October 30, 2018

POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Tuesday 10/30, I returned the Masterpiece papers, along with a Comment Key to some of my comments on the papers. We went over the assignment and the comment sheet. I then talked more about the standard for incitement under the law, and we looked both at the dissent by Holmes and Brandeis in the Gitlow case (p. 200 of the text) and the social media posts by the alleged shooter in Pittsburgh, Robert Bowers. We then went to the opinions in the McCullen v. Coakley case, looking at the nature of the forum, the analysis of content-neutrality, and the analysis of narrow tailoring, all for both the majority and the concurrence.
The assignment for Thursday 11/1 is to read in the text pp. 247-259, including both Snyder v. Phelps and Alvarez.



POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Tuesday 10/30, I returned the Paffhausen case briefs, along with a Comment Key to some of my comments on the brief, and my own version of the Paffhausen case brief. I also distributed an article about how the 1972 Furman case came very close to finding capital punishment a per se violation of the cruel and unusual clause of the 8th Amendment. We went through the case briefs and what I was looking for. We then turned to Chapter 2 of the text and Gregg v. Georgia, We got through the plurality opinion, and began discussing both the Brennan and the Marshall dissents. We will pick up with those dissents on Thursday.
The assignment for Thursday 11/1 is to review Gregg and read in the text through p.67 (including both Mobbley and Holland).