April 4, 2019

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 4/4, I first clarified that, for the Pagnani case brief, do not include (in the Issues, Facts, and Holding portion) ¶25 (Search of the Vehicle). Do include Search of the Vehicle in other segments, such as Prior Proceedings, Appellant's Contentions, etc. Do include the dissent's footnotes 6 and 7 in your paragraph explaining the view of the dissent.
We then finished our discussion of Mobbley by going over the (un)persuasive authority, and the dissent's view about effectuating legislative intent. We also discussed how the case might be defended, now that it's headed for trial. We then went over the Holland Florida Supreme Court case. Finally, we looked at the statutory handout from Tuesday, going over Maine law regarding Ms. Mobbley's situation, as well as Maine common law crimes, and the Maine situations in which there is a duty to report, as well as the federal misprision statute.
The assignment for Tuesday 4/9 is to review Lawrence v. Texas (through p. 72 of the text) and to work on your Pagnani case brief, due 4/11.


POS 359 THE CURRENT SUPREME COURT TERM
In class today, Thursday 4/4, I distributed one handout, excerpts from three method-of-execution cases: Baze, Gossip, and Monday's opinion in Bucklew. I introduced those cases, and explained how Thomas' vision of the 8th Amendment (never before a majority opinion) may have prevailed this week.
We then turned back to the American Legion case. We first reviewed the outline of the Maryland Commission (Katyal) Brief. Then we discussed the American Legion (Carvin) position, which aimed at a much larger victory. We looked at the Justices' response to Carvin during the oral argument. We went through the American Humanist Association (Miller) Brief, including a somewhat confusing trip through the outline of her argument. And we looked at the response that her argument got during oral argument. The remaining issue that I wanted to look at is the standing issue brought up by Gorsuch. We'll start with that question on Tuesday.
The assignment for Tuesday 4/9 is to read today's handout, focusing on the question of whether the Court in Bucklew has changed the test for what is Cruel and Unusual.