Elective Courses

The following courses and seminars have been taught in the last three academic years. They are not necessarily offered every year. Although many similar courses and seminars are taught each year, the nature of the Virginia curriculum allows significant variations in titles and content depending on the interests of the faculty members and students. The following course descriptions are abbreviated. For complete, up-to-date information on current courses, including instructors and number of credits, go to Current Courses.

ACCOUNTING: UNDERSTANDING and ANALYZING FINANCIAL STATEMENTS This course covers the conceptual framework of accounting, specialized accounting terminology, generally accepted accounting standards, and the distinction between financial accounting and income tax accounting. Students learn how components of financial statements such as inventories, plant and equipment, bonds, leases, sales revenues, cost of goods sold expense, and depreciation expense are measured and reported.

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW Much federal law that governs private behavior is the product of administrative agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. This course is an introduction to the special body of law that governs such agencies at the federal level, including the constitutional and statutory constraints on their actions.

ADVANCED ISSUES IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY POLICY This course reviews foundational topics in intellectual property policy, namely intellectual property’s desirable duration and scope, fostering innovation, and the merit of alternatives to the intellectual property system. Students assess the law and current policy suggestions in light of the theory and available evidence.

ADVANCED LEGAL RESEARCH Legal research is a basic part of the practice of most beginning attorneys. While research is changing dramatically with the increased use of online databases and the Internet, an understanding of print resources remains essential.

Advanced Legal Writing The goal of the course is to increase experience and mastery of writing skills that may be used in legal practice. We work on opinion letters, letters to clients, e-mail, legislative drafting, contract drafting and trial court motions and pleadings.

Advanced race and Laws Projects This course addresses the disjunction between legal theory and practice by creating a pedagogical space that allows students to closely examine, and/or produce creative solutions to, real world problems involving race and law.

ADVANCED TOPICS IN CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE This seminar examines leading legal scholarship on the criminal process, focusing on topics including: sexually violent predator laws, federal drug kingpin statutes, conspiracy, and federal constitutional limits on sentencing. These topics will be explored through student-led discussions of major appellate cases, which often come from the Supreme Court.

Advanced Topics in the First Amendment This seminar focuses on doctrinal and theoretical controversies involving the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment. The first three weeks of the course provide a general overview of constitutional protections for the freedom of religion. After this introduction, each week is devoted to an intensive discussion of a law review article on a selected topic (e.g., public displays of religion, religious accommodation, public funding of religion, the autonomy of religious institutions, the definition of religion, the values and principles that justify the Religion Clauses, and the relationship between the two clauses).

ADVANCED TRUSTS AND ESTATES The course covers restrictions on the power of testamentary disposition; charitable trusts and fiduciary administration, including the duties, powers and liabilities of trustees.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN LAWYERS FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO THE PRESENT This seminar explores the history of the African-American lawyer from the 19th century to the present. Special attention is given to the place of the black lawyer in the African-American community, the relationship of black lawyers to the larger predominantly white legal community, and the role of black lawyers in the Civil Rights Movement.

AGENCY AND PARTNERSHIP This course is an introduction to the legal consequences of people acting on behalf of other people or organizations. The course also serves as an introduction to business organizations other than the corporation, including partnership and limited liability entities.

AIRLINE INDUSTRY AND AVIATION LAW This course is an introduction to the domestic and international airline industry, and the manner in which business responds to legal demands, using the aviation industry as a focal point. Attention is also given to key current issues, including foreign control of airlines and Homeland Security.

ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION Traditional litigation is often criticized for its delay, cost and complexity, and sometimes for failing to provide results that satisfy the parties. This course is an overview of alternatives to litigation, including arbitration, negotiation, mediation, mini-trial and others.

An American Half-Century In World War II, the United States combined with the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to defeat right-wing totalitarian states in Germany, Italy, and Japan. In the much longer Cold War, the United States led a coalition of democracies whose constant pressure eventually transmogrified the left-wing totalitarian menaces of the Soviet Union and China into, respectively, a fractured economic disaster area and an uneasily capitalistic economy with an uncertain political future. This course examines this pair of U.S.-led victories, especially the Cold War. The course emphasizes the role of international law, as well as the interplay between U.S. domestic law and foreign policy.

AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY This course examines the nonconstitutional dimensions of American legal development between the late 18th and early 20th centuries. Topics to be considered may include private law and economic development, crime and punishment, the law of slavery, family law, and immigration and citizenship.

AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY SEMINAR This seminar considers aspects of American legal development between 1865 and 1965, focusing on civil rights, labor law, and corporations, with special attention to changing structures of governmental intervention and legal thought.

AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE LAW This course covers 19th- and 20th-century Supreme Court decisions interpreting the 14th Amendment, and examines how law and judicial intervention affect social relations and social movements. Topics include segregation and other forms of status-based discrimination, women’s suffrage, women in the workplace, school desegregation, anti-poverty and anti-war activism, and reproductive rights.

ANTI-TERRORISM, LAW, AND THE ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Bush Administration’s doctrine of pre-empting future attacks, this seminar examines the current posture of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to supply information on which a decision to launch a pre-emptive strike must be based. Topics include: the IC’s performance in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the proposals for change that have come out of the two conflicts; the failure to predict the 9/11 attacks; impact of 9/11 on U.S. criminal and immigration law, including the USA Patriot Act; trials against suspected terrorists; and special military tribunals. The seminar attempts to define a role for law enforcement, intelligence, and the courts in dealing with the legal and constitutional disputes that a war against an “ism” presents.

ANTITRUST Antitrust is about much more than simple price-fixing conspiracy, of course. As the celebrated Microsoft case showed, there are a bewildering number of ways that aggressively run firms can run against the antitrust laws. The course considers all of the standard ways—from cooperative pricing to noncooperative refusals to deal.

