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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.

The purpose of this course is to provide a brief overview of the elaborate and complex system that has evolved over the past 150 years to regulate the activities of banking institutions. It will provide an overview of the types of financial entities providing banking services in the United States, their powers and authorities, and how they are regulated. It will discuss the major laws that govern banks, and the themes of regulation, including safety and soundness, anti-money laundering and sanctions, and the regulatory enforcement process. It will also address the structure of the payments system in the US, as well as the systems that have evolved for handling bank insolvencies. This class will be graded as Pass/Fail.

In a globalizing world, the range of issues with cross-border implications only expands, from finance to trade, terrorism to food safety, climate change to sports. This upper-level, interdisciplinary course examines how and why different legal regimes have developed to govern these issues, when and why they succeed, and when and why they fail or generate backlash.

This course will provide students with an overview of litigation finance, with an emphasis on topics related to third-party litigation funding for commercial matters in the United States. We will cover subjects such as the principal drivers of demand for litigation finance, historical challenges to third-party funding, and the current state of the industry, including courts’ analyses of litigation funding arrangements and recent efforts relating to regulation. Reading for the class will include a combination of articles, case law, legislation, and expert commentary.

By the end of the course, students should have an understanding of the factors that led to the rise of third-party litigation funding, its place in the U.S. legal ecosystem, and practical and professional responsibility-related considerations around litigation finance transactions that can be utilized in their future practices. This class is pass/fail.

This course will introduce MSL students to learning in the law school environment and to core concepts within the American Legal System. Coverage will include structure of U.S governments, judicial and court processes, sources of American law, the role of the lawyer, legal reasoning and analysis, and foundational issues in various legal subject areas.

Islamic finance is an increasingly important sector of the international finance market. No longer limited to the Middle East or Southeast Asia, there is growing interest in this market on the part of non-Muslim customers, investors, and financial institutions, and sharia-compliant financial services and products are currently offered more than 70 countries, including in the U.K. and the U.S. Yet in spite of its dynamic growth and future potential, the Islamic financial industry remains relatively unknown in the United States. This course is designed as an intensive basic introduction to Islamic (or sharia-compliant) finance and banking. It will explore the hows and whys behind the industry, its ethical and legal underpinnings, and how it interacts with the U.S. and other legal systems. No previous familiarity with the field is necessary, and there are no course prerequisites. All readings will be in English. The course is pass/fail.

Superior Court civil litigation clinic representing lower income victims of domestic abuse in obtaining protective orders. Students work as lay advocates and student practitioners to provide direct service to clients including screening and referral, interviewing, counseling, pleading and case preparation, negotiation, and advocacy at final hearings under the Student Practice Act. Class discussion centers on readings in texts and statutes relating to family violence, as well as on theory and practice of lawyering in a litigation/negotiation context. (See description of JURI 4500S for clinic grading policy.) Register for both 5140S (graded portion) and 5141L (pass/fail portion).

This course will consider how political forces may exert themselves on judges, how judges should navigate political issues and public spaces, judges’ ethical responsibilities, and concerns and potential solutions for federal and state judges. Students will read articles on the development of judicial ethics, empirical research on judicial decision-making, and popular-press materials of newsworthy controversies, among other materials. Students will have two essays to complete, one due at the first class session and the second after the final class session. The reading assignments will be frontloaded to allow students to read materials before the class begins and to render the week’s work more manageable.

Rules, Standards, and Discretion — We can array legal norms along a spectrum, from crisp rules (e.g., a marginal income-tax rate specified in the Internal Revenue Code) to fuzzy standards (e.g., the reasonable-care standard in tort). Sometimes, we approach legal-norm application not by stating a norm, but by designating someone to exercise informed, discretionary judgment. This seminar explores the complexities that follow from the foregoing observables. Consider the following illustrative questions:

• When should a norm designer choose a rule, and when a standard? And does the answer turn on whether the norm designer is a legislature, an executive administrator, or a judicial tribunal?
• When should a norm applier pull toward the rule end of the spectrum, and when toward the standard end? And does the answer turn on whether the norm applier is an administrator or a judge?
• How can discretion be squared with the rule of law? Is it more important that discretion be guided by a preexisting framework? Or is it enough that, even if unguided, the discretionary judgment be explained with reasons?
• Are any rules defeasible? Are all rules defeasible? If so, are there really only standards?
• Is stare decisis best thought of as a rule, a standard, or a matter of discretion? What difference does the answer make for the rule of law?

The works of legal philosopher Frederick Schauer will feature heavily in our readings. Evaluation will be by a semester-long writing project; students can use the project to meet the capstone writing requirement. Whatever your favorite substantive area of law may be, in this seminar you can reflect more deeply on its rules-standards-discretion internal structure by writing your project in that subject-matter area.

Are most trials won or lost by the end of jury selection? This course will focus on the procedural rules of jury selection in state and federal court as well as the role that psychology plays in conducting voir dire. This class is pass/fail.

This course is organized in three distinct parts. Part 1 will explore the historical and legal development of labor arbitration and its relationship to collective bargaining. Part 2 will address common issues including evidence, discipline and discharge, and contract interpretation. Part 3 will consist of three simulated, mock arbitration hearings. In each mock arbitration students will rotate between the roles of union counsel, management counsel, and arbitrator. Counsel will write post-hearing briefs, and arbitrators will write decisions. There is no final exam in this course. Student grades will be based on a combination of class participation (5%), self-evaluations (5%) and the 3 mock arbitrations (25% for the first, 30% for the second, and 35% for the third.) Grades for the mock arbitrations will be based on post-hearing briefs by the advocates and decisions by the arbitrators. This course meets the requirements of a practical skills course and will include a student self-evaluation component to be assigned during the course. There are no required prerequisite courses for the labor arbitration course.

This class is capped at 18.