Your options are as follows:
1. Prepare a case analysis of one or two cases. This means that you should not merely offer a summary of the facts and outcome of the case, but you should be prepared to focus on a justice’s argument. Here your task is to determine whether the conclusion the justice reaches is matched by logical and analytical framework he or she has produced. In other words, does the outcome make sense in terms of what the justice has presented or are personal preferences involved?
2. Write an opinion yourself on one of the cases as if you were writing the majority opinion for the Court. How would you want the case to come out? What meaningful resources would you use to support your argument, such as precedent, historical events, historical documents, and other materials?
3. Prepare an opinion as if you were a particular justice. Write from the perspective, for example, of Hugo Black (literalist) or Felix Frankfurter (legislative deference), William Brennan or William O. Douglas (living constitution), or Antonin Scalia/Clarence Thomas (originalist) or even beyond the Constitution (visionary as in Douglas again). You might want to compare this opinion to one that is crafted from a completely different perspective.
The work must be your own, it must reflect your care and duty to the material and the work of the Court, and it must be written in your best manner. For those of you who have not reviewed the manuscript style sheet on Blackboard, now is the time to do so, well in advance of the due date. You will find a model essay on Blackboard under Content. Let me know whether you have any questions.

Elonis v. United States
575 U.S. ___ (2015)
Anthony Douglas Elonis’s legal troubles began in 2010, when his wife left him, taking their two young children with her. He began to post lyrics, under the moniker “Tone Dougie,” from popular songs on Facebook, and he soon moved on to post his own, sometimes violent, rap lyrics using graphically violent language and imagery concerning his wife, co-workers, a kindergarten class, and state and federal law enforcement. As part of his posts, Elonis included disclaimers about how his lyrics were merely fictitious, and that he was just “exercising his constitutional right to freedom of speech.”
He soon discussed harming his ex-wife. One post was a take-off on a comedy routine available on YouTube, and added that he wanted to kill his ex-wife. These posts earned Elonis a visit from an FBI agent. After the visit, he posted about that encounter too, suggesting in rap lyrics that he had strapped a bomb to his body and would have detonated it if he had been arrested. A few weeks later, Elonis was arrested and charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), which makes it a crime to communicate threats in interstate commerce--for example, over the Internet.
Elonis claimed that the charges against him should be dismissed because you can only violate the law if you intend to threaten someone. And he didn’t have any plans to threaten his ex-wife, the FBI agent, or anyone else: his rap lyrics and “venting” about his problems on Facebook just made him feel better. But if he can be convicted without any intent to threaten anyone, he added, that would violate the First Amendment.
A federal trial court rejected both of his arguments. Instead, it instructed the jury, it could find Elonis guilty if the average person, looking at a statement objectively, would believe that it was intended to be a threat.The jury convicted Elonis, and he was sentenced to nearly four years in prison. The Third Circuit affirmed, holding that Section 875(c) requires only the intent to communicate words that the defendant understands, and that a reasonable person would view as a threat.
By a vote of 8 to 1, the Supreme Court reversed Elonis’s conviction. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion of the Court, in which Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan joined. Justice Alito concurred and dissented in part. Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion.

Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court.
Th[e] statute requires that a communication be transmitted and that the communication contain a threat. It does not specify that the defendant must have any mental state with respect to these elements. In particular, it does not indicate whether the defendant must intend that his communication contain a threat.
Elonis argues that the word “threat” itself in Section 875(c) imposes such a requirement. According to Elonis, every definition of “threat” or “threaten” conveys the notion of an intent to inflict harm. These definitions, however, speak to what the statement conveys--not to the mental state of the author. For example, an anonymous letter that says “I’m going to kill you” is “an expression of an intention to inflict loss or harm” regardless of the author’s intent. A victim who receives that letter in the mail has received a threat, even if the author believes (wrongly) that his message will be taken as a joke.
