Courses

Explores comparative law, jurisprudence, conflicts of laws and international law. Examines the Nazi philosophy of law emanating from its egregious racial ideology, and how it was used to pervert Germany's legal system to discriminate against, ostracize, dehumanize, and eliminate certain classes of people. Studies the role of international law in rectifying the damage by bringing perpetrators to justice and constructing a legal system designed to prevent a repetition.

Requires substantial writing and reading. Begins with participants bringing to class a piece of creative writing consisting of three to five thousand words.Each session consists of one hour of discussion and critique of an assigned writing exercise that everyone has prepared for the class, and one hour of workshop critique of each participant's longer work, in turn.

Focuses on aspects of the practice of employment law, rather than the examination of legal doctrines. Discusses typical issues presented in advising and litigating on behalf of employers and employees. Topics include special attention to ethical issues.

Examines the law that protects wildlife, its habitat, and biodiversity. Explores human-caused threats including habitat destruction, illegal trade, and climate change. Focuses on statutes, case law, environmental ethics, and current controversies to highlight legal, scientific, and political strategies for protecting biodiversity. Particular emphasis is placed on the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Explores disparities in criminal sentencing and death penalty cases; quality and effectiveness of legal representation for indigent criminal defendants; relationship between modifications in traditional steps in legal process; connection between alternative tort doctrines and volume of litigation, trial rates, plaintiff success rates and award size; impact of congressional statutes and US Supreme Court decisions on handling and outcomes of habeas corpus petitions.

Examines international environmental law, including transboundary impacts and global issues. Addresses such issues as intergenerational equities, principles of compensation, and if international environmental norms should receive special environmental norm consideration. A course in public international law is not a prerequisite, but students who have not taken such a course will probably find it useful to do some additional background reading. Offered in alternate years.

Includes the subjects of evolution of labor relations laws; how a collective bargaining relationship is established; negotiation of the collective bargaining agreement; labor and the antitrust laws; and rights of the individual worker. Course materials frame the issue of how a developed or postindustrial democracy deals with the problems that arise out of the employment relationship: of the choices between laissez-faire, substantive regulation, and the private ordering of the employment relationship through the collective bargaining process.

Examines the Formative Era of Islamic Law, through its sources and methodologies. Examines the Established Era of the Schools of Law including differences between Sunni and Shiite Islamic Law. Examines human rights, terrorism, political Islam, women's rights and rights of religious minorities, criminal law, and finance law, and the growing role of fundamentalism in these areas. Examines the relevance of Islam and Islamic law in today's world.

Entails a survey of employment-at-will, workplace safety, workplace torts; ERISA and retirement, workers' compensation; controls on hours and wages; health insurance; disability and unemployment compensation.

Surveys the history and current status of capital punishment in the United States, with a critical examination of arguments both for and against the death penalty.

In today's globalized world, lawyers are increasingly likely to encounter issues involving foreign employment. The course will provide substantive knowledge about foreign employment law and its relation to American law, as well as a comparative framework to assess the relative merits of the American approach to employment law.

Introduces the legal theories that underlie the no-fault compensation system, its historical evolution, policy conundrums, and ethical quandaries. Teaches the application of the procedural rules most frequently utilized in administrative setting. Studies the Workers' Compensation Act, the Workers' Compensation Rules of Procedure, and the Office of Administrative Courts Rules of Procedure. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Introduces students to an overview of Latin American commercial and civil law systems, looking closely at Napoleanic and Chilean law. Explores the choice legal structures available for Latin American corporations; contract law that regulates business transactions in Latin America; and exploration of the way in which Latin American countries have joined international business trade agreements that pertain to Latin American nations such as the Vienna Convention and Gatt.

Concerns domestic and International regulation of property that expresses group identity and experience. Organized around traditional categories of property (real, personal, and intellectual), the course covers historic preservation, archeological resources, art and museum law, with attention to indigenous people's advocacy on burial sites, traditional lands, ceremonies, music, symbols, ethnobotany, genetic information, and language. May satisfy upper-level writing requirement. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Explores special topics in law. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Examines the science of climate change and the broader role of science in public policymaking. Reviews the changing legal landscape to abate greenhouse gas emissions, and key issues in policy design. Reviews the Supreme Court's April 2, 2007, decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, overturning EPA's refusal to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from motor vehicle tailpipes, and the aftermath in the courts, Executive Branch and Congress.

Provides an introduction to energy law and regulation in the United States. Covers basic principles of rate regulation and public utilities, the division of jurisdiction between federal and state governments, and the key federal statutes and regulatory regimes governing natural gas, electricity, and nuclear power. Focuses on the basic federal frameworks for natural gas and electricity regulation, with an emphasis on understanding the messy and uneven transition to wholesale competition in these sectors and, in the electricity context, the experience with state restructuring and retail competition. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Examines renewable energy and how legal topics impact financing projects. Reviews structure, regulation, and functioning of electric energy industry and laws applicable to development, ownership and operation of renewable energy projects across technologies. Addresses legal policy, economic and financing issues associated with expansion and improvement of the transmission grid to support renewable energy development. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Equips students to deal effectively with experts, whether as consultants or as adverse witnesses, and to enable the identification of a quantitative issue. Helps students to become multi-dimensional in quantitative literarcy. Enables students to be comfortable reading statistical arguments, performing basic analyses, writing about statistics, expressing quantitative ideas in graphs, questioning an expert, and understanding the power of computer programming.

Offers an in-depth look at research resources and methods. Includes sources from the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of federal and state government; research in topical areas such as environmental law, taxation, and international law; and extensive coverage of secondary and nonlaw resources. Covers both print and electronic sources. Students will have several assignments and a final project.

Surveys resources and methods to effectively research Colorado law. Covers primary and secondary resources including Colorado statutes, cases and digests, regulations, and constitution and practice materials. Covers how to research Colorado municipal law and other Colorado topics. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Approaches legal research from a practice-focused perspective using hands-on sessions in the library. Instructs: how to find and use resources specific to a particular practice area; how to evaluate and weigh strengths and weaknesses of the various legal resources available; and, how to use legal resources efficiently. Includes research strategies and methods, primary and secondary resources, and research using library catalogs and Westlaw, Lexis, and other vendors. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Develops students' ability to think critically about and solve current legal problems. Evaluates the benefits and detriments of both print and on-line legal resources, and how to create an efficient research plan. Formulates and applies research strategies to real-world legal problems, and uses legal analysis to refine and improve research results. Note: students who have taken LAWS 6856 Advanced Legal Research course may not enroll in this course. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Looks at structure and jurisdiction of the federal courts, emphasizing problems of federalism and separation of powers and their relationship to resolution of substantive disputes.

Surveys common, statutory, and regulatory law as applied to the mass media. Focuses on the law as it affects the gathering and publishing of news. Also examines the regulation of the electronic media.