Course Offerings

This course will inform students of major concepts and themes in government ethics law at both the state and federal level. By the end of the course, students should possess a foundational knowledge of law in these areas that can aid their future practice in advising clients as well as understand the legal implications of government investigations and ethics questions presented through current events. This course will be graded.

Learn the inner workings of how a bill becomes a law, with an emphasis on Georgia legislative process. Go beyond Schoolhouse Rock and pull back the curtain into the myriad processes and people involved. This course will be taught as an online, paced, asynchronous course consisting of six modules that will run for eight weeks. There will be a combination of individual and group work. We will be employing innovative pedagogy for a new type of legal education class.

This course will introduce students to students' and teachers' constitutional rights and obligations in the education context.

A two-student team practices oral arguments under the supervision of a faculty advisor in preparation for a competition against the University of Florida before a panel of state and federal judges. A student registering for this course must be selected as a competing advocate who will attend the competition in the semester in which the student registers.

Study of modern litigation efforts in the United States to combat human trafficking. Examines civil litigation in the context of both sex and labor trafficking and discusses the issues unique to each, including victim advocacy and interaction, trauma-informed lawyering, identifying force, fraud, and coercion in the trafficking context, third-party liability, nascent case law and appellate decisions, and the problems of proof involving clandestine crimes. This class is pass/fail.

With its roots in Article I of the U.S. Constitution, copyright is an essential part of U.S. Law. Moreover, because of the ease of obtaining copyright protection over creative works, nearly all people have countless works to their names. Yet despite these things, people often misunderstand how copyright law operates. As such, this course will explore the fundamentals of U.S. copyright law, from securing protection, to copyright duration, fair use, and the tension between copyright and First Amendment freedom of expression.

This course will examine American immigration law and policy. Topics considered include source and scope of Congressional power to regulate immigration; procedures for entry, exclusion, and deportation; refugees and asylum; current immigration law reform; and the role of states in regulating migrants. This course is intended both for those who are considering immigration law as a career and for those who want a general introduction to an important area of law that intersects with many areas of practice, including administrative, criminal, family, employment, and international.

Independent projects provide student with flexible opportunity to independently explore legal issues or questions sometimes not found in any course or seminar and without following format of a formal research paper. Projects must involve significant legal, social, or empirical research or experience.

This course introduces students to innovations necessary to keep pace with a rapidly changing legal industry and that will cover a wide range of timely topics, including: innovative practice / firm management, the pandemic’s effect on the profession, the need for lawyer resiliency, ESG, equal access to justice, process and change management, AI, alternative pricing models, and business / client development in the modern market.

This is an experiential class based on a survey of liability and first party insurance coverage issues. The course will include a review of current and recurring issues in liability insurance, including commercial general liability insurance, professional liability insurance, directors and officers insurance, and umbrella and excess insurance. Within this context, coverage for subjects such as environmental claims, construction defect claims, and claims against corporate officers and directors for breach of fiduciary duty and mismanagement will be discussed. The course will also include a review of current and recurring issues under first party property policies. Within this general context, the course will also survey emerging insurance coverage issues, such as coverage for cyber liability claims and claims related to alleged climate change. To provide experiential learning, cases will be assigned in advance to be argued by teams of opposing counsel, one team representing the insurer and one team representing the insured. The class will be graded as follows: 10 percent based on class participation in arguing a pre-assigned case (this will be based on the substance of the argument and not on presentation skills); 40 percent based on a mid-term assignment to write a reservation of rights letter or coverage memorandum based on a written problem (which will include a self-evaluation component), and 50 percent on a one hour open book final exam.

This course provides an introduction to researching intellectual property, including copyrights, patents, and trademarks. In addition to reviewing administrative regulation research, this course will explore a variety of free and fee-based tools.  Topics include classification and search techniques, and intellectual property searching in business research and competitive intelligence.

This course provides an introduction to the four primary types of intellectual property protection: copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret. Students gain a basic understanding of the various grounds for and limitations of such protections. This course serves as both an introduction to the field for those anticipating further study and a survey of the area for those planning to focus on a different area of law. NOTE: One cannot take the IP Survey (JURI 5050) after having taken any two of the following courses: Copyright Law (JURI 4430), Patent Law (JURI 4920), or Trademark Law (JURI 4930). If the IP Survey course is taken first, any or all three of the advanced intellectual property courses can be taken.

Course examines how corporations and their personnel investigate their own conduct. Course will develop students' understanding of the roles of management, the board of directors, and their respective counsel in corporate investigations and their interplay with government regulators, such as the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Preparation, handling of international law moot court case and representation of hypothetical states before international legal tribunal. Topics covered impart knowledge of international legal reasoning, novel research and effective oral advocacy. This course is graded S/U. Enrollment extended by permission.