For its part, the Government argues that Section 875(c) should be read in light of its neighboring provisions, Sections 875(b) and 875(d). Those provisions also prohibit certain types of threats, but expressly include a mental state requirement of an “intent to extort.” The Government takes this expressio unius est exclusio alterius [t he expression of one thing is the exclusion of another] canon too far. The fact that Congress excluded the requirement of an “intent to extort” from Section 875(c) is strong evidence that Congress did not mean to confine Section 875(c) to crimes of extortion. But that does not suggest that Congress, at the same time, also meant to exclude a requirement that a defendant act with a certain mental state in communicating a threat. The most we can conclude from the language of Section 875(c) and its neighboring provisions is that Congress meant to proscribe a broad class of threats in Section 875(c), but did not identify what mental state, if any, a defendant must have to be convicted. In sum, neither Elonis nor the Government has identified any indication of a particular mental state requirement in the text of Section 875(c).
The fact that the statute does not specify any required mental state, however, does not mean that none exists. We have repeatedly held that “mere omission from a criminal enactment of any mention of criminal intent” should not be read “as dispensing with it.” Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246 (1952). This rule of construction reflects the basic principle that “wrongdoing must be conscious to be criminal.” As Justice Jackson explained, this principle is “as universal and persistent in mature systems of law as belief in freedom of the human will and a consequent ability and duty of the normal individual to choose between good and evil.” Id., at 250. The “central thought” is that a defendant must be “blameworthy in mind” before he can be found guilty, a concept courts have expressed over time through various terms such as mens rea, scienter, malice aforethought, guilty knowledge, and the like. Although there are exceptions, the “general rule” is that a guilty mind is “a necessary element in the indictment and proof of every crime.” United States v. Balint, 258 U.S. 250 (1922). We therefore generally “interpret criminal statutes to include broadly applicable scienter requirements, even where the statute by its terms does not contain them.” United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc.,513 U.S. 64 (1994).
This is not to say that a defendant must know that his conduct is illegal before he may be found guilty. The familiar maxim “ignorance of the law is no excuse” typically holds true. Instead, our cases have explained that a defendant generally must “know the facts that make his conduct fit the definition of the offense,” Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600 (1994), even if he does not know that those facts give rise to a crime. . . .
Elonis’s conviction, however, was premised solely on how his posts would be understood by a reasonable person. Such a “reasonable person” standard is a familiar feature of civil liability in tort law, but is inconsistent with “the conventional requirement for criminal conduct--awareness of some wrongdoing.” Staples. Having liability turn on whether a “reasonable person” regards the communication as a threat--regardless of what the defendant thinks--”reduces culpability on the all-important element of the crime to negligence,” United States v. Jeffries, 692 F. 3d 473 (2012), and we “have long been reluctant to infer that a negligence standard was intended in criminal statutes,” Rogers v. United States, 422 U.S. 35 (1975). Under these principles, “what [Elonis] thinks” does matter.
The Government is at pains to characterize its position as something other than a negligence standard, emphasizing that its approach would require proof that a defendant “comprehended [the] contents and context” of the communication. The Government gives two examples of individuals who, in its view, would lack this necessary mental state--a “foreigner, ignorant of the English language,” who would not know the meaning of the words at issue, or an individual mailing a sealed envelope without knowing its contents. But the fact that the Government would require a defendant to actually know the words of and circumstances surrounding a communication does not amount to a rejection of negligence. Criminal negligence standards often incorporate “the circumstances known” to a defendant. Courts then ask, however, whether a reasonable person equipped with that knowledge, not the actual defendant, would have recognized the harmfulness of his conduct. That is precisely the Government’s position here: Elonis can be convicted, the Government contends, if he himself knew the contents and context of his posts, and a reasonable person would have recognized that the posts would be read as genuine threats. That is a negligence standard.
In support of its position the Government relies most heavily on Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 87 (1974). In that case, the Court rejected the argument that individuals could be convicted of mailing obscene material only if they knew the “legal status of the materials” distributed. Absolving a defendant of liability because he lacked the knowledge that the materials were legally obscene “would permit the defendant to avoid prosecution by simply claiming that he had not brushed up on the law.” It was instead enough for liability that “a defendant had knowledge of the contents of the materials he distributed, and that he knew the character and nature of the materials.”
