Course Offerings

This course surveys the legal issues relating to mental health and illness, including competency, disability, confidentiality (HIPAA), duty to warn, civil commitment, criminal defenses, discrimination, and similar issues. The course will help students planning careers in the helping professions, including social work, therapy, psychology, education, and criminal justice.

This course will focus on the role of the Judge Advocate in the six service branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, with particular emphasis on the largest Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, the U.S. Army JAG Corps. Students will learn about the six core competencies of military law, which include administrative and civil law, claims, contract and fiscal law, international and operational law, legal assistance, and military justice. We will review some of the most significant Supreme Court, Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF), and federal court decisions as they relate to military law. This course is ideal for any student who wishes to learn more about the role of a military lawyer and the unique skills and value they bring to the mission and to a Commander’s decision-making.

Student teams prepare civil or criminal jury trials under the supervision of a faculty advisor by preparing and presenting pretrial evidentiary motions, opening statements, direct and cross examinations of witnesses, and closing arguments. A student must be selected as a competing advocate who will attend a competition in the semester in which the student registers.

This is a study in the theories that animate modern legal scholarship and practice. The course surveys classic articles and book excerpts and reviews to provide a basic understanding of the dominant theoretical movements and their development.

This is an online course studying in the theories that animate modern legal scholarship and practice. The course surveys classic articles and book excerpts and reviews to provide a basic understanding of the dominant theoretical movements and their development.

Student teams prepare appellate briefs and bench briefs and practice oral arguments under the supervision of a faculty advisor for regional, national, and international competitions. A student must be selected as a competing advocate who will attend a competition in the semester in which the student registers. This course is graded S/U.

Preparation, handling of international law moot court case and representation of hypothetical states before international legal tribunal. Topics covered impart knowledge of international legal reasoning, novel research and effective oral advocacy. Enrollment extended by permission. This course is graded S/U.

Through readings, experiential exercises, and simulated negotiations, this course serves as an introduction to the theory and practice of negotiation for deals and disputes, with an emphasis on negotiation tournaments. In the Fall, the course is required for all second-year students who wish to compete for a spot on the Negotiation Advocacy Team and is otherwise open only to Negotiation Advocacy Team members, who are required to enroll each semester. The faculty advisor(s) will approve course registration and assign a grade. Course is graded S/U.

Deals with impact of federal income tax on formation and operation of businesses conducted in partnership form. Special emphasis on tax ramifications of sale of partnership interest, death or retirement of partner, and dissolution of partnership.

This course studies how to write and prosecute a United States patent application. With numerous drafting exercises, including the drafting of claims and arguments in response to Office Actions from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the course both introduces students to common issues arising during patent prosecution and equips students with basic strategies to deal with those issues.  The course also explores patent infringement analysis and opinion letter work in which patent lawyers routinely engage.  This course does not include the formal preparation for the USPTO patent bar.

This class will provide an overview of what it is like to practice on the Plaintiff’s side of civil litigation. Hollywood and most legal television shows would have you believe that being a Plaintiff’s lawyer is as easy as putting up a billboard and filing a lawsuit. This course will focus on the reality of Plaintiff’s practice by discussing ethical concerns, advertising, federal and state laws privacy laws regarding client medical records, drafting and submitting time-limited demands, and of course, dealing with the insurance company.

The law has always had to adapt to deal with challenges created by new technologies. The first copyright law, for instance, can trace its origin to the proliferation of publishing enabled by the printing press. Today this issue is especially important because technology develops much more quickly than the law can respond. And since things like the World Wide Web, social media, smart phones, and wearables are so integral to modern life, this time between tech development and legal change can be lead to problems that the law cannot easily address. As such, this course will explore the intersection of law, policy, and the modern connective technologies that many of use daily. To this end, we will look at copyright, fair use, and the changing concept of IP ownership, particularly since the growth and fall of Napster; privacy and data security, particularly since Edward Snowden's revelations; and how copyright and privacy collide with free speech, particularly considering cases like the fight between Terry "Hulk Hogan" Bollea and Gawker Media.

This is a practicum in which students will learn to identify, investigate, and prosecute animal welfare crimes and ordinance violations. In some semesters, it may include drafting ordinances and state laws, providing an analysis of laws presented for adoption by others, and other related tasks. In academic years in which Boot Camp in Animal Welfare Skills is taught, it must be taken in advance of this practicum or concurrently. Register for both 5278S (graded portion) and 5279S (pass/fail portion).

The strategies of complex civil litigation, focusing on case development and analysis in the pre-trial period.

This course addresses the recognition, development, and regulation of rights in real property and personal property, including the nature and function of possession and title, shared ownership, private and public rights, and transfers of property.

This course teaches how the 4th and 5th Amendments guide and limit law enforcement officers when they search or seize citizens and when they conduct pre-arrest interviews or post-arrest (custodial) interrogations. Students will also learn practical skills including how to conduct a motion to suppress hearing and a Jackson-Denno hearing.

Fall Semester. This course teaches the procedural steps involved in the prosecution of a criminal case following a suspect's arrest. Students will learn how to evaluate cases and how to wisely exercise "prosecutorial discretion." Students will also learn practical skills including how to conduct preliminary hearings, grand jury proceedings, and arraignments.

Spring Semester. This course teaches the procedural steps involved in the prosecution of a criminal case following a defendant's not-guilty plea. Students will learn about jury trials and jury selection. Students will also learn about the search warrant requirement and its "well-recognized exceptions," identification of suspects, Confrontation Clause, and Right to Counsel.

This course offers an overview of Public Health Law. The course begins by defining public health law with historic, contemporary and international comparative law-policy perspectives, discusses the government entities most involved in public health domestically and internationally, and then surveys a range of applications. Coverage encompasses reproductive health, vaccination, biodefense, integration of genomics (study of gene function) and population genetics into public health policy and practice, and international public health.

Designed to teach students to discover what peoples' needs are, to be able as lawyers to summon community's resources for meeting those needs, and to determine what lawyers can do to insure the community's services are in place and functioning. Students will be required to work with both service institutions and individuals who are the clients of those institutions. They will be assigned to cases and graded on their success in solving the problems raised.

This introductory course will examine the doctrine, theory, and evolution of International Law. Once focused narrowly on relations between nation-states, the field now encompasses myriad legal norms and mechanisms regulating the global activities not only of states, but also of human beings, corporations, and intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations.

Race and Law is a 3 hour course that meets twice a week. It focuses on historical and current issues that illustrate the critical and systemic ways in which law has been used to define race, to construct racial identity and to justify racial discrimination in the United States, as well as the attempts to utilize law to deconstruct those same structures. Topics include, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement, policing, mass incarceration, voting rights and processes, educational opportunity, affirmative action, language and accent discrimination, and generally the intersection of race and law with gender, sex, ethnicity, religion and other routes along which discrimination often travels in combination with race.

An examination of the effects of race on the structure and practice of law, on thinking about law, and on legal education.

A comprehensive overview of issues involved in developing real estate projects and representing real estate developers, from finding and securing a site, structuring the acquisition agreement, understanding development financial metrics, professional service agreements, financing agreements and construction contracts through sale or refinancing of the project.

Residential and commercial real estate transactions, including contracts of sale, brokerage arrangements, deeds of conveyance, the recording system, and methods of title assurance; financing of real estate acquisition, including installment land contracts, mortgages, and other financing methods.