ANTITRUST PRACTICE This seminar covers antitrust problems involved in dealing with Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission proceedings and in dealing with private suits, including mergers, joint ventures, intellectual property disputes, and international trade matters.

ANTITRUST REVIEW OF MERGERS IN A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT Students learn how domestic and international mergers and acquisitions are reviewed under the antitrust laws, with an emphasis on U.S. antitrust law. Also include are the extraterritorial application of U.S. merger law, merger control law in Europe, and the problems of mergers that are subject to challenge under the antitrust laws of more than one country.

Appellate Practice This seminar examines the role of appellate courts in and provides a practical introduction to appellate litigation.

Art Law This interdisciplinary course explores how the law shapes and constrains visual expression. The focus is on the censorship of contemporary art. The reading draws extensively on non-legal texts as well as on an array of first amendment materials. The class considers recent art controversies and the special problems presented by the interpretation of visual images to explore a series of First Amendment topics including: obscenity law, child pornography law, the feminist anti-pornography movement, the critique of racist hate speech, public art and government funding of the arts. Ultimately we use the problems presented by visual art as a means to probe the meaning of "speech" for purposes of the First Amendment.

Ballots, Baseballs, and Bombers This seminar examines the interaction of legal and non-legal rules in modern U.S. national elections, Major League Baseball and strategic warfare in World War II. The course materials focus on book-length readings and on complex, rules-driven simulations.

Banking Regulation This seminar teaches students the basic concepts underlying the regulation of depository institutions in the United States, and, where appropriate, contrasts the U.S. regulatory approach with that of other countries. The seminar includes a discussion of systemic risk and consumer protection as bases for the regulation of depository institutions (e.g., banks and thrifts), as well as their holding companies and affiliates. There is a specific focus on activity restrictions imposed on depository institutions and their affiliates (including depository institutions’ affiliations with securities and insurance underwriting), as well as lending limits, capital requirements, geographic restrictions, the bank failure process, community reinvestment obligations, privacy concerns and restrictions, and the federal banking agencies’ supervision and enforcement powers. The seminar concludes with a discussion of international banks’ operations in the United States, and U.S. regulation of those activities.

BANKRUPTCY This course explores in detail the legal, theoretical, and practical issues raised by a debtor’s financial distress. Principal emphasis is on how the Federal Bankruptcy Code uses or displaces otherwise applicable law to govern the relationships among debtors, creditors, and others.

BEHAVIORAL ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW Experimental results from the field of cognitive psychology reveal a variety of decision-making anomalies that seem to call into question whether people really behave according to the predictions of rational choice theory, in which individuals pursue their self-interest by using available information to maximize their expected utility. The burgeoning field of behavioral law and economics has developed a wide-ranging and sustained critique of rational choice theory. In this seminar, students read many of the seminal works in this field and consider whether the behavioral approach can improve our ability to design effective legal regulations and to assess how law is likely to influence individual decision-making.

Bioethics and the Law This course explores the intersection among medicine, technology, and the law. Topics include human reproduction and birth (including actions for wrongful birth, wrongful life, and wrongful conception), human genetics and the privacy and ownership of genetic information, death and dying, research involving human subjects, organ transplantation, and public health and bioterrorism.

BUILDING BRIDGES: TRANSPORTATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS AFFECTING INFRASTRUCTURE This seminar examines the application of certain transportation, environmental and land-use laws to the design and construction of large transportation projects, including highways and bridges, airport and rail projects. The course uses as examples current projects in Virginia, including the Woodrow Wilson Bridge crossing of the Potomac River and the extension of the Washington area Metrorail system to Dulles International Airport, as well as projects in other parts of the country. The seminar also examines the recent and growing use of Public Private Partnerships to finance these projects. Students explore the hurdles public agencies must clear in getting projects approved, as well as the tools opponents use to alter or stop those projects.

BUSINESS REORGANIZATION UNDER CHAPTER 11 This seminar focuses on the practical and strategic applications of Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. Legal and tactical considerations confronting debtors and creditors in a business reorganization are analyzed so that students can appreciate the negotiation, litigation and transactional components of a Chapter 11 case.

BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS AND THE SCHOLARLY PROCESS This yearlong seminar is designed for students who are interested in going into law school teaching and also wish to produce significant scholarship in business transactions, including a wide range of financial and commercial contracts. The course is open to 14 students who will be selected based on their demonstrated ability and interest to engage in sustained research

CHILDREN IN THE LEGAL SYSTEM This course examines the many dimensions of legal regulation of children, who have a unique status in law. Topics include: the parental authority over children, children’s rights, reproductive rights, state authority in public schools, state intervention in response to parental abuse/neglect and termination of parental rights, and juvenile delinquency, the juvenile court, and legal responses to juvenile crime.

CHINAS, KOREAS, AND (THE) UNITED STATES This seminar examines international law and U.S. foreign policy relevant to China and Korea. Topics include the status of Taiwan, the Korean War, the accession of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the World Trade Organization, North Korea’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, human rights in the PRC, the Law of the Sea regarding various territorial claims in the South China Sea, and U.S. counter-proliferation policy towards North Korea.

CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBERSHIP This short course provides an overview of U.S. citizenship law, including acquisition at birth, naturalization and denaturalization, loss of citizenship, dual nationality, and the history of U.S. doctrine, including the increasing importance of constitutional protections. The course looks briefly at selected international and comparative law issues, including citizenship questions that arise from the breakup of states, and considers deeper questions involving the concept of citizenship and the meaning of membership in a nation.

CIVIL LIBERTIES The seminar discusses selected contemporary problems in civil liberties such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, censorship, religious liberty, rights of privacy, academic freedom, sexual orientation, and alcohol and drug abuse.