This holding does not help the Government. In fact, the Court in Hamling approved a state court’s conclusion that requiring a defendant to know the character of the material incorporated a “vital element of scienter” so that “not innocent but calculated purveyance of filth . . . is exorcised.” In this case, “calculated purveyance” of a threat would require that Elonis know the threatening nature of his communication. Put simply, the mental state requirement the Court approved in Hamling turns on whether a defendant knew the character of what was sent, not simply its contents and context. . . .
In light of the foregoing, Elonis’s conviction cannot stand. The jury was instructed that the Government need prove only that a reasonable person would regard Elonis’s communications as threats, and that was error. Federal criminal liability generally does not turn solely on the results of an act without considering the defendant’s mental state. That understanding “took deep and early root in American soil” and Congress left it intact here: Under Section 875(c), “wrongdoing must be conscious to be criminal.” Morissette.
There is no dispute that the mental state requirement in Section 875(c) is satisfied if the defendant transmits a communication for the purpose of issuing a threat, or with knowledge that the communication will be viewed as a threat. In response to a question at oral argument, Elonis stated that a finding of recklessness would not be sufficient. Neither Elonis nor the Government has briefed or argued that point, and we accordingly decline to address it. Given our disposition, it is not necessary to consider any First Amendment issues. . . .
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Justice Thomas, dissenting.
We granted certiorari to resolve a conflict in the lower courts over the appropriate mental state for threat prosecutions under 18 U. S. C. §875(c). Save two, every Circuit to have considered the issue--11 in total--has held that this provision demands proof only of general intent, which here requires no more than that a defendant knew he transmitted a communication, knew the words used in that communication, and understood the ordinary meaning of those words in the relevant context. The outliers are the Ninth and Tenth Circuits, which have concluded that proof of an intent to threaten was necessary for conviction. Adopting the minority position, Elonis urges us to hold that §875(c) and the First Amendment require proof of an intent to threaten. The Government in turn advocates a general-intent approach.
Rather than resolve the conflict, the Court casts aside the approach used in nine Circuits and leaves nothing in its place. Lower courts are thus left to guess at the appropriate mental state for §875(c). All they know after today’s decision is that a requirement of general intent will not do. But they can safely infer that a majority of this Court would not adopt an intent-to-threaten requirement, as the opinion carefully leaves open the possibility that recklessness may be enough.
This failure to decide throws everyone from appellate judges to everyday Facebook users into a state of uncertainty. This uncertainty could have been avoided had we simply adhered to the background rule of the common law favoring general intent. Although I am sympathetic to my colleagues’ policy concerns about the risks associated with threat prosecutions, the answer to such fears is not to discard our traditional approach to state-of-mind requirements in criminal law. Because the Court of Appeals properly applied the general-intent standard, and because the communications transmitted by Elonis were “true threats” unprotected by the First Amendment, I would affirm the judgment below. . . .
There is always a risk that a criminal threat statute may be deployed by the Government to suppress legitimate speech. But the proper response to that risk is to adhere to our traditional rule that only a narrow class of true threats, historically unprotected, may be constitutionally proscribed.
The solution is not to abandon a mental-state requirement compelled by text, history, and precedent. Not only does such a decision warp our traditional approach to mens rea, it results in an arbitrary distinction between threats and other forms of unprotected speech. Had Elonis mailed obscene materials to his wife and a kindergarten class, he could have been prosecuted irrespective of whether he intended to offend those recipients or recklessly disregarded that possibility. Yet when he threatened to kill his wife and a kindergarten class, his intent to terrify those recipients (or reckless disregard of that risk) suddenly becomes highly relevant. That need not--and should not--be the case.
Nor should it be the case that we cast aside the mental-state requirement compelled by our precedents yet offer nothing in its place. Our job is to decide questions, not create them. Given the majority’s ostensible concern for protecting innocent actors, one would have expected it to announce a clear rule--any clear rule. Its failure to do so reveals the fractured foundation upon which today’s decision rests.
I respectfully dissent.

Your options are as follows: 1. Prepare a case analysis of one or...