Alphabetical Course Descriptions | Courses By Subject Area | First Year Courses | Upper Level Courses

FIRST YEAR COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

(S) = Seminar

1L Required Courses:

Civil Procedure

4 sem. hrs.

This course is devoted to a consideration of the basic problems of civil procedure. Pleading, discovery, multi-party actions, trial practice, and judgments are considered in terms of function and technique. The course is also designed to introduce the student to underlying problems such as jurisdiction, the choice of law in the federal system, and the role of courts as lawmaking institutions.

Constitutional Law

4 sem. hrs.

A study of basic issues of federal constitutional law. Major topics will be: the role of courts in the interpretation of enforcement of the U.S. Constitution; the scope of federal legislative powers under the Constitution; federalism limitations placed on the powers of state and local governments; individual civil, political, and human rights under the U.S. Constitution, with the primary emphasis on the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Criminal Law

4 sem. hrs.

This course will examine the criminal law as a device for defining and controlling harmful behavior. Attention is given to the theoretical justifications for and the effectiveness of punishment, the foundations of culpability, the basic principles of criminal liability, and the definition of offenses and defenses.

Property

4 sem. hrs.

This course explores the legal institution of property, primarily through an examination of the possession, ownership, and use of land. Topics may include different ways of acquiring property, such as by capture, discovery, creation, adverse possession, and prescription; estates in land; rights in other persons' land; landlord/tenant; basic land transactions; public and private control of land use; and eminent domain.

Torts

4 sem. hrs.

This course examines the doctrinal, theoretical, and policy dimensions of non-promissory civil liability for harm to persons, property, and certain intangible interests.

1L Elective Courses:

Administrative Law

3 sem. hrs.

We live in an administrative state, populated by thousands of governmental bodies that collectively exercise pervasive authority over the entire economy and the lives of every citizen. Unlike courts, which enjoy explicit constitutional independence, administrative agencies constitute a more constitutionally ambiguous “fourth branch of government.” Also unlike courts, most agencies have authority to wield a wide variety of regulatory powers other than adjudication, including rulemaking, licensing, advice-giving, and prosecution. Administrative law is the body of constitutional, statutory, executive, and “common law” principles that constrain and thereby seek to legitimate the exercise of these powers. This course will provide a critical examination of these principles, preparing you for the inevitable encounters lawyers have with administrative agencies in their professional practice. This is a 1L elective course and 1Ls will receive priority in enrollment.

Chinese Law

3 sem. hrs.

For thirty years, Chinese laws and legal institutions have developed rapidly, if unevenly, amid—and in response to—China’s breathtaking economic transformation and integration the outside world, and the social and political challenges and consequences that “reform” and “opening” have produced. Some aspects of legal change in contemporary China are unprecedented while others perhaps echo influences from earlier periods, including the PRC’s first decades, the initial impact of the West, the broad sweep of Chinese tradition, and diverse Chinese challenges to that tradition. This course provides a brief overview of classical Chinese thought on law, governance and economic regulation, the legal norms and institutions of law and government during the late imperial period, and the influence of Western ideas and pressures and of Chinese reformers and revolutionaries during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of the course focuses on the PRC years, with primary emphasis on the contemporary “reform era.” For this period, the course addresses selected topics such as criminal law and other means of social control, the legal regulation and promotion of economic activity, law and government accountability, and legal aspects of regulating China’s external economic relations. Throughout, political, economic and social contexts are emphasized. The exam will be open-book, essay. It will be take-home with a lenght limit. Class participation, partly in the form of panels for specific weeks and topics, will count toward the final grade.

Environmental Law

3 sem. hrs.

This course focuses on both the substance and process of environmental law in the United States. The goal is for students to become familiar with the basic structure of federal environmental law and regulation, both to prepare for legal counseling and advocacy as well as to be able to engage in policy evaluation and design of environmental law. The course will cover key federal environmental statutes, such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Superfund, and the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, as well as selected EPA regulations. The course will focus on the major legal and policy issues underlying environmental statutes, as well as on legal methods of statutory interpretation. Classroom attendance and preparation is expected. There will be an in-class exam.

Foundations of Climate Change Law and Policy

3 sem. hrs.

This course will begin by critically examining the scientific and economic work on the causes and consequences of global warming, with special attention to the political economy of international efforts to curb global warming, the structure and process of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the methodologies underlying economic estimates of costs and benefits. The course will then proceed to consider both domestic and international legal and political developments in the climate change area. These include the Kyotol Protocol, the European Emissions Trading Scheme, and -- in the U.S. -- the history and political economy of efforts to pass federal climate change legislation, state legislation and regulation (with a focus on California), regulation under existing federal environmental statutes and regulation via common law public nuisance actions. The course will conclude by discussing the many substantial environmental impacts from the new "green" energy projects funded by the 2009 stimulus bill and justified by the need to avert global warming, and the treatment of those impacts under existing state, local and federal environmental and land use laws."