COLLOQUIUM IN AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY This reading and discussion seminar covers selected topics in the history and historiography of American law. Topics may include the law of accidents, debtor-creditor relations, Native American rights, judicial review, juvenile justice, immigration and citizenship, legal thought, and the civil rights revolution.

COLLOQUIUM: MARRIAGE IN LAW, CULTURE, AND THE IMAGINATION What does law tell us about marriage, and how does this compare to how marriage is shaped in the cultural imagination? Do law and culture reinforce one another—or are there conflicts? This colloquium studies law relating to marriage (and associated topics, such as love, divorce, paternity, etc.) and explores the place of marriage, as legal, social, and cultural aspiration and means of regulation.

Commercial Law in the Context of the People's Republic of China In this course students look closely at certain areas of Chinese law that directly impact non-Chinese investors that establish companies in China. Such areas include joint venture law, employment law, company law and contract law. Students do not look only at the law, but also at some of the historical and political drivers that shaped it. Finally, there will be a joint venture negotiation exercise that will allow students to focus on the interaction between policy, law and commercial objectives.

COMMERCIAL LAW: PAYMENT SYSTEMS This course explores the law governing various payments systems, including checks, letters of credit, credit cards, ATM and debit cards, wire transfers, and Internet banking. This course will include some emphasis on litigation strategy and the drafting of agreements to contain risk from the bank’s perspective.

COMMERCIAL LAW: SALES AND SALES FINANCE This course focuses on the basic principles of sales law, including the rights of creditors, owners, and purchasers; warranties of title and quality; performance stage controversies and remedies of buyers and sellers; methods of payment in exchange for goods; and the financing of sales transactions, both domestically and internationally.

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE TRANSACTIONS This seminar is an in-depth review of real estate acquisition and development contracts including joint venture agreements, a review of construction and permanent mortgage loan documentation, and a review of various forms of commercial leases.

Communications Law This course surveys the field of electronic communications, from the telephone to broadcast media to the Internet. Communications law is driven by a series of conflicts over control of both a “scarce” resource (indeed, there is a conflict over whether it should be defined as “scarce” at all) and the markets in which that resource is allocated. There are conflicts between firms and between different media; conflicts between competition and monopoly (and the role of regulation and antitrust in creating both); conflicts between free speech and regulation; conflicts between regulators and the companies they regulate; and even conflicts between different regulators (federal, state, and local).

Comparative Constitutional Law Recent years have seen a renaissance of an interest in the comparative possibilities of constitutional law. Just as framers of liberal constitutions 200 years ago were influenced by events in France and America, so constitution-makers in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere have pondered the experience of more established constitutional democracies in framing their fundamental laws. This seminar explores the issues entailed in the drafting and uses of a constitution. To what extent do constitutions reflect universal values (such as human rights), and to what extent are they grounded in the culture and values of a particular people? How much borrowing goes on in the writing of a constitution? In particular, in what respects do the U.S. Constitution and American constitutionalism serve as models for newer democracies? What are the historical, cultural, political, and economic contexts necessary to the success of liberal constitutional democracy?

Comparative Democratic Constitutionalism This course examines the constitutions and constitutional jurisprudence of the United States, Germany, Canada, and South Africa. Each nation has a distinct constitutional text and history, as well as idiosyncratic rules and norms of judicial review. Each strikes a different balance between majority rule and entrenched constitutional rights. And yet each is recognized as a free and open society that is both rights-regarding and democratic. Students in this course engage in comparative constitutional analysis, through study of relevant provisions of each nation's constitution, as well as selected cases and secondary materials. Students examine the historical relationships between these constitutions, and the borrowing that later constitutions have made from earlier documents. The ultimate focus of the course will be on the role that constitutions and constitutional law plays in constructing democratic societies.

Comparative Federalism This course examines how federal systems of government accommodate and promote the competing goals of unity and diversity. Today, some two dozen countries are federal, claim to be federal or exhibit the characteristics typical of federations, and about 40 percent of the world’s population lives in such countries. Innovation is apparent in federal systems, with reforms and modifications in mature federations in response to changing demands upon government, and the emergence of new versions of the federal model in countries not previously regarded as federations. The course will build upon a number of themes explored in a program called “A Global Dialogue on Federalism,” a joint venture of the Forum of Federations and the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies.

COMPARATIVE LAW This seminar introduces the student to different legal systems, especially those in Europe and parts of the developing world. The efforts of formerly communist countries to create new legal systems has provoked a critical review of the achievements and deficiencies of the Anglo-American and Continental legal traditions as well as considerable experimentation with hybrid institutions.

Comparative and International Administrative Law This seminar focuses on two broad topics. First, it acquaints students with administrative law in other nations and regions (such as the European Union). That study demonstrates the many different ways a nation might organize its bureaucracy and the mechanisms to control that bureaucracy. In the study of the European Union, students encounter a still-evolving system of supranational administrative law that must, among other things, confront difficult questions about the relationship between the union and the nation states. Second, the seminar focuses on international administrative law—looking at questions about delegation, process, and transparency as they arise in the context of international organizations.

Comparative Labor Law This course adopts a comparative approach to the study of selected issues and problems in contemporary labor and employment law. Using the U.S. scene as a general reference point, students examine labor law reforms in the European Union, Australia and New Zealand. Topics include the relevance and difficulty of studying labor law from a comparative perspective, labor law as an academic discipline and the notion of labor law autonomy, employee status, unions and other means of employee representation, institutionalized forms of worker participation (works councils, supervisory boards), deregulation and re-regulation, and dismissal protection.

COMPLEX CIVIL LITIGATION This course addresses the dramatic expansion of the role of civil litigation in our society and the accompanying development of new procedural mechanisms for coping with that expansion. The class action is given primary attention.

