Course Offerings

This course covers numerous legal and policy questions related to the American educational system. Relevant sources of law include the U.S. Constitution and state and federal statutes and administrative materials. Topics include school funding, school choice, student and teacher speech rights, policy debates, and others. The course will be conducted with an emphasis on developing practical lawyering skills.

An in-depth exploration of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibitions against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishment.

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibitions against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishment. Students will analyze foundational Supreme Court decisions, relevant statutory and legislative developments, and the broader historical and political contexts in which these legal doctrines have evolved. While doing so, students will examine and seek to better understand the persistent gap between the Amendment’s formal protections and the lived experiences of individuals impacted by the criminal legal system. Students will also learn about the diverse strategies employed by system-impacted individuals and communities—including class action litigation, policy advocacy, and grassroots organizing—to advance and actualize Eighth Amendment protections. Grading will be based heavily on class participation in addition to a final paper.

Aspects of federal and state elderly programs and problems; special risk populations; significance of older population growth; representation of elderly clients; guardianship; lifetime estate management; testamentary estate disposition; living wills and "right to die" debate; health and long-term care; housing, transportation and employment policies; public assistance.

Examination of the law regulating our political process, and consideration of how those regulatory choices shape substantive policy outcomes. The course covers campaign finance regulation, redistricting, voting rights, and the regulation of political party primaries

This seminar will examine current issues in election law, through the prism of active legal disputes. Topics studied will include: claims that individuals involved in the events of January 6th are disqualified from holding public office under section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment; efforts to shield information about legislative gerrymandering using claims of attorney-client privilege; assertions by election officials that they have a First Amendment right to block constituents from accessing their social media pages; recent challenges to the creation of "majority-minority districts" under the Voting Rights Act; and efforts to change or eliminate the Electoral College. Weekly reading assignments will include background material, litigant briefs, and court opinions. Active participation in weekly class discussions is required. Students will be evaluated on the basis of class participation and a final take-home project. The final project will require students to write a judicial opinion addressing one of the issues studied in class. Students wishing to write a longer paper in order to use the course to meet the Capstone writing requirement should contact the professor for additional information.

E-Discovery has taken over the discovery process in civil litigation as most information created today is in electronic form. Every medium to large litigation matter in the country involves some e-discovery issue and therefore understanding e-discovery is critical whether you want to be a plaintiff or defense attorney or in house counsel. This course will provide an understanding of the legal and practical aspects of e-discovery. It will cover all stages of the e-discovery process from when the duty to preserve electronically stored information (ESI) is triggered and a producing party must take reasonable steps to preserve ESI, to collection of ESI in response to requests for production, to review and production of relevant ESI to the opponent. The course will also focus on spoliation and proportionality and how producing parties struggle to balance complying with their preservation obligations with keeping costs down. Additionally, the course will cover how lawyers prepare for and handle Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 26(f) (and state equivalents) conferences and best practices for negotiating ESI protocols involving search terms, predictive coding and other e-discovery technology.

This course will consider emerging issues in trusts, estates, and wealth preservation. Topics will include the legal and social science aspects of innovative death technologies, planning for digital assets, the role of trusts and retirement planning in asset protection, and creative estate planning strategies. The course will also briefly consider some of the legal rules that apply to persons of significant wealth, whose estate plans are designed to protect assets and accomplish tax efficient intergenerational transfers of property. Students will have two short essays to complete, and reading assignments will be front-loaded to allow students to read materials before the class begins and to render the week’s work more manageable.  Course Learning Objectives The successful student should be able to: Synthesize competing practical, ethical, and policy issues that are raised by emerging issues in trusts and estates; Articulate and express well-informed opinions about potential legal impacts of innovation; Demonstrate skills in legal analysis, reasoning, problem solving; and written and oral communication; Listen actively and engage with speakers and other

This course will consider emerging issues in trusts, estates, and wealth preservation. Topics will include the legal and social science aspects of innovative death technologies, planning for digital assets, the role of trusts and retirement planning in asset protection, and creative estate planning strategies. The course will also briefly consider some of the legal rules that apply to persons of significant wealth, whose estate plans are designed to protect assets and accomplish tax efficient intergenerational transfers of property. Students will have two short essays to complete, and reading assignments will be front-loaded to allow students to read materials before the class begins and to render the week’s work more manageable.  Course Learning Objectives The successful student should be able to: Synthesize competing practical, ethical, and policy issues that are raised by emerging issues in trusts and estates; Articulate and express well-informed opinions about potential legal impacts of innovation; Demonstrate skills in legal analysis, reasoning, problem solving; and written and oral communication; Listen actively and engage with speakers and other students to share viewpoints and identify weaknesses in other’s arguments.

This course will consider emerging issues in trusts, estates, and wealth preservation. Topics will include the legal and social science aspects of innovative death technologies, planning for digital assets, the role of trusts and retirement planning in asset protection, and creative estate planning strategies. The course will also briefly consider some of the legal rules that apply to persons of significant wealth, whose estate plans are designed to protect assets and accomplish tax efficient intergenerational transfers of property.

Examines law regulating distinctions in the employment relationship. The emphasis is on federal statutory law regulating race, sex, religion, national origin, age and disability discrimination in employment.

