LAW & CRIMINAL JUSTICE

PENN LAW FACULTY

PENN LAW ADJUNCTS & LECTURERS

TOLL PUBLIC INTEREST CENTER PARTNERS AT PENN

PUBLIC SERVICE PLACEMENTS

American Civil Liberties Union - National Headquarters
Bingham McCutchen LLP
Bucks County District Attorney
CeaseFire PA
Center for Advocacy for the Rights and Interests of the Elderly (CARIE)
Citizens Crime Commission of Delaware Valley
City of Philadelphia Law Department – Inspector General’s Office
Cozen O’Connor
Cumberland County District Attorney's Office - Victim Services Division
Defender Association of Philadelphia – Appeals; Federal Court; Felony Waivers; Police
Families of Murder Victims Program
Federal Public Defender – D.C., NJ
Innocence Project
International Legal Defense Counsel - International Recoveries
Kairys, Rudovsky, Epstein & Messing
Krasner & Restrepo
Lehigh County District Attorney's Office
Mann & Mitchell
Moldovsky & Moldovsky, LLC
Brem Moldovsky, L.L.C.
Montgomery County District Attorney's Office
New Jersey Office of the Public Defender
Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office – Civil; Organized Crime Section/Norristown
Philadelphia District Attorney's Office
Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission
Prevention Point
Public Defender's Office
School of Government, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN)
Spear, Wilderman, Borish, Endy, Spear & Runckel
U.S. Attorney's Office – NJ Criminal Division; PA Criminal Division; Organized Crime Strike Force; DE Civil Division
U.S. Dept. of Justice - Counterterrorism Section
Washington Legal Foundation

PENN LAW COURSES

The Fall 2006 Advanced Criminal Law builds upon the introductory criminal law course through a series of case studies and statutory drafting exercises. The case studies are selected by the course members, .front public sources or from the softcover coursebook, Criminal Law Case Studies (2d ed. West 2002), which is on reserve at the library. Student teams argue the prosecution and defense side of each case, based upon commonsense justice arguments that one might make to a jury, as well as upon the law as it then existed, and upon the Model Penal Code. The legal source document for the course is a general treatise on criminal law, also on reserve at the library, so success in the course does not depend upon what a student remembers from, or what professor he or she had for, introductory criminal law. Student teams also draft proposed criminal code provisions relating to issues that arise in the case studies. Case studies selected by students in the past have concerned such topics as a brainwashing defense, the use of torture to save civilian lives, the battered spouse syndrome as a defense to spouse killing, the use of the death penalty, the use of the lesser evils defense in instances of protest or civil disobedience, drug addiction as involuntary intoxication, the use of deadly force against burglars, the defense of military orders, and euthanasia.

The primary focus of this course is learning to write a persuasive appellate brief, and the secondary focus is on oral argument and appellate practice. The class will follow the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, and the briefs often focus on federal and constitutional questions. There will be reading assignments and focused writing exercises, including an appellate argument and appellate brief. Course writing will be subject to detailed review by the instructor and sometimes fellow classmates. Attendance and participation are important, and there will be some required independent legal research. Oral arguments will be videotaped after appellate briefs are submitted near the end of the course. You may get an assignment in August due at the first class. Class is limited to 12 students, with preference given to 2Ls.

In this seminar we will ask: When should legal liability turn on subjective bad intent? We will explore mental state requirements in private and public law, including: the principle of good faith in contract law and corporate fiduciary law; the distinction between intentional and non-intentional torts; scienter under the federal securities laws; mens rea in criminal law, and; impermissible purpose under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Each student will participate actively in each session, present a short paper in an assigned week, and submit a final paper on an approved topic on the last day of class.

This course will focus upon constitutional, statutory, case-law, policy, and ethical issues that arise during the investigation of a criminal case. Topics will include Fourth Amendment and other limitations on police searches, seizures, and surveillance; the scope of the exclusionary rule; the law of confessions, including Miranda v. Arizona and its progeny; lineups and other pre-trial identification procedures; the use of informants and secret agents; and the privilege against self-incrimination in the grand jury setting. This course is a renamed version of what has traditionally been called Constitutional Criminal Procedure, renamed to emphasize the variety of issues beyond constitutional ones that arise in a criminal case. Students may not take both that course and this one for credit. The instructor expects prompt and consistent class attendance and will allow adding and dropping through the second week of class but not thereafter, absent exceptional circumstances. Students may not use laptop computers in this class, except during exam review sessions. Students should focus on listening and responding to the professor and one another instead of trying to transcribe every word spoken in class.

