February 28, 2019

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 2/28, I collected the Carter case briefs, and I also distributed my own version of the brief. I plan to grade them this weekend, and return them on Tuesday. We spent the class period going over the case and the case brief.
I also laid out a scheduling plan for the next two weeks. I plan to give some practice exam questions on Tuesday 3/5, and to give Exam #1 on Tuesday 3/12.
The assignment for Tuesday 3/5 is to read in the text pp. 34-38, including Speelman v. Bellingham Housing Authority.


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Thursday 2/28, I distributed 2 handouts: the 2017 Supreme Court opinion in Dunn v. Madison, and the 2/27/2019 (yesterday) opinion in Madison v. Alabama. We first went over the procedural story of the Dunn v. Madison opinion, and the effect of the federal AEDPA statute on the ability to get these issues into federal court. We also looked at both the Ginsburg and Breyer concurrences in that case. We then turned to the Madison oral argument. We saw how the Justices eventually got Stevenson to concede on Issue #1 that loss of memory alone was not sufficient for a finding of incompetency, but that it was somewhat confusing what qualified as the "plus" to add to loss of memory. We also saw how one looming question was whether the state competency judge had in fact ruled out dementia as a cause of incompetency, or, alternatively, had allowed it but hadn't found that the dementia in this case had met the Panetti standard. We will pick up briefly on Tuesday with the question of whether it was Alabama's position that dementia could not be the source of incompetency.
I also laid out a scheduling plan for the next two weeks. I plan to give some practice exam questions on Tuesday 3/5, and to give Exam #1 on Tuesday 3/12.
The assignment for Tuesday 3/5 is to read today's 2 Madison opinion handouts. The plan then for next Thursday is to discuss the Timbs opinion which I had distributed to the class on 2/21.