.


POS 484 CRIMINAL DUE PROCESS
In class today, Thursday 4/26, I distributed one handout, an excerpt of the Maine Rules of Court regarding jury selection. We reviewed the Powell case, and then went through the two opinions in Gideon v. Wainwright. We discussed the current case of McCoy v. Louisiana from the two handouts from last class, and the question of of whether effective assistance of counsel requires that lawyers follow the instructions of the client, even if the client is making bad choices. We began our discussion of the selection of juries, and will pick up next week with the Batson case. I will also talk about two recent cases that I didn't get to today, Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado and Tharpe v. Sellers.
The assignment for Tuesday 5/1 is to review Batson v. Kentucky (previously assigned), to read today's handout, and to read from the text pp. 555-562 (including Sheppard v. Maxwell).