Announcements and Comments
POL 462H
Spring 2008

Spring Break for this semester is the week of March 10th.

5 January 2007 

Comments on Writing Assignment # 1

There are a number of short-hand comments on the margins of the papers.

W/C stands for Word Choice. The word marked is not the correct word

 * stands for a place where a footnote should be provided. Footnotes appear at the bottom of each page, and should be numbered consecutively, using Arabic numbers.

 AWK stands for the indicated phrase being awkward. UGH is the extreme equivalent of AWK.

In general the papers were of mixed quality. Some students did not even select a statute that the E.P.A. administers. Some papers did not include an outline of either the rulemaking procedure of provided in the APA or that provided by an E.P.A. statute.

Generally, there are several points that need to be clearly emphasized since they apparently have not sunk in.

·        Read and comply with the statement about Writing contained on the website.

·        Anyone who uses contractions or personal pronouns will NOT complete this course satisfactorily.

·        Anyone misspelling the word statute will not have the rest of their paper even read, and the evaluation of the paper will be based on what preceded the misspelling.

·        Write clearly and explicitly. You should be able to outline each step in the rulemaking procedure for the APA, without much difficulty at all, and you must be able to outline the steps for the other statute you select.

·        You need to pay close attention the subtle or slight differences, if they exist, between the APA and the alternative rulemaking procedure because those can make a great deal of difference in E.P.A. procedures and the result of rulemaking. (One way to do that is to create a table in WORD that displays the steps for the APA in one column and the steps for the E.P.A. in the other column. Then look at the differences.)

·        Many people clearly do not seem to have much clear idea of the E.P.A.’s rulemaking procedure for the selected statute. That indicates either that they have not read the statute or they have not found the relevant provisions, and that must be remedied. (The real source of E.P.A. rulemaking might be contained in the agency’s procedures. These are reported in the Code of Federal Regulations. These are available in hard copy in the Reference section of the HSSE Library. They are cited as “Title” C.F.R. “Section.”)

·        Punctuation. Footnote numbers should appear only outside all punctuation! (That is clearly indicated in the Writing document on the web for this course. Read it!)

·        As clearly indicated in the Writing Document on the Web, do not use contractions.

·        Some of you do not know the difference between “it’s” and “its” so do no use those.

·        The Administrator of the E.P.A. who is generally given the authority to issue rules, is a particular officer of the United States Government so the office should always be CAPITALIZED.

·        FOOTNOTES means FOOTNOTES! Those appear at the bottom of each page, and they are numbered sequentially. Citations to websites are not acceptable for legal citations!

·        ALWAYS proofread and correct your papers. ALWAYS have your papers scrutinized at the Writing Lab.

 Papers would generally be much improved is students got off the Internet and found hardcopies (in the HSSE Library) of their statutes and Regulations. Students need to READ the statutes and understand those provisions, rather than simply cutting (or copying) and pasting them electronically.

 Students who do not follow the Maroon book in citation forms will not get credit for their submissions.

 The papers were evaluated qualitatively into three categories.

 O == indicates the student received credit for submitting the paper.

 A check mark == indicates that the paper indicates some contribution and completion of the assignment.

    + == a satisfactory submission.

 Students who received a PLUS (+) need not submit Writing Assignment No. 2.

 24 January 2007 

Comments about Case Reading

Given the completion of the first set of case readings assignments these are my comments about student reading and preparation for classes. Generally people are not adequately prepared to discuss the cases and answer questions about them. While there are exceptions to that statement, most students do not seem to have read (i.e., comprehended and understood) the cases that are assigned for each day. Most students have looked at the case, and perhaps read portion of the opinions. Some even remember portions of the opinion. However, most seem able to discuss very little in connection with the case. Some students can find items in the case by checking the opinion and reading their highlighted portions of the opinion. But this "searching" indicates the student is really not prepared or knowledgeable about the case. Some responses indicate the student does not know enough about the case to recognize what information the question I pose requires of them.

It should be clear by now, that I always ask the same question when we start the discussion of a case. What is the holding of the Court in this case? Given the silence or searching that people do to determine a response to this question, I usually regress and ask for rudimentary pieces of information about the case in an effort to get students on the right track: What court decided this case? Who was the plaintiff? What did the plaintiff want? What had the Defendant done? These are factual questions that I should not have to ask, but which I hope will get enough information that we can get to the holding of the court in the case. Yet, these background questions often fail to get a correct and accurate response. So I would like to ask that each student come to class prepared to answer the following questions about each AND every case that is assigned for the day.

1. Who is the plaintiff in this case? What did the plaintiff ask for or want the court to decide? What did the defendant "do" or fail to do in this case?
2. What happened (was decided) at the trial court level or at the agency level in this case? What did the agency do about this matter, if an agency was involved?
3. What was the legal question (or questions) presented in this case?
4. Are there statutory provisions involved in this case? If so, what provisions and what is the exact wording of the statute involved here?
5. How did the appellate court decide this question or these questions?
6. What was the holding in this case? [This should be a one sentence statement of the substantive holding the court rendered in the case.]
7. How did the court reason to this conclusion? What was the reasoning the court used to reach this conclusion about the legal question?
8. What does this case add (or change) about the law on this subject?

The answers to these questions should be written down and you should bring these written materials to class each day. That way, when I ask you a question, you can read the answer. That may sound strange, but until you develop the skills to phrase answers to these questions orally, on your feet, you need to come prepared with a written script. Some of these question can be answered in a sentence or two. Others may take a paragraph or more. Whatever is required in terms of length, be sure you come to class prepared on each case.

 29 January 2007