CONFLICT OF LAWS This course examines the rules and principles that govern the resolution of multi-jurisdictional conflicts of laws in the United States. We consider various theoretical bases for choice of law principles, as well as the principal constitutional limitations on choice of law.

CONGRESS: ITS OPERATION AND RELATIONSHIP TO THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH This course examines the processes of the Congress of the United States, its role under the Constitution, and its relationship with the Executive Branch. Special emphasis is placed upon the nature and pace of procedural change in the modern Congress as matters of institutional significance mandated by both constitutional and precedential requirements and by political realities.

CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY I: ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION TO THE CIVIL WAR This course traces the history of American constitutional law development from the Articles of Confederation through the Civil War. Topics to be covered include the framing and ratification of the Constitution, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the landmark decisions of the Marshall Court, the constitutional ramifications of slavery, and various constitutional issues raised by the Civil War.

CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY II: FROM RECONSTRUCTION TO BROWN The course begins with the political and legal upheaval that followed the Civil War and concludes with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education and its immediate aftermath.

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW II: CHURCH AND STATE This course examines the two clauses in the Bill of Rights that define and safeguard religious freedom, the one barring laws “respecting an establishment of religion” and the other protecting the “free exercise of religion.”

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW II: FREEDOM OF SPEECH and PRESS The central theme of the course is the Supreme Court’s determination of the scope of First Amendment expressive freedoms throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. Topics include prior restraint, defamation, campaign finance regulation, obscenity, child pornography, and commercial advertising.

CONSTRUCTING THE DEAL: SELECTED TOPICS IN CORPORATE ACQUISITIONS This short course explores the principal legal issues and also the practical realities of negotiated corporate acquisitions and mergers. Using documents from recent transactions, business deals are analyzed from inception to closing, with the focus on the lawyer's role in each phase of a transaction.

Construction Law This seminar focuses on the law relating to construction contracts. It uses a textbook and local construction contracts as source materials. The seminar will cover issues relating to private and public construction, from selection of contract models to disputes resolution.

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN THE CONFLICT OF LAWS This short course examines traditional principles of private international law in the context of the global business environment.

Contemporary Political Theory This course provides students with the analytic tools for understanding the structure and role of political philosophy in normative debate. Toward that end, students explore the foundations of contemporary liberalism as it finds expression in the work of John Rawls and other leading contemporary political philosophers, including Ronald Dworkin, Will Kymlicka, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, Susan Okin, John Rawls, Michael Sandel, and R. P. Wolff.

CONTRACT THEORY This short course surveys non-economic theories of contract law (e.g., consent, promise, corrective justice, and historical). The central objective is to discern the implicit or explicit objectives of these theories. Are they trying to explain and justify contract doctrine? If so, what kind of explanations and justifications do they provide? How does their conception of the purpose of contract theory compare to that of economic analysis of contract law?

CONTRACTS II This course is a continuation of the study of basic contract law and theory.

CORPORATE FINANCE This course takes a financial and economic perspective of the corporation. The major topics of the course include: time value of money, discounted cash flow analysis, financial statement analysis and projections, capital markets, market efficiency, cost of capital, capital structure theory and practice, capital budgeting decisions, firm valuation, and option valuation.

CORPORATE FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS This yearlong seminar concerns corporate decision-making in financial transactions. It focuses on governance issues and the allocation of control among the board of directors, management, and other constituencies. Topics include debt and equity financing, venture capital, initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, shareholder activism, executive compensation, spinoffs, and financial distress.

Corporate Law Policy This course discusses works on pressing issues in corporate law policy. Topics include misreporting of corporate performance, the role of gatekeepers, differences between U.S. and Europe and corporate law reforms.

CORPORATE TAX This course deals with the tax problems involved in the formation, operation, reorganization, and liquidation of corporations.

CORPORATIONS This course considers the formation and operation of corporations. It examines the roles and duties of those who control businesses and the power of investors to influence and litigate against those in control. The course also addresses the special problems of closely held corporations and issues arising out of mergers and acquisitions.

CRIMINAL ADJUDICATION This course examines the adjudication of criminal cases from “bail to jail.” Topics include bail and preventive detention, prosecutorial discretion, case screening by preliminary hearing and grand jury, the right to effective assistance of counsel, discovery, the right to jury trial, double jeopardy, guilty pleas and plea bargaining, sentencing, and habeas corpus.

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION This course examines the constitutional doctrines that surround and control the investigation of crime. The primary topics are the law of searches and seizures, police interrogation, and the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

CRIMINAL PROCEDURE The seminar develops a working familiarity with the law and procedural rules governing conduct of a criminal case at the trial court level, and their practical and tactical application.

CRIMINAL REGULATION OF SEXUALITY This short course explores the criminalization of sexuality historically and within contemporary jurisprudence. Topics include the traditional prohibitions on nonmarital sexuality and sodomy, as well as the evolution of rape doctrine from its origins in early common law up to contemporary reform movements.

CULTURAL PROPERTY This seminar examines the legal regimes that regulate interests in cultural property. Topics include: the repatriation of antiquities, the rights of artists to control or profit from their works, and the enforcement of limitations on access to documents of significant public interest.

CURRENT ISSUES IN FEDERAL TAX POLICY This seminar covers significant federal tax policy issues currently under consideration in the Congress and in political and academic debates.

Current Issues in Patent Law The U.S. patent system is under attack, with reform efforts underway in all three branches of the government. This seminar examines a variety of these reform efforts, including proposed legislation to, among other things, change the United States from a first-to-invent to a first-inventor-to file country and create a post-grant opposition system; recently decided and pending U.S. Supreme Court cases dealing with the standards for granting injunctions and determining the non-obviousness of patent-eligible inventions; and proposed U.S. Patent & Trademark Office rule changes that promise to significantly affect important aspects of patent prosecution practice.