This clinical course will combine hands on trial experience with an educational component tailored to developing litigation skills. Students will try cases under the close supervision of a senior trial attorney from the Defender Association of Philadelphia. During the first four weeks there will be intensive classroom study where students will learn Pennsylvania Criminal Law, Procedure, Evidence, trial and cross examination skills. During this period students will also be assigned mock cases to prepare in addition to observing actual preliminary arraignments, preliminary hearings, and trials in municipal court. Students will then be assigned to represent defendants. Students will conduct misdemeanor trials and preliminary hearings for felony cases. Students will interview and counsel clients, develop case theories, negotiate with opposing parties, and prepare various pretrial motions. Students will be interacting with their clients, members of the judiciary, District Attorneys, witnesses and complainants. Successful participants will need to be able to persuasively articulate legal arguments, work with a wide variety of individuals and maintain their composure in difficult situations. It is the instructor’s expectation that each student will have the experience of representing clients on 5 to 7 different cases. In addition to the classroom educational component described above, students will be exposed to a variety of guest speakers who will examine some of the ethical and social issues raised in criminal defense, and particular issues involved in representing the indigent. This course will meet for 6-1/2 hours, over two days per week. There will be a mid-semester evaluation of the student's progress and weekly feedback of the student's in-court performance, which can be scheduled at the student's convenience. Clinical instruction will be conducted at the Law School, except when courtroom appearances are required.

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.

Criminal Law Research Group  
The Criminal Law Research Group does criminal justice related policy and drafting work for governments and government agencies, domestic and foreign, as well as for non-governmental organizations like the UNDP. This term's seminar will include finishing a penal code for the Maldives, an Islamic nation in the Indian Ocean, and policy work for the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. It also may include drafting sentencing guidelines and rules of criminal procedure for the Maldives, doing preliminary work on drafting a criminal code for a Midwestern State (a project that would continue into the Fall Term), and/or other projects. Selected students typically would travel with the professor for the meetings with clients.   

Criminal Law Theory Seminar

of a theory of punishment. Each week, students will submit the day before the seminar meets a one-page comment on the readings and will summarize their views at the seminar meeting. Sometime after the first half of the seminar, each student will prepare a non-research "think piece" of less than 10 pages that gives his or her own view of the principles by which criminal liability and punishment should be distributed, and will defend that view in the seminar. The last third of the seminar meetings will be devoted to these discussions of student papers. The reading assignments for the first two-thirds of the seminar will be drawn from parts of the following articles, all authored by Professor Robinson: Does Criminal Law Deter? A Behavioural Science Investigation, 24 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 173-205 (2004) The Role of Deterrence in the Formulation of Criminal Law Rules: At Its Worst When Doing Its Best, 91 Georgetown Law Journal 949-1002 (2003) Punishing Dangerousness: Cloaking Preventive Detention as Criminal Justice, 114 Harvard Law Review 1429-1455 (2001) And others...

Criminal Procedure: Investigation  
This course will focus upon constitutional, statutory, case-law, policy, and ethical issues that arise during the investigation of a criminal case. Topics will include Fourth Amendment and other limitations on police searches, seizures, and surveillance; the scope of the exclusionary rule; the law of confessions, including Miranda v. Arizona and its progeny; lineups and other pre-trial identification procedures; the use of informants and secret agents; and the privilege against self-incrimination in the grand jury setting. This course is a renamed version of what has traditionally been called Constitutional Criminal Procedure, renamed to emphasize the variety of issues beyond constitutional ones that arise in a criminal case.   

Traditional criminal procedure courses share two features: First, they treat criminal procedure as a subset of constitutional law. This means that they focus on doctrine and case law, in particular the decisions of the Supreme Court and how the Warren Court expanded defendants’ rights while the Burger and Rehnquist Courts have stayed or reversed this trend. Second, traditional courses focus on jury trials. This course will not be a traditional criminal procedure course. As a former federal prosecutor, my own view is that law schools focus too much on Supreme Court doctrine, ignoring variations among states and how police, prosecutors, and judges implement these rules in the real world. I also think that we should move beyond our obsession with jury trials, which today account for only 4-5% of felony adjudications. The real action today is in charging, plea bargaining, and sentencing, and this course will pay much more attention to these topics. This course will not overlap with Constitutional Criminal Procedure, which covers searches and seizures, Miranda warnings, etc., so those who have taken that course should feel free to take this one as well (and that class is NOT a prerequisite for this one). This course will, however, overlap with the Advanced Criminal Procedure course, so students may not take both. This lecture course will survey post-arrest criminal procedure. Topics will include the right to counsel, bail, charging, double jeopardy, joinder, discovery, guilty pleas, sentencing, and appeals. Time permitting, there will also be selective coverage of forfeiture, jury trials, and habeas corpus/collateral review. The final exam will be open-book and take-home, with two essay questions. For each question, students will receive documents such as a police report, an indictment, and a guilty plea or sentencing transcript and will have to write an appellate brief or a habeas petition/opposition challenging or defending a conviction.