Employment Law surveys the law of the workplace for the U.S., with an emphasis on those areas which predominate the work of lawyers who represent employees and employers in 21st Century practice. While law school curricula include specific courses on employment discrimination, traditional labor law, workers’ compensation, employee benefits, and wage and hour law, this course will touch on all these areas and, because of their importance to day-to-day practice, emphasize some of them. This course will also introduce important rudiments, including the vast sweep of the employment-at-will doctrine, the bar posed by workers’ compensation and other preemptive provisions, the importance of the U.S. Constitution, and the ascendance of arbitration in contemporary practice. We will then consider negligence theory in employment law and general hiring issues including immigration and testing.

Employment Law surveys the law of the workplace in the U.S., with an emphasis on those areas which predominate the work of lawyers who represent employees and employers in 21st Century practice. This course examines the statutory and common law regulation of the employment relationship; focusing on the employment at-will doctrine, public policy and wrongful discharge, employment-contract issues (including restrictive covenants, arbitration agreements, and employment-specific contract provisions), employment-specific tort claims (negligent hiring and supervision), wage-hours-and-compensation issues, leaves of absences and their interplay with disability laws and policy, and benefits and ERISA.  This survey course includes a practice-oriented classroom and project approach.  Class discussions include how to advise and counsel clients about workplace issues.  In addition, students will work on projects that present hypothetical “client” issues. 

Students will learn about the fundamental elements of entertainment law, including: (a) basics of copyright, trademark, and right of publicity law; (b) how intellectual property rights are transferred and acquired; and, (c) how relationships within the entertainment industry are structured.

This course will introduce students to the foundations of U.S. environmental law, with particular attention to regulatory programs under the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and federal “Superfund” (CERCLA), pesticides control (FIFRA), and waste management (RCRA) statutes. The course will highlight environmental justice and the experience of legal practice throughout.

This course will use a case study approach to cover the types and purposes of writing found in an environmental law practice. Students will study and draft a number of the typical documents used in environmental rulemaking, public comments and rulemaking responses, transactional agreements, and environmental litigation. Students will be working from the perspectives of the variety of stakeholders found in environmental law - including property owners, industry, and the general public.

This course prepares students for environmental practice through applied research strategies and introduction to specialized resources. Students will master locating and utilizing environmental administrative materials, statutes, legislative histories, caselaw, international sources, and scientific data. Students will also leverage emerging, secondary, and practice resources to assess various complex environmental legal issues. Administrative Regulation Research, Environmental Legal Research, and Intellectual Property Research are all branches of administrative law.  They overlap significantly.  Students cannot take more than one of these three courses.

Focuses on federal tax law and policy affecting the transfer of wealth, including the gift tax, the estate tax, and the generation-skipping transfer tax. Statutes, regulations, and interpretative materials and their application to hypothetical problems are addressed to lay the groundwork for the study of estate planning.

Typical problems involved in planning effective and economical gift distribution of property interests. Attention given to preparation of estate plans and drafting of appropriate instruments to accomplish goals.  Focus on restrictions imposed by law of trusts, wills, future interests, and federal taxation. 

This course examines the various ethical issues that can arise in the context of civil and criminal litigation. Specific areas of coverage include competence, dealing with prospective clients, dealing with victims, pre-filing investigation, pleading and motion practice, discovery, witness interviews and preparation, negotiation and settlement, technological challenges, and duties as "officers of the court." Final grades will be based on the following: (1) assignments, (2) class participation, and (3) take-home final examination.  Law and Ethics of Lawyering is a prerequisite for this course.

Covers rules governing admission and exclusion of testimony, documents, exhibits, expert proof and experiments in criminal and civil cases. Also concerned with mechanics of proof, proper form of objections, order of proof, and burden of proof in criminal and civil trials. The subjects of hearsay, relevancy, character evidence and the law of witness impeachment and cross-examination are explored in detail.

Significant aspects of family law, including marriage, divorce, separation, custody, and non-traditional families.

This course teaches students about antitrust law by placing it within the wider scope of the American antimonopoly tradition. This course enables students to engage in this ongoing debate and to answer for themselves the perennial question of our time: how should we regulate market competition in a liberal democracy?

This course will focus on the structure, jurisdiction, and powers of federal courts. Coverage will include: development of the federal court system; selection of judges; the judicial power under Article III; justiciability and the case-or-controversy requirement (standing, ripeness, mootness, political questions); the Erie doctrine; federal common law; challenges to jurisdiction; federal question jurisdiction; diversity jurisdiction; venue and transfer; special problems of removal jurisdiction.

We will examination the history and development of the writ of habeas corpus in the courts of the United States. Habeas corpus, known as the Great Writ, traces its history from the Magna Carta through the current term in the Supreme Court. It is the tool by which an imprisoned person petitions a court to review the lawfulness of his custody and to order his release. The building blocks of the course include constitutional law, criminal procedure, Congressional statutes, and Supreme Court precedents. We will learn the nuts and bolts of modern federal habeas practice by studying the tales of people imprisoned by English kings, American presidents, state court juries, and federal judges. Through the lens of habeas corpus, we will also confront questions central to today’s world, including race, immigration, crime-and-punishment, the death penalty, and war.