CURRENT LEGAL IDEAS This seminar explores the greatest hits in legal thinking over the last several years. Each week we’ll look at an article pushing at the edge of some envelope in legal theory. Law and economics, legal feminist theory, and First Amendment theory are all fair game.

Cybercrime This seminar examines key legal and policy issues associated with cybercrime, which can be defined to include any crimes in which computers and the Internet serve as targets, as storage devices, or as instruments of crime. Because cybercrime can be committed in and from any corner of the world, the seminar focuses principally on U.S. laws and legal materials, but includes relevant legal materials from countries in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. It also addresses pertinent international legal issues, in the context of the Council of Europe’s Cybercrime Convention. The seminar first addresses definitions of cybercrime and other background issues, then turns to some of the most prominent issues in the substantive law of cybercrime (e.g., unauthorized access to computers and files, malicious code such as viruses and worms, intellectual property offenses such as software piracy and economic espionage, fraud, "hate speech," and pornography and child exploitation). The remainder of the seminar addresses major legal and policy concerns in the procedural law of cybercrime (e.g., surveillance techniques and technologies, and legal standards for obtaining electronic communications and evidence-gathering).

DEATH PENALTY: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE This short course surveys: the history of capital punishment and movements to restrict its use and then to abolish it; the politics of the abolitionist movement; the influence of international law and the human rights movement; the current scope and use of the death penalty around the world; the evidence regarding the deterrent effect of capital punishment; and alternatives to the death penalty, in particular life imprisonment.

DEFAMATION This short course surveys the common law and constitutional dimensions of defamation law.

DERIVATIVES AND OTHER EXOTIC FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS (Law & Business) This course is concerned with financial instruments other than common stock and conventional debt securities. The class begins with options and financial futures and then discusses structured preferred stocks, exotic debt securities such as commodity-linked bonds, and swap agreements. Throughout students are concerned with three questions: what is the economic function of these instruments; how are they valued; and how are they treated by the regulatory system? The relevant regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are covered.

DERIVATIVES REGULATION The regulation of derivatives encompasses a wide array of financial instruments and other products that are extensively used by corporations, banks, insurance companies, pension plans, and other institutional investors to enhance profits or control risks. The federal statute and agency for this area are different from those governing the securities markets. This seminar examines what these instruments are, how they are used, and the impact on those activities of the Commodity Exchange Act and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The largely unregulated markets in swaps and over-the-counter options is also covered.

DUTY TO OBEY This course examines debates concerning our moral duty to obey the law. Readings are from contemporary sources in political philosophy and legal theory, and we consider (among other things) arguments concerning consent, fairness, justice, associative responsibilities, civil disobedience, conscientious refusal, violent resistance, and revolution.

Economics of Antitrust No area of law derives its content from social science as much as antitrust law relies on economics. In the post-Chicago economic world, antitrust courts are bombarded with complex qualitative and quantitative economic evidence, and instructed by the Supreme Court to understand and apply it. The class discussions give students a detailed look at several recent antitrust cases with hotly contested economic evidence. The analyses of competing economic experts will be examined to show how slightly different assumptions can lead to very different results. For each case, the class evaluates whether the economic analysis offered supported the court’s decision. Discussion topics include: Should the results of an econometric analysis of price scanner data stop a merger of two specialized retail stores with small shares in a more general retail marketplace? Does economic theory support a claim that bundled rebates and cash incentives resulting in above-cost pricing amount to illegal monopolization? What economic assumptions can be made to establish the “but for” world used to calculate antitrust damages?

Ecosystem Management: Law and Policy This seminar addresses the challenges of managing environmental issues in the context of the human-natural systems within which they occur. These challenges include defining the character and scope of ecosystems; establishing the goals appropriate to managing ecosystems; and assessing institutional arrangements to achieve those goals. The inquiry covers diverse problems (from biodiversity loss to watershed degradation and urban sprawl) occurring at multiple scales (from the local to the regional and global). It concentrates on problems that are not adequately addressed by conventional environmental management regimes and on solutions that cut across existing institutional and jurisdictional lines. Readings include emerging theoretical approaches, such as collaborative and adaptive management, and case studies designed to illustrate and test the theories.

EDUCATION LAW AND POLICY This seminar considers law and policy pertaining to public education and examines how educational systems function as tools of socialization and social ordering. Topics include school segregation, school finance, school choice, same-sex schooling, standardized testing, ability grouping, special education, and affirmative action in higher education.

EMERGING GROWTH COMPANIES AND VENTURE CAPITAL FINANCING: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE This course deals with legal and business issues that arise in the context of representing emerging growth technology companies, with a particular emphasis on corporate formation, governance and capital structure, key employee contracts, venture capital transactions and intellectual property.

EMERGING ISSUES: COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA LAW This short course addresses issues in media law, including: federal legislation and FCC media regulations; FCC media ownership deregulation and its impact on competitive markets; FCC oversight of media company mergers; multichannel competition and the impact of mergers in the cable and satellite television markets; and communications law and entertainment programming regulations affecting the marketplace.

EMERGING MARKETS: PRINCIPLES and PRACTICE This seminar explores the legal and regulatory structures affecting foreign investors seeking to participate in the development of “emerging markets,” and in particular in the restructuring of formerly socialist economies.

Empirical Methods in the Law Every day, as lawyers and citizens, we are bombarded with information. How do we know what to believe? This course makes students critical consumers (and even producers) of legally-relevant empirical research. It covers research design and basic statistics. Students apply these techniques to two small student-generated projects (one archival, one survey) and two critiques. The class discusses how to evaluate alleged biases (e.g., discrimination), the effectiveness of various policies, and the reliability of expert testimony – among other topics.

