Courses

Explores the escalating debates by policymakers, scholars, advocates, and industry representatives about the growing spread of tracking and surveillance in society. Debates are being spurred by the pace of changes to technology and particularly of changes to Internet and mobile technology. Practitioners in information privacy law or technology policy must understand the past, present, and likely future of the technology of privacy. 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.

Studies the methods and forms of proof in litigation,including detailed consideration of hearsay, impeachment of witnesses, relevancy and certain restrictions on authentication and best evidence doctrines, and privileges. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Studies methods and forms of proof in litigation, including detailed consideration of hearsay, impeachment of witnesses, relevancy and certain restrictions on authentication and best evidence doctrines, and privileges. Applies rules and doctrine of evidence in simulated trial settings. Combined Evidence and Trial Practice course. Satisfies the trial practice requirement and counts two hours toward the 14 credit hour maximum in clinical hours.

Litigates through all pretrial phases as plaintiff's counsel, a mock federal case: an employee's challenge to compensation and termination, with possible claims including breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, violation of wage payment statutory and regulatory requirements, and fraudulent inducement to contract. Prereq., LAWS 6353. Restricted to Law students only. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Examines the nature, structure, and sources of international law, the relationship between international law and domestic U.S. law, the role of international organizations such as the United Nations, the methods of resolving international disputes, the bases of international jurisdiction, and select substantive areas of international law that may change from semester to semester. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Examines the law of the World Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Examines rules restraining national restrictions on trade that addresses tariff and non-tariff barriers, discrimination, regionalism, anti-dumping, countervailing duties, and safeguards. Considers the relationship between trade and other regulatory areas or social values, such as environmental protection, health and safety standards, human rights, intellectual property protection. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

Explores product liability lawsuits and litigation. Explores law of product liability and the tools necessary to successfully litigate these cases. Considers the theory and practice of lawsuits now and after the Supreme Courts landmark decision in Wyeth v. Levine (2009). Focuses on similarities and differences between the special context of FDA regulation. Considers the legal principles governing such lawsuits such as inadequate warning, the Learned intermediary Doctrine and medical causation.

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.

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.

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.

Involves highly experiential and participatory form of learning related to the rights and needs of victims of crime. Legal and constitutional aspects of crime victims' rights and advocacy are considered. Includes a training component by Moving to End Sexual Assault, a Boulder based organization. After training by MESA, students will complete 120 hors of volunteer service on the MESA hotline as well as attend various meetings. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law students only.

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.

Examines past and present employee benefits and compensation practices among private and public employers. Covers ERISA and defined benefit, defined contribution, and welfare benefit plans; equity awards granted by corporations; equity awards granted by LLCs and partnerships; nonqualified deferred compensation and Section 409A of the IRS; golden parachutes and Sections 280G and 4999 of the IRC. Restricted to Law students only. 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.