This course will explore the legal issues that judges, legislators, and lawyers confront as they respond to the increase in Internet and computer-related crime. We will explore how crimes in cyberspace challenge traditional concepts of crime that developed to deal with crimes committed in physical space. We will also explore how the investigation and prosecution of crime in cyberspace are altered from the physical world models. Topics will include: an exploration whether paradigms of the physical world translate to the cyber world; computer hacking and computer viruses; child exploitation; on-line threats and on-line stalking; online economic espionage and intellectual property theft; the interaction of the laws of privacy (constitutional and other) and law enforcement efforts to gather evidence from computers and on the Internet; cyber terrorism; issues of federalism and national sovereignty in computer crime. An introductory course in American criminal law is required, but previous experience in computer technology is not. A basic familiarity with the Internet will be helpful. The seminar will examine how the criminal justice system should respond to computer-related crime. We will consider three broad questions. First, what conduct should be considered criminal in cyberspace? Second, how do we protect privacy on the Internet and what rules should govern law enforcement investigations of computer crime? Third, how should traditional notions of sovereignty and punishment that govern criminal law in the physical world apply in cyberspace? After the first, introductory class, we will spend approximately five classes each on the first and second questions and two classes on the third. We will have a federal law enforcement agent and a federal judge as guest lecturers/moderators. The course will use materials from actual cases, as well as the traditional case method. Students will be required to write two papers of approximately 1,500 words each. For third year students, this requirement can be converted into a single paper to fulfill the senior writing requirement. Papers are to be on the issues discussed in class, or, with the approval of the instructor, on another appropriate topic.

The course explores the theoretical bases and practical realities of death penalty law, and the interplay between substantive and procedural law both at the state and federal levels in the context of actual practice. The first half of the class deals generally with substantive death penalty issues, commencing with the Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia. We look at the limits imposed on the states by the Supreme Court in order to have a constitutionally viable death penalty. What are the minimum protections that a state death penalty statute must provide? What trial procedures must be in place? The second half of the course explores how these issues interplay with federal habeas corpus, particularly since the enactment of the AntiTerrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) in 1996.  (Course offered in Fall term only)

A study of the common law and federal rules of proof. The scope and function of the rules are analyzed against the background of problems arising in the trial of an issue of fact, and the rules are evaluated on the basis of their logical consistency and their tendency to promote or impede a rational method of investigation. The format will combine lectures organizing the materials, Socratic questioning on the readings, and class discussions about policy issues. The exam will be partial open book with a mostly black-letter, multiple-choice section and a less structured policy-oriented essay.   

This course offers a complete Evidence curriculum taught with an emphasis on the courtroom application of the Rules of Evidence. Students will first learn the rudiments of trial practice and will then use these skills to analyze evidentiary problems. Evidentiary principles are taught from case book readings, the Federal Rules of Evidence and a case file containing various trial problems. Topics covered include relevance/undue prejudice: character, habit and custom; statistics; witness credibility; prior convictions; hearsay and the exception thereto; introduction of documents; authentication; expert and lay opinions; sex offense cases; competence of witnesses; and issues of witness confrontation.

The Federal Government plays an increasingly significant role in the prosecution of crime in the United States and the Federal Courts have become the forum for most of the Nation's more complicated and far-reaching prosecutions. This course will consider the trends of federalization and criminalization and will analyze the most widely used federal criminal statutes. Topics will include the prosecution of white collar crime such as financial fraud and embezzlement, securities offenses, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and the mail and wire fraud statutes. The course will also explore the implications of the federal emphasis on culpability for jointly undertaken activity including RICO, conspiracy, corporate and entity liability, and accomplice liability. Plea bargaining, defendant cooperation, and the United States Sentencing Guidelines will also be considered.

This course traces the dramatic rise of the individual as a subject of international law in the post-World War II era; specifically, as a beneficiary of fundamental rights recognized, protected and enforced directly by that system of law. It begins by laying historical foundations, showing how the individual was formerly treated as no more than a mere appendage of his/her State, and then considers the transformation effected by the United Nations Charter (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and two International Covenants (1966). The evolution of specific areas of human rights will be considered, e.g., elimination of racial discrimination, elimination of discrimination against women, freedom of religion, elimination of torture, etc. In each case, three eras will be traversed: (a) that of general principles, in which the notion of the rights emerges at the general level; (b) that of specificity, in which the content of the rights takes shape and is defined; and (c) that of enforcement, in which the international legal system seeks to give practical effect to the rights it has recognized, at the national, regional and international levels. Documentary videos will be shown in class, dealing with the creation of the Universal Declaration, the struggle for human rights in Guatemala and Czechoslovakia, women's rights, children's rights and a contemporary trial arising in the context of the former Yugoslavia. The essay exam will be an open-book takeaway. Students may opt to write a paper (with Professor Reicher's permission) in addition to the exam. Such papers will count as 60% of the course's grade (with the takeaway exam constituting the other 40%) and may be considered for Senior Writing. Class participation may be taken into account to improve a student's final grade.

Images of justice, the law, and lawyers pervade American popular culture. In this course, we’ll trace those images, starting with Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series, Travers’s Anatomy of a Murder, Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, Lewis’s Gideon’s Trumpet, and the like, and continuing to modern-day images in And Justice for All, The Godfather (or the Best Movie in Legal History), The Firm, and beyond. It’s true (undoubtedly) that popular fiction mirrors the images of justice that prevail at the time it was created, and we’ll also examine social, political, and legal trends to see how they have influenced and informed fiction. Our ultimate purpose in examining these images is to explore their implications for the law, the legal profession, and society. We’ll ask and (you’ll) answer questions like, what is the difference between law and justice in The Merchant Venice? When does law lead to justice? When does it thwart justice? What accounts for the difference? What is the difference between legal, just, right, and moral endings, in fiction? How does it affect a society to learn its criminal procedure from Boston Legal? What effect does Law & Order have on law students and lawyers, and their expectations of real-life practice? How does it affect potential jurors, and what are the long-term implications? How do images of fictional lawyers affect the culture's opinion of the profession? Okay, you get the idea. The course requirements will be different from last year, because this is now a three-credit course (i.e., the bigs). Reading for this course will be of the page-turning variety, a novel or a movie a week, and supplemental reading will be required and provided, to give legal and political context to the novels. Please sign up for this class only if you will do the reading. You can't rely on having read To Kill A Mockingbird in middle school. Likewise, please sign up only if you like to talk in class. I want to hear what you think about these questions, and shyness is adorable in three-year-olds only. There will be two papers: one mid-year paper and one final paper. There will not be a final exam. Your grade will be determined by the two papers and your class participation. Bottom line: This course is really fun, but it’s not a joke. Join only if you know the difference.

How are juvenile offenders treated differently from adult offenders? To what extent should they be? These questions provide the focus for examining how the state treats the "aberrant" behavior of children. Students will be introduced to the legal, social, and historical underpinnings of the juvenile justice system in the United States beginning with founding of the juvenile court in 1899 and then-held assumptions about the nature of childhood. We will examine how in the late twentieth century the juvenile court has undergone both ideological and institutional change from its original form. These shifts in theory will be outlined with specific attention to several U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have significantly affected juvenile court, as well as psychological and social science data that have a continuing impact on juvenile court practice and jurisdiction. Throughout the course, students are invited to consider and imagine a future role for the juvenile court as it goes forward. Each class will be co-taught by two adjunct professors who are practitioners in the filed of children's law with particular emphasis in juvenile justice. During the last five classes, weekly reading assignments will be developed by student led teams, who will work with the professors in advance to select appropriate topics, relevant caselaw or other materials, as well as appropriate videos. Student teams will be responsible for leading class discussion on their designated topic.   

This course draws together comparative law, constitutional law, jurisprudence, conflicts of laws, international law, human rights and legal history to examine the Nazi philosophy of law, emanating from the egregious racial ideology, and how it was used to pervert Germany's legal system to discriminate against, ostracize, dehumanize, and ultimately eliminate, certain classes of people; then, to study the role of international law in seeking to rectify the damage by bringing perpetrators to justice and constructing a system of international human rights designed to prevent a repetition. The course will consider the following areas: 1. The Holocaust: "Lawful Barbarism.” Overview of the Holocaust, and the ways in which it was "anchored" in law. 2. The Ideology That Made It Possible. Nazi theories of race and the nature and role of the State, and the legal system as an instrument of both. 3. The Nazi Legal System In Action. Laws giving effect to the theories of race, and their interpretation and application by the judges. 4. Jurisprudential Issues. Parts 2 and 3 above will form the foundation for an exploration of the role of morality in a system of law, through a consideration of academic writings and judicial reflection. An example of the former is the celebrated Hart-Fuller debate, in the Harvard Law Review; and an example of the latter is the controversial Bernstein litigation, in which the Courts grappled with the effect to be accorded in the US to expropriations of property by the Nazi regime. 5. Measure For Measure: The Response Of The International Legal System. Prosecution of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg; national legislation and court decisions bringing perpetrators of atrocities to justice; the Genocide Convention; and the evolution of international human rights, stressing the equality and dignity of all human beings, as a direct antithesis of the Nazi racial philosophy. 6. Lessons For The 21st Century. Case studies in which contemporary history--in Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, etc.--raises the disturbing question: What lessons, if any, has the world learned from the Nazi era? Teaching in the course revolves around specially-edited materials, supplemented by video excerpts of archival footage of the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, a re-enactment of the Wannsee Conference, a biography of Dr. Josef Mengele, Leni Riefenstahl's classic propaganda film Triumph of the Will, and a contemporary war crimes trial arising in the context of the former Yugoslavia.

The focus of this course is on advocacy as persuasive communication. The principles of persuasion will be analyzed and applied in the context of the lawyer's interpersonal relationships: lawyer/client; lawyer/witness; lawyer/lawyer; lawyer/judge/fact finder. Students will prepare and participate in two videotaped cases out of class in which they will be required to demonstrate their ability to persuade. The simulated cases are in an arbitration tribunal, since advocating in an informal tribunal is usually a lawyer's initial trial experience. In the simulated cases, students will be able to develop their skill in making legal and factual arguments, in eliciting, selecting, and persuasively presenting factual information through witness interviews, witness preparation, the examination of witnesses on direct-, cross-, and redirect examination, and in making an opening statement and closing argument. There will be individual review and evaluation of the videotapes. Development of the ability to evaluate critically one's own ability to persuade, both from a skill and ethical standpoint, will be emphasized throughout. Selected portions of the Rhetoric of Aristotle are required reading. For one additional semester credit, students may write a paper comparing Aristotle's analysis of persuasion with persuasion in modern trial advocacy. The class will meet for two 80 minute sessions each week. The class format is primarily participatory. Frequently during the semester, students will be required to spend substantial out-of-class time in planning, preparation, and participation in the simulations. Students also must be available for individual conferences which will be scheduled during the semester. Enrollment will be limited to ten students and open to second/third-year, and graduate students who have completed or are enrolled in the course in Evidence. Attendance at the first class session is mandatory and other announced class sessions, which will be identified during the semester.

This course addresses the basic theoretical and scientific foundations of mental health law and then applies the foundational principles to the understanding of various criminal mental health law doctrines, including various competencies, the right to refuse treatment, the insanity defense, quasi-criminal commitment, and mitigation based on mental abnormality. The course is both theoretical and practical, and will be of use to students interested in the relation of mental health and law in any legal context.

People who are ill with bipolar disorder, major unipolar depression, schizophrenia and other DSM-IV mental illnesses have rich and difficult moral lives. Noted psychiatrists, including Sigmund Freud himself, have noted the problems of excessive and deficient moral responsibility-taking by their bipolar patients. Dr.Kay Jamison is perhaps the most famous of the contemporary autobiographers who have described struggling with issues of identity and shame that result from her acts of violence, dependency and neglect. Often educated, well-brought up, and well-employed, many people with mentally illnesses know right from wrong. Yet sometimes they do the wrong thing. They hit, lie, cheat, bribe, molest. Many of their most hurtful, damaging and illegal acts are the direct result of illnesses that unleash negative impulses and distort judgment. This seminar will examine how moralists recommend that a just and caring society judge and respond to the harmful and offensive acts of the mentally ill. The seminar will also examine how that law treats the mentally ill--refusing to excuse them for their torts and criminality, save in a narrow set of exceptional circumstances. Who should we blame? What is an excuse? What, if anything, do the ill owe the people they harm? What special moral obligations, if any, pertain to the mentally ill, their families and caretakers? Should the mentally ill be liable for intentional torts or negligence? And what about ordinary and heinous crimes?

Today, only 4-5% of adjudicated felony cases end in jury trials. More than 95% result in guilty pleas, and most of those stem from plea bargains. The real action today is not at the jury trial stage, but in the plea and sentencing negotiations that determine most defendants' fates. This seminar will explore the law, policy, philosophy, and sociology of plea bargaining and sentencing. Topics will include the requisites for knowing and voluntary pleas; the shift from unstructured to structured sentencing; the role of prosecutorial discretion and incentives; the justifications for punishment; and alternatives to imprisonment. Readings will consist of cases, statutes, and procedural rules but also law review articles and selections from sociological and philosophical works. There will be no final exam; instead, each student must complete an original research paper.

This seminar will focus on the legal, moral, religious, social, and political dimensions of crime, blame, shame, and punishment as discussed in the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, especially his great novels Crime and Punishment, Demons (sometimes called The Possessed), and The Brothers Karamazov. Students will read all three of these novels in their entirety as well as some related secondary literature, be prepared to discuss them, and write papers on some aspect of them. While students are encouraged to use the outstanding translations produced by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, which include very illuminating endnotes, if they already own other translations of these works they are welcome to use those instead.

In this seminar, we will be concerned with the philosophical character of responsibility in law, focusing in particular on criminal law and torts. The following questions are meant to be illustrative of the subject matter that will be covered, but not all of these topics will necessarily be taken up, and others might be added. What is the relationship between legal and moral responsibility? What is the philosophical basis of responsibility in criminal law? Is it, for example, character, choice, or capacity of a certain kind? Is there a distinct requirement of voluntariness in criminal law, and, if so, what is its character? What is the role of the mens rea requirement in determining criminal responsibility? What is the philosophical basis, if any, for imposing criminal responsibility for negligence? Should the severity of punishment be different for attempts and completed crimes? What is the philosophical basis for responsibility in tort law? Is it, for example, causation, reciprocity of risk imposition, or control over the harmful outcome? What is the relationship between responsibility in criminal law and responsibility in tort law? Does a non-consequentialist understanding of tort law call for a standard of strict liability, a negligence standard, or some combination of the two? How should the content of the reasonableness standard in negligence law be determined?

This seminar explores the challenges associated with the provision of justice in the wake of mass atrocity. We will begin with a basic introduction to key issues in international criminal law, the development of international crimes, and the application of criminal law to the particular circumstances of post-conflict justice. Thereafter, we will turn to a number of case studies to examine how international justice has

been delivered and how various justice mechanisms have both been shaped by and impacted the particular political and social circumstances in which they operate. Case studies include the Nuremberg Tribunal in the wake of WWII, the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the hybrid tribunals operating in Cambodia and East Timor, traditional justice processes such as the Rwandan Gacaca, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and the International Criminal Court’s investigations in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We will explore how these institutions were created, their impact on the societies in which they operate, and their interactions with one another. In the final weeks of the course we will turn to a number of cross-cutting issues such as: 1) the ways in which domestic politics influences the choice of post conflict justice mechanisms 2) optimum institution design; 3) the interaction between domestic and international justice mechanisms, 4) the tension between peace and justice, and 4) whether transitional justice really “works”? Students will be expected to write a seminar paper due during the reading period at the end of the semester. Active participation in class discussions will be essential. A number of guest speakers will be joining us throughout the semester.

This is a skills course in trial techniques and related litigation theory development. The student will learn how to prepare and try a case. The objectives are to create strong fundamental skills in the art of direct examination, cross-examination, objections, preparation of witnesses, jury selection, preparation and examination of expert witnesses, introduction of documents, and opening and closing arguments. There will be video-taped exercises followed by individual critique. The course culminates in full mock trials in state or federal courtrooms, with witnesses and jurors. All students participate as trial counsel. Any Evidence course is a prerequisite for this class. Attendance and participation are mandatory. Approximately six (6) students will be selected from the combined classes to participate, on a voluntary basis, in the National Mock Trial Competition. Tryouts are held at the conclusion of the first semester. If selected, the Trial Team's second semester will entail participation on the Trial Team, and those selected will not be required to attend the regular Trial Advocacy classes.