Employee Pensions and Welfare Benefits This course examines the federal laws governing retirement, health, and other welfare benefits provided through the employment relationship. The class considers several aspects of employee benefits law, but places primary emphasis on the regulation of retirement plans (such as traditional pensions and 401(k) plans) under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). Topics include substantive employee rights and obligations; standards of conduct for trustees, investment managers, and other fiduciaries; administrative and judicial enforcement procedures; public policy on retirement security; and the economic incentives and disincentives for employers to maintain tax-qualified retirement plans.

EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION This course focuses upon federal statutes prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of race or sex, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Employment Law/Employment Law: Contracts, Torts, and Statutes In contrast to the traditional labor law course, which focuses on collective bargaining, this course offers students an introduction to the diverse body of law that governs the individual employment relationship.

EMPLOYMENT LAW: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE This course examines employment law doctrine and theory from a practical perspective. Topics include: the standards governing vicarious liability for employment discrimination and employee torts; the task of designing internal complaint procedures; handling harassment and discrimination complaints and responding to EEOC investigations; problems associated with drafting and litigating severance agreements; FMLA compliance issues; the interactions between the ADA and other statutes; and drafting, enforcement, and preclusion issues surrounding arbitration agreements.

ENTERTAINMENT LAW This course introduces legal, business, and creative issues in film, television, and music production and distribution, and the role of the entertainment lawyer. The class provides an overview of standard contract clauses in film, television, and music contracts and some of the leading cases and legal issues related to those businesses, including celebrity and publicity rights, idea submission and protection, credit and control, budgets and financing, compensation (net vs. gross and profits in films, profits and residuals), licenses and royalties, and limitations on enforcement of personal service contracts.

ENVIRONMENTALISM AND THE SUPREME COURT This short course explores the Supreme Court’s response to the modern environmental movement. Looking at selected decisions from the last 35 years, students examine the Court’s acceptance or rejection of environmentalist beliefs and values and try to discern the sources of the Court’s response. The inquiry includes comparisons to the Court’s treatment of the other great social movement of the last half of the 20th century, civil rights. Constitutional rulings and statutory interpretations are considered.

ENVIRONMENTAL LAW This course gives students a basic grasp of the laws and the concepts that underlie the environmental movement, the legal practice that has grown up around them, and their potential for change. We address both conservation and pollution control.

ENVIRONMENTAL LAW II This course explores federal laws that address the dissemination of toxic chemicals in the environment. These include the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act or Superfund, which assigns liability for the cleanup of contaminated sites and accounts for the bulk of federal environmental litigation, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which establishes “cradle-to-grave” regulation of hazardous waste. The class also explores the regulation of toxic substances in useful products, including the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act. Topics include: how regulators assess the risks posed by toxic substances and hazardous wastes; how best to manage these risks; whether federal laws are providing the right level of protection in the most efficient manner; and the impact of these laws on markets and corporate behavior, including mergers and acquisitions. Although designed together to provide comprehensive exposure to federal environmental regulatory law, Environmental Law I and II are freestanding courses. A student may take either or both, simultaneously or sequentially, as the course schedule permits.

Environmental Law and Federalism This seminar focuses on the real-world impact that “new federalism” is having on environmental law and policy at both the federal and state levels. The course blends discussions of key federalism decisions from the Supreme Court and lower federal courts with case studies modeled on current public policy and political disputes. The seminar may consider federal and state responses to concerns about wetlands depletion, loss of endangered species, air pollution, and global warming.

ENVIRONMENTAL LAWYERING: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE This seminar is about the tasks of lawyers in environmental disputes. The course develops several case scenarios based on actual proceedings. The cases involve a range of parties, including property owners, developers, and environmental groups as well as governmental agencies at the local, state and federal levels. Students draft documents and engage in simulated hearings and negotiations on behalf of clients.

EQUALITY AND THE LAW This seminar is concerned with the following questions: How does the American legal system attempt to create equality? How does our understanding of equality differ for various protected groups? What is the relationship between constitutional and nonconstitutional rights? To what extent have governmental actions succeeded in creating equality?

ESTATE PLANNING: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE This seminar considers estate planning, with emphasis on sophisticated tax-planning techniques.

Ethical Issues in Foreign Policy The class provides an overview of ethical thinking and examines the ethical implications of four specific foreign affairs decisions, including President Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, decisions to “stress” detainees for intelligence in the war on terror, the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, and the response of the international community to the crisis in Rwanda in 1994.

ETHICS, INTEGRITY, AND AVOIDING “CLUB FED” The short course focuses on real-world ethical issues in the private practice of law and business.

EUROPEAN LEGAL SYSTEMS This course traces the development of European legal systems and methods from Roman law to modern civil codes (Austrian, French, German, Swiss and Russian). It also examines the ongoing process of harmonization of private law in the European Union.

EUROPEAN UNION BUSINESS This short course is an introduction to the main areas of business law in the European Union based on a synopsis of the foundations of the European Union (history, constitution, institutions and the “Four Freedoms”). Topics include the regulation of financial services, corporate law, merger control, and competition law in the European Union, including transactions with a U.S. dimension.

EXPERTISE, SCIENCE, AND THE LAW OF EVIDENCE This seminar examines the theoretical and practical questions raised by the use of expert information within the legal system. Topics to be addressed include: standards for the admissibility for scientific evidence; Daubert and its effects; legal, philosophical and sociological conceptions of the expert’s role and the nature of expertise; the competence of the jury to assess expert testimony and possible alternatives to the jury system for complex cases. Specific subject areas may include: forensic science (fingerprinting and handwriting identification evidence); epidemiological evidence and problems of causation; eyewitness identification evidence; DNA profiling; polygraph evidence, and psychological syndrome evidence, among others.

