Custom Course Search

Spring Semester. This course teaches the procedural steps involved in the prosecution of a criminal case following a defendant's not-guilty plea. Students will learn about jury trials and jury selection. Students will also learn about the search warrant requirement and its "well-recognized exceptions," identification of suspects, Confrontation Clause, and Right to Counsel.

This course offers an overview of Public Health Law. The course begins by defining public health law with historic, contemporary and international comparative law-policy perspectives, discusses the government entities most involved in public health domestically and internationally, and then surveys a range of applications. Coverage encompasses reproductive health, vaccination, biodefense, integration of genomics (study of gene function) and population genetics into public health policy and practice, and international public health.

Designed to teach students to discover what peoples' needs are, to be able as lawyers to summon community's resources for meeting those needs, and to determine what lawyers can do to insure the community's services are in place and functioning. Students will be required to work with both service institutions and individuals who are the clients of those institutions. They will be assigned to cases and graded on their success in solving the problems raised.

This introductory course will examine the doctrine, theory, and evolution of International Law. Once focused narrowly on relations between nation-states, the field now encompasses myriad legal norms and mechanisms regulating the global activities not only of states, but also of human beings, corporations, and intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations.

An examination of the effects of race on the structure and practice of law, on thinking about law, and on legal education.

Race and Law is a 3 hour course that meets twice a week. It focuses on historical and current issues that illustrate the critical and systemic ways in which law has been used to define race, to construct racial identity and to justify racial discrimination in the United States, as well as the attempts to utilize law to deconstruct those same structures. Topics include, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement, policing, mass incarceration, voting rights and processes, educational opportunity, affirmative action, language and accent discrimination, and generally the intersection of race and law with gender, sex, ethnicity, religion and other routes along which discrimination often travels in combination with race.

A comprehensive overview of issues involved in developing real estate projects and representing real estate developers, from finding and securing a site, structuring the acquisition agreement, understanding development financial metrics, professional service agreements, financing agreements and construction contracts through sale or refinancing of the project.

Residential and commercial real estate transactions, including contracts of sale, brokerage arrangements, deeds of conveyance, the recording system, and methods of title assurance; financing of real estate acquisition, including installment land contracts, mortgages, and other financing methods.

The world's refugees - persons forced to flee home countries - topped 15 million in 2014. This course will examine laws and policies governing forced migration. To be studied: international and U.S. legal systems and institutions; substantive, procedural, and evidentiary aspects of an asylum claim; causes; and trafficking and other refugee experiences.

Digital abuse is on the rise. People are increasingly using networked technologies to engage in harassment, stalking, privacy invasions, and surveillance. The law will often adapt to deal with harmful technologies, and one of the pressing challenges of our time is deciding whether and how to regulate digital abuse. This seminar will consider responses to the harms enabled by networked technologies, exploring issues related to civil rights, consumer protection, cybercrime, free speech, privacy, and private self-governance.

Remedies is a transubstantive course that crosses the traditional boundaries within private law, and between private and public law. The course requires students to reconsider from a new perspective the fundamental tort, property and contract law doctrines they learned in their first-year. In particular, they are asked to focus on the relief they are seeking for their clients and the alternative forms of relief that might be available. After all, remedies are the denominator common to every area of the law that imposes liability. The objective of this course is gain an understanding of the relationship between liability and remedy across many areas of the law, looking at both regularities and divergences.

This course will introduce students to the legal and policy issues currently arising in the ongoing transition to renewable energy resources in the U.S. electric power sector. Following an introduction to utility regulatory basics, the course will focus on conflicts and challenges in development of solar and wind energy resources, and discuss legal issues related to grid modernization initiatives (e.g., energy storage, demand side management, smart meters), and other renewable energy resources (e.g., biomass, renewable fuels, geothermal). The course is designed to be accessible to students regardless of background familiarity with the subject matter.

The course will be designed to equip students with a starter of skills and perspective to create immediate capacity to function effectively in state governmental lawyer capacity.

This course will explore the history and law of reproductive rights in the United States. The majority of the term will be spent analyzing the constitutional framework governing forced sterilization, contraception and abortion and the substantial changes made to that framework by the current Supreme Court.  We will consider the historical, ethical, social and religious context; gender, race and socioeconomic class issues; impact on health and the U.S. health care system; the rationales for the protection of reproductive rights; and the practical impact of the regulations. We will also look ahead to the future of reproductive rights jurisprudence in the U.S. in the post-Dobbs era and discuss broader, intersectional areas of reproductive justice, including issues of access, parenting, maternal health and criminalization of pregnancy.  This course is pass/fail.

This commercial law course focuses on one of the most important devices in facilitating credit: secured financing when the collateral consists of personal property. The term “personal property” for the purpose of the course includes tangible and intangible items such as motor vehicles, goods in store inventories, rights in copyrights, trademarks and patents, agricultural products and commodities, contract rights, payment intangibles, accounts receivable, and equipment. Focus is on Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. The course should help students to develop their skills in statutory analysis and in understanding and planning business transactions.

This course will examine the enforcement of the federal securities laws and related white-collar crimes from the perspectives of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission staff, the Department of Justice, and defense counsel. An important focus of the course will be discussing the relevant statutes, regulations, case law, and other legal principles, and applying them to practical situations that arise in government investigations. The required weekly reading will consist of securities enforcement cases, statutes, regulations, and other relevant documents. Given the highly evolving subject matter, many classes will include a short discussion of recent developments. As events occur during the semester, we may supplement or replace the reading materials to account for current events and changes in the law. Additionally, at points throughout the semester, we will have 'practical' classes that will involve workshops in which students will be expected to demonstrate their understanding of the course material in simulated real-world settings.

This overview of the federal securities laws focuses primarily on the Securities Act of 1933. Topics covered include the definition of a security, the registration of securities offerings with the Securities & Exchange Commission, exemptions from registration, secondary distributions, and civil liabilities.

Selected areas of judicial administration and judging that are too narrow for a full-semester course. Topics may include judicial case management, the judicial role in criminal and civil matters, the role of judges or courts in society and literature, comparative approaches to judging in different legal systems, etc.

This one-week course will examine various aspects of the sentencing process, with an emphasis on the federal system. We will cover a variety of topics, including an overview of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, how the federal system contrasts with non-guideline sentencing systems, the legal and societal objectives underlying the imposition of sentences, and the factors deemed relevant to sentencing decisions.  We will also discuss various aspects of sentencing from the perspectives of the key players involved: the prosecution, defense, the court, and victims. Last we will cover the forms of punishment that comprise sentencing; the role of mandatory minimums; and sentencing policy reform.

This semester you and your classmates will engage in class discussions and exercises related to case preparation, pre-trial procedure, jury selection, opening and closing statements, witness examinations, and the appeals process.  The goal will be to learn more about how to persuasively argue cases before judges and juries.