Legal "briefs," so goes the old lawyers' joke, are anything but ...
Today we will brief the grave constitutional issues raised in a landmark judicial decision in the U.S. District Court at Augusta, Ga., by "Blackie the Talking Cat." Blackie did not testify on his own behalf, but it was argued -- unsuccessfully -- that his right of free speech under the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitition was abridged when his masters were required to pay a business tax to the city of Augusta when they asked pedestrians on the city streets to pay money to hear the talking cat. The case, perhaps not surprisingly, was decided on other issues.
Robert J. Beck, an international law professor, has guidelines on how to brief a case linked to a course syllabus at Tufts University. It is unusually clear. Let's use it to analyze the decision of U.S. District Judge Dudley H. Bowen in Miles v. City Council of Augusta, Ga., 551 F.Suppl. 349 (1982).
A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.
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- COMM 317: Lobbying and the First Amendment
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About Me
- Pete
- Springfield (Ill.), United States
- I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.
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