FAMILY LAW This basic offering focuses on legal problems of marriage and marital breakdown and the legal regulation of the parent-child relationship. Substantial time is devoted to economic aspects of marriage dissolution, the establishment and termination of nonmarital relationships, and child support, custody, and adoption.

FEDERAL COURTS This course is about the federal judicial system and its relationship to various other decision-makers, including Congress and the state courts. We examine the jurisdiction of the federal courts, the role of state law in federal courts, and state sovereign immunity.

Federal Criminal Law The course covers federal criminal law, as well as constitutional limitations on the reach of Congress’s power to define federal crimes. The course also covers federal sentencing guidelines and several other controversial federal sentencing policies, including mandatory minimums, harsher sentences for crack cocaine versus ordinary cocaine base, and the recent return of the federal death penalty.

FEDERAL INCOME TAX This course is the introduction to federal taxation. It concentrates the taxation of individuals and covers such topics as the concept of income, income exclusions and exemptions, non-business deductions, deductions for business expenses, basic tax accounting, assignment of income, and capital gains and losses.

Federalism This seminar examines what the Supreme Court has described as “the oldest question of constitutional law” in America: the allocation of authority between national and state governments. It considers the historical underpinnings and political theory of federalism, American constitutional doctrines of federalism, and questions of judicial federalism. Specific topics include the nature and purposes of federalism, institutional responsibility to safeguard federalism, and the relationship between enumerated-powers and state-sovereignty doctrines of federalism. Topics also include the respective roles of federal and state courts in the making and enforcement of federal and state law, and the place of other sources of law (such as international law) in the American federal system. Although the focus of the seminar is on American federalism, the matters examined implicate questions involving international law and comparative analysis.

Federalism: History and Theory From the first session (on the American Revolution) to the last three (on federalism in contemporary constitutional theory), this seminar focuses on the changing nature and sources of American federalism in political thought and constitutional law.

FEDERAL LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCE LAW This course provides an overview of the legal (and non-legal) regimes that govern the acquisition and control of natural resources. The course examines the history of the federal public domain, including the creation of national forests, parks, and wildlife refuges. The course also provides an introduction to the control of specific resources including water, wildlife including endangered species, hard-rock minerals, oil and gas, marine fisheries, and public lands dominated by recreational and/or preservation uses.

FEDERAL TAXATION OF GRATUITOUS TRANSFERS This course is an introduction to the federal taxation of gratuitous transfers made by individuals during life and at death. Federal taxation of estates and gifts and generation-skipping transfers are examined separately and as they interrelate with each other.

Feminist Legal Theory This course provides an intensive introduction to various schools of feminist theory (these may include: liberal feminism, anti-subordination theory, intersectionality, postmodernism, and global feminism) and their legal applications. Materials include theoretical essays as well as legal texts. This course is appropriate for students with no previous experience in feminist theory who would like an introduction to the subject as well as those with a background in literary theory, political theory, or women’s studies who want to think about the legal implications of feminist theory.

Financing of Small Enterprises Over 99 percent of United States businesses are defined by the Small Business Administration as small businesses, and the small business sector accounts for over half the country’s GNP and employment. Almost all small businesses are private companies and their financing needs and options are substantially different from the needs of large public companies that are the subject of most law school courses dealing with business law and business finance. This course deals with the business and legal issues that arise in financing a small business from its startup to an eventual exit of the founder through a sale or IPO. This course is from the perspective of small business senior management and deals with the range of financing options and the pros and cons of each as a business is started and grows. There is particular emphasis on the different financial options available to each category of business at different stages in its life cycle including bank loans, commercial finance and factoring, leasing, commercial mortgages, angel equity financing and venture capital and the terms that normally are associated with these different types of financing.

FIRST AMENDMENT FREEDOMS This elective sequel to the required introductory course focuses significantly on First Amendment doctrine and theory including free speech, freedom of the press, and religion.

FIRST AMENDMENT THEORY The seminar devotes a few weeks to an overview of general writing about the freedom of speech, including both philosophical and historical treatments. Then we devote each session to a close critique of a recent law review article on the subject.

FOOD AND DRUG LAW This course considers the Food and Drug Administration, an agency that must combine law and science to regulate activities affecting public health and safety. The class covers the regulation of cancer-causing substances in foods, the use of risk-assessment techniques in regulatory decision-making, the effects of FDA drug approval requirements on research and competition in the pharmaceutical industry, and the ethics of drug testing.

FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW This course examines the law regulating American foreign relations. Topics include the distribution of foreign relations powers among the three branches of the federal government, the status of international law in U.S. courts, the scope of the treaty power, the validity of executive agreements, the preemption of state foreign relations activities, the power to declare and conduct war, and judicial review in foreign relations cases.

Foundations of Analytic Jurisprudence This is an introductory seminar in the basic ideas and works of modern analytic jurisprudence. Issues will include the relation between law and morality, positivism and natural law, theories of legal reasoning, the nature of rules, the obligation to obey the law, the characteristics of legal sources and the foundations of a legal order. Works discussed will include those of H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Hans Kelsen, Lon Fuller, Joseph Raz, the American Legal Realists and the instructor. No prior background in philosophy is expected, but a tolerance for theory is essential.

Franchise Law This course covers the legal and practical business basics of franchising, including the sales process and disclosure requirements; the relationship of franchising, trademark and antitrust law; structuring of the franchise relationship and the analysis of franchise agreements; contract and other common law concepts that affect the franchise relationship; the legislative process and statutes regulating the franchise relationship at the state and federal level; franchise-related litigation; the impact of the Internet and other technological advances on franchising; and international franchising.

FRENCH PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LAW This short course studies the sources of French Law, including the French Civil Code, international sources, and European Convention of Human Rights, as well as the increasing significance of case law and the difficulties in establishing a European Civil Code. Basic principles and new directions in contract law, recent trends in tort case law, and companies are also covered.

Fundamentals of Insurance This course surveys basic insurance concepts and the major forms of insurance coverage. The course is designed to give students the tools to recognize insurance issues when they encounter them in law practice, and to acquaint students with the scope of coverage provided by the principal types of insurance policies covering U.S. businesses.

Fundamental Tax Reform This seminar examines the most prominent fundamental tax reform proposals currently being considered by U.S. policymakers, including the “flat tax,” the progressive consumption tax, a national retail sales tax, a value-added tax, and various reforms of the current income tax system. The seminar provides an opportunity for students to become more familiar with the core policy considerations and implementation difficulties in the design of any tax system. The basic material for the seminar is the 2005 Report of the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform.

GENETICS AND THE LAW This class explores legal issues that arise with new genetic technologies. The course surveys genetic privacy and access to genetic information; the forensic use of genetic information; reproductive issues, including monitoring of genetic diseases and novel techniques of reproduction such as cloning; alteration and ownership of biologic forms; and genetic risks in the context of employment and insurance.

Germs, Guns AND Lead: Public Health Ethics AND Law This seminar explores the legitimacy, design, and implementation of policies aiming to promote the public health and reduce the social burden of disease and injury. Topics include mandatory immunization, screening and reporting of infectious diseases, prevention of lead poisoning, food safety, prevention of firearm injuries, airbags and seat belts, mandatory drug testing, syringe exchange programs, tobacco regulation, and restrictions on alcohol and tobacco advertising.

GERMS AND JUSTICE: INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND THE LAW This course examines the legal issues involved with infectious diseases. It begins with a historical overview of how infectious disease affects law and vice versa, and examines international issues such as access to treatment and medicine, how international agreements affect access, as well as ethical issues involving research in infectious disease with international populations.

Globalization and International Civil Litigation This course examines traditional principles of private international law in the context of the rapidly changing global business environment. Topics include the concept of international jurisdiction, choice of law rules in inter-jurisdictional contracts and in Internet transactions, the implications of electronic commerce for private international law, and the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. Particular attention is given to the doctrine of forum non conveniens, anti-suit injunctions and provisional and protective measures in international litigation. Students also consider the work of the Hague Conference on Private International Law in these areas.

GOVERNANCE AND CONTROL OF THE MULTINATIONAL BUSINESS Enterprise This short course examines the methods for internal governance and control of the multi-national enterprise with emphasis on internal structure, enterprise culture, local and regional legal regimes, and public opinion and politics.

GOVERNMENT ETHICS: CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, LOBBYING AND CAMPAIGN FINANCE There is increasing concern about the rules governing conflicts of interest, lobbying, and campaign finance. Particularly at the state level, where legislators generally are part-time, conflicts of interest often are hard to avoid. This seminar provides students with a working knowledge of current government ethics laws and rules and an opportunity to explore potential reforms.

HALLMARKS OF DISTINGUISHED ADVOCACY This seminar treats oral advocacy as any effort to persuade any audience of the merits of a cause or proposal and of the credibility of the proponent. Each session consists of an instruction segment and a learn-by-doing exercise.

HEALTH CARE LAW This course surveys the law applicable to health care delivery in the United States. Topics include: treating patients, industry structure, antitrust regulation, health insurance, organ transplantation, Medicare, Medicaid, and more.

Health care Structures and Financing This course provides an overview of the structure and financing of the American health care system. It will provide a broad overview of American law and regulation as it applies to these areas. Major topics include: access to and cost of health care in the U.S., health insurance and managed care, Medicare and Medicaid, the relationship amongst health care professionals and organizations, enforcement and compliance activities of the government, and the impact of liability on the health care system. It is intended that this one-credit course be a high level overview of the American health care system and the laws and regulations that shape it.

HEALTH LAW AND POLICY This course introduces the policy environment that defines the delivery of health care and the practice of medicine in the United States today. It presents legal and medical perspectives on topics such as health system structure and financing, technology innovation, the public health agenda, professional licensure and credentialing, and end-of-life issues. Emerging concerns regarding research on human subjects are discussed and a brief review of physician, hospital and insurer liability is presented. Health reform proposals, especially patient-focused and consumer-oriented initiatives, are evaluated and discussed.

Historic Preservation Law The seminar reviews the structure of historic preservation law and the policy issues regarding the preservation of historic buildings and sites.

HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCACY This seminar explores a range of approaches to human rights advocacy, domestic and international, from the perspective of human rights methodology. Students examine diverse tactics, strategies, and venues selected by human rights lawyers and other advocates pursuing similar objectives. We consider the obligations and options of various stakeholders, including states, corporations, NGOs, and individuals. The seminar focuses on strategic choices, including litigation; legislation and policy advocacy; advocacy before the U.N., transnational, regional and national human rights bodies; investigation and documentation; and global human rights campaigns.

IDEAS OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT The principal goal of the course is to develop an understanding of the central ideas of the First Amendment tradition regarding freedom of speech and religious liberty. We read essays and opinions by, among others, John Milton, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Stuart Mill, Learned Hand, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, and Alexander Meiklejohn.

IMMIGRATION LAW This course is an introduction to U.S. immigration laws and the procedures used to decide specific immigration-related issues. Attention is given to underlying constitutional and philosophical issues, to selected questions of international law and politics, and to the interaction of Congress, the courts, and administrative agencies in dealing with immigration issues.

INCOME TAXATION OF TRUSTS AND ESTATES This short course studies Subchapter J of Subtitle A of the Internal Revenue Code—the Income Taxation of Trusts and Estates. Students examine the ways in which the process of determining income tax liability for these two taxable entities is the same as that for taxing the income of individuals and the important ways in which the process differs. This course is not a substitute for Federal Taxation of Gratuitous Transfers.

INDIAN