Intro to IP Law and Policy

3 sem. hrs.

This course starts from the premise that the law and policy of intellectual property is increasingly becoming an important component of a modern legal education. As such, the course will present a broad overview of the contemporary doctrinal and policy challenges facing intellectual property in an era of rapidly changing technology. The course is not intended to replace (or be a prerequisite for) any of the basic IP courses - instead, the class will be structured around several of the major recent disputes over the patent, copyright, and trademark laws, considering these from both a doctrinal and a social policy perspective.

Introduction to Jurisprudence

3 sem. hrs.

This first half of the course will provide an introduction to the main currents of thought about the nature and function of law. It will consider, among other things, the classic problem of the source of law’s authority, exploring whether an unjust law is still a law, and whether law does or ought to bear a close relation to morality. Should Nazi officials or East German border guards be punished if they were “just following orders”? What about the judges who enforced the implementation of such laws? Do the conclusions we would reach in the foregoing contexts apply to the conduct of Americans in dealing with suspected terrorists or other detainees? We will consider the divergent answers to these questions suggested by the work of J.L. Austin, H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, and others. After addressing these traditional jurisprudential inquiries, we will turn to a more recent jurisprudential question: what are the implications for legal theory of the ascension of interdisciplinary methodologies? The law and economics movement, for example, has transformed not only contemporary debate about the nature of law, but it has also had a significant impact on adjudication and even on legislation. Contemplating law from the standpoint of recent work in political science, through public choice theory, has impacted the traditional understanding of constitutional interpretation and legislation. Recent work in psychology has begun to change the way the legal profession thinks of the legal subject, as well as about traditional institutions of our legal system, such as the jury. And moral philosophers have helped to clarify the relation between law and morality, often by demonstrating the significant differences that obtain between the two. The second half of the course will accordingly assess the impact of this interdisciplinary scholarship on adjudication and legislation, and will consider as well the implications of these trends for legal education. Course requirements: Take home exam (90%); attendance and preparation (10%).

Labor Law in Comparative Perspective

3 sem. hrs.

This course will introduce the fundamentals of labor law in the United States, comparing the American approach with those of other advanced industrialized democracies. We will study the federal law governing employee collective action, including the law governing organizing, employee-union relations, collective bargaining (including tools of economic pressure), and preemption of state law. We will then consider the appropriate scope of application of the NLRA regime; assess the political economic role of organized labor; consider historical and institutional explanations for American 'exceptionalism', and; explore the advantages and disadvantages of American labor law as compared to its alternatives.

Law and Economics

3 sem. hrs.

This class will critically examine the theoretical and empirical foundations of the economic analysis of law.

Legal Responses to Inequality

3 sem. hrs.

This course will study legal material as expressive of, and as supportive of, differing concepts of equality and its role as a social value, rather than as simply part of a course of doctrinal development or a system of analytical reasoning. Its premise is that differences in those concepts are often not recognized, and the contestability and bases of one's approach to equality issues are often not acknowledged. Substantively, the course will include aspects of legal regulation affecting the status of racial, religious and ethnic "minorities," women, gay and lesbian people, and people perceived as disabled, as well as the distribution of wealth and income. It will do this in part by examining "antidiscrimination," "equal protection," or "poverty" law, but will focus also on issues of equality implicit in such mainstream first-year subjects as Procedure and Contracts.

Legislation

3 sem. hrs.

This course examines issues relating to the enactment, application and interpretation of legislation, primarily at the federal level. The course will introduce students to the basic contours of Congressional lawmaking practice, theoretical models of the legislative process, the application and interpretation of statutes by the executive branch, and numerous aspects of judicial statutory interpretation. Students will explore and critique the different methods and canons that courts apply in construing statutes and consider issues such as the appropriate degree of deference to administrative interpretations, judicial use of legislative history in construction, and interaction between the courts and Congress. The basic text will be the Eskridge, Frickey & Garrett casebook, but students will also read selected legal and/or political science articles presenting current theories of legislative process and interpretation, and review examples of current cases and statutory debates. Grades will be based on an examination at the end of the semester.

Public International Law

3 sem. hrs.

This course introduces students to the rules and institutions of public international law. The course provides a formal introduction to the major doctrinal issues in international law and emphasizes the relationships between law and politics in the behavior of states, institutions, and individuals in international systems. The course begins with an introduction to the nature and structure of the international legal system and the political / international relations questions and theoretical perspectives that frame the field. The course covers institutional and “constitutional” topics, including: the sources of international law, the roles and responsibilities of states and non-state actors in making and being subject to international law, the reach and scope of international law (including its relationship to domestic law and institutions). The course then turns to substantive legal issues. Topics include: human rights, the use of force, and international economic law (including the WTO and foreign investment). Throughout, we will consider the roles of established and emerging institutions and processes and applications to current and recent events. Additional topics may be added or substituted if international events and student interest so warrant.