This course will examine the legal regime governing international commercial arbitration. Topics will include the enforcement of arbitration agreements, arbitral procedure and the enforcement of arbitral awards. The course also will consider how to draft arbitral clauses.

This course examines the international commercial law and practices, including the international sale of goods (CISG) and international payments, that govern a variety of cross-border business transactions. Students will gain an understanding of the main tools that multinational firms have at their disposal when considering disputes, regulations, and variation in national laws.

Study of international human rights law and international and regional organizations, states and private actors in field. Examines instruments and institutions forming sources of human rights law (UN system, including Charter and treaties, European, African and Inter-American human rights regimes), role of NGOs and interaction between domestic and international law.

This course examines the main international treaties governing intellectual property rights, the grounds and limitations of protections arising from these treaties, and the role that prominent international institutions play in the international intellectual property law framework. Students will gain an understanding of the key principles underlying international intellectual property law, including the most-favored-nation principle and national treatment.

In Spring 2025, this course is designed to introduce students to features of international economic law, broadly defined, through engagement with scholars in the international legal field.  The course broadly defines “international economic law” to include traditional approaches (trade and investment agreements) as well as non-traditional, emerging approaches (examining the effects of IEL on marginalized communities and considering re-distributional policies). This course will consist of presentations of scholarly works by prominent scholars from other law schools.  In addition to reading the manuscripts and actively participating in classroom discussion of the work with the presenters, students will be expected to write a reaction paper on each of the colloquium papers. Note: There is no pre-requisite for this course. If you get an error message, please email the law registrar to waive it.

This spring’s Hackathon will focus on international dispute resolution and sales law. The course will feature international legal fundamentals, guest lectures, and a problem‐solving final project where teams pitch a solution. This course will meet on the following dates from 12:00-1:40: 1/11, 1/18, 1/25, 2/1, 2/15, 2/22. The course will also meet on a Saturday TBD for up to 8 hours. The course will be capped at 20 JD students, but it will include graduate & LLM students.

Researching international and foreign law requires materials and methods different from those employed in researching U.S. law. This short course provides an overview of international law, with an emphasis on the resources and skills used to locate relevant international and foreign resources. Although students and researchers of international and comparative law should find this course particularly useful, non-specialists will also find it helpful in an increasingly global legal arena. Class discussions will include the differences between public international law, private international law, and municipal (foreign) law, important research tools, UN and other intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs); European Union & other regional organizations. Weekly research exercises provide hands-on experience in locating materials.

International Organizations rarely impinge on one’s consciousness as national institutions do unless there is an event of international significance, namely Covid Sars 2019, the Russian-Ukrainian war or the more recent conflict in Gaza. Yet, a world bereft of the United Nations Security Council or its agencies/funds and programs, international financial institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the Conference of the Parties (COP), regional organizations such as the EU, ASEAN - is inconceivable in a globalizing world.  This course examines these institutions that facilitate and govern humanity’s affairs and values in an increasingly intertwined world, their effectiveness and the international and national political factors that impact their functions and capabilities.

Considers role of American lawyer acting as tax planner in context of transnational business transactions; U.S. income taxation consequences of foreign corporations and individuals doing business and investing in U.S.; similar tax consequences of American companies and individuals doing business and investing in foreign countries.

The debate surrounding workers’ rights in the global economy is increasingly heated and dogmatic, politicized, and divisive. Indeed, the recent election debates and executive orders to withdraw from trade commitments have highlighted divisions with respect to the manner and extent to which workers’ rights should be regulated in trade. What are international workers’ rights, how are they established, and what do they mean in theory and in practice? What tools are available to protect and promote them and how have these those tools been applied? When governments adopt policies that restrict trade to protect their workers, do they violate the principles of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and World Trade Organization (WTO) jurisprudence? This course will provide an overview of the intersection of WTO and International Labor Organization (ILO) principles. Students will discuss the common issues confronting workers and governments in liberalized trade, while comparing the U.S. and E.U. approaches to incorporating the ILO’s labor standards in their trade agreements. Taking a closer look at U.S. trade developments, the course will examine the evolution and implementation of labor provisions in U.S. trade agreements, from NAFTA through the present, and the labor eligibility criteria in U.S. trade preference programs and their enforcement. The course will conclude with a critical examination of the various mechanisms to promote workers’ rights and the compatibility of that system with international economic law.

Examines national and international policies and laws relating to international trade and investment.