Courses

Deals with the legal status and management of resources on federal lands, including national forests, parks, and BLM lands. Explores federal law, policy, and agency practice affecting the use of mineral, timber, range, water, wildlife, and wilderness resources on public lands. Prerequisites: Requires prerequisite course of LAWS 6112 (minimum grade D-).

Analyzes regional and national water problems, including the legal methods by which surface and ground water supplies are allocated, managed, and protected. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.

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 (LAWS) students only.

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 (LAWS) students only.

Deals with the legal problems associated with private arrangements for the ownership and development of oil and gas: deeds and leases to oil and gas rights, trespass, adverse possession, implied covenants in leases, conveyances of fractional interests, and the interaction of private rights and conservation regulation. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.

Examines why national security deals not only with armed aggression and the ability to thwart military invasions or subversion, but also includes critical threats to vital national and international support systems such as the economy, energy, and the environment.

Examines the litigation strategies and procedures used to enforce and defend against enforcement under environmental protection statutes, such as the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Resource Conversation and Recovery Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, and the Toxic Substances Control Act. Covers civil enforcement, and citizen's suits.

Establishes why nearly a third of the world populated by the energy oppressed poor, presents a major national and international "legislative" or socio political problem calling for answers from governments and civil societies in the developed and developing world. Explains and elucidates the concept of energy justice, its jurisprudential heritage, and its meaning and relevance in contemporary society. Case studies present problem solving frameworks spanning the political, social, behavioral, engineering, natural sciences, and law. Prerequisites: Restricted to Law (LAWS) students only.

Builds on the study of basic water law principles for those interested in practicing in this field. Explores in more detail the highly developed legal and administrative system of water law in Colorado and other states, including the use of special courts to adjudicate the existence of water rights and approve changes of use. Prerequisites: Requires prerequisite course of LAWS 6302 (minimum grade D-).

Provides an examination of efforts to regulate air pollution in the United States under the Clean Air Act. Covers key provisions, basic approach of cooperative federalism, role of science and risk assessment establishing health-based standards, implications of instrument choice and regulatory design on innovation and economic growth, development of 'first generation' climate policies, and new approaches to compliance and enforcement.

Investigates the legal history and current legal status of Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. Addresses other current topics such as tribal water rights, tribal fishing and hunting rights, tribal justice systems, religious freedom, and tribal natural resource and environmental management. Prerequisites: Requires prerequisite course of LAWS 7725 (minimum grade D-).

Provides in-depth study and analysis of current problems in natural resources law, using historical, literary, and scientific materials. Includes field-trip, and requires additional field trip expenses. Recommended prereq., LAWS 6112. Department enforced prereqs. or coreqs., any three of the following: LAWS 6002, 6112, 6302 or 7725. May be repeated up to 6 total credit hours.

Examines a variety of current issues related to American Indian Law. The topics will change to reflect the subjects that emerge at each time that the seminar is offered. Some examples of topics considered in this seminar include legal protections for American Indian religion and culture, cultural property, Tribal law, gaming law, and Native American natural and cultural resources law. Coreq., LAWS 7725. Prerequisites: Requires enrollment in corequisite course of LAWS 7725.