Courses

Explores both the kind of law students might decide to practice and the ethical, personal, and professional commitments central to the practice of law. Students who elect to participate in this 1-unit elective are committing to enroll in the fall of the 2nd year in LAWS 6133 for 2 units, focusing on the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

An elective that requires fifteen hours observing actual civil proceedings in a courtroom(s), attending a two-hour class meeting every other week, preparing and submitting a journal of recorded observations. Figuring out how to gain access to appropriate proceedings is part of the student's work, although the professor is available for advice and guidance. Course is offered for Pass/Fail only. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

An elective that requires fifteen hours observing actual criminal proceedings in a courtroom(s), attending a two-hour class meeting every other week, preparing and submitting a journal of recorded observations. Figuring out how to gain access to appropriate proceedings is part of the student's work, although the professor is available for advice and guidance. Course is offered for Pass/Fail only. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

An elective that requires fifteen hours observing proceedings before an international tribunal(s), attending a two-hour class meeting every other week, preparing and submitting a journal of recorded observations. The proceedings observed will be available streaming online and the professor will provide information about how to gain access to them. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Examines the legal profession as an institution, its history and traditions, and the ethics of the bar with particular emphasis on the professional responsibilities of the lawyer. Discusses the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Prerequisites: Restricted to Professional Year 1, 2, or 3 Law students only.

Addresses the conflicts that arise when the significant facts of a case are connected with more than one jurisdiction, whether that jurisdiction belongs to a state, the federal government, or a foreign government. The subject is studied in its theoretical and historical context, with special emphasis on the international aspects of extraterritorial jurisdiction.

Continuation of LAWS 5103. Focuses on the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Provides the nuts and bolts of the ethical rules needed to begin to explore externships, clinics, pro bono projects and other practice experiences during law school. Prereq., LAWS 5103. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Covers neuroscience basics, and explores the relationship between the law and recent neuroscientific discoveries in domains including pain, memory, lie detection, psycopathy and criminal responsibility.

Introduces the basic elements of economic theory and emphasizes demand and utility, cost, and optimality. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Applies concepts, ideas, insights, and principles of modern finance to real-world situations that lawyers will face in many areas of law. Analyzes present discounted value (time value of money), risk versus return, asset diversification, portfolio theory, efficient markets hypothesis, arbitrage, financial options, real options, financial signals, human capital, behavioral finance, socially responsible investing, neurofinance, happiness finance, and financial bubbles and crashes. Restricted to Law students only. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Explores the causes and consequences of the global financial crisis. Analyzes financial instruments and institutions at the heart of the crisis -- including asset-backed securities, credit derivatives, government-sponsored entities, credit rating agencies, hedge funds, and financial conglomerates -- and places them in the context of a larger "shadow banking system". Examines the building blocks of financial reform.

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.

Questions the nature of law, characteristics and considerations of a legal system, rights and from where they come; thinking like a lawyer, basic techniques of legal reasoning, difference between doctrinal and normative legal analysis. Explores law's frontier and what distinguishes law from morality or politics. Focuses on influential texts from the end of WWII to the end of the Cold War. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

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.

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

Uses judicial decisions as well as historical and theoretical materials to explore significant aspects of the relationship between law and religion. The religion clauses of the First Amendment are a central but not exclusive subject of study. Offered in alternate years.

Addresses a number of fundamental questions, such as: What is law? What should it be? How is it created? Our readings consist of cutting-edge articles from leading modernist/postmodernist schools of thought including legal formalism, legal realism, interpretive theory, law and economics, feminist jurisprudence, critical legal studies, and law and literature. Same as LAWS 8128.

Introduces the uses and limitations of microeconomic theory for understanding and resolving legal problems. Emphasizes concepts prominent in the law and economics literature such as cost, transaction costs, utility, and rational self interest.

Introduces legal institutions engaged in social change, from courts, to Congress, to bureaucracies and organizations. Posits tension between tasks of dispute resolution and public policy development and institutional adaptations. Considers the role of public opinion and the classics of legal formalism to more critical accounts. Considers postmodern theory and empirical legal scholarship. Presents alternatives to court-centered approaches to change, including community lawyering and organizing, law and social movements, and legislation. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Explores key ideas that have shaped American law and legal thought, such as Holmes' bad man, the Coase Theorem, the "Hunch" theory of law, and others. Focuses on researching and writing many short papers.

Explores the various justifications that philosophers have developed to explain why we have the right to punish. Examines the historical evolution of our punishment system and focuses on the death penalty as a critical contemporary issue in the debate about the proper role of punishment in our society.

Examines critically the possibility and character of ethical reasoning within the legal profession in light of its institutional structures. Explores descriptive/normative accounts of the profession's structure, "Professionalism," and individual conscience. Put simply, the seminar explores whether it is possible to be a good lawyer and ethical person.

Surveys critical legal theory; introduces the discipline of analytical engagement with law review literature; feminist legal theory, and critical race theory. Offers a deeper understanding of the purposes behind legal reforms, the interaction between law on the books and law in action, how different groups experience the law in different ways, and difficult yet rewarding nature of working through seemingly intractable and emotionally charged race, sex, and class issues. Restricted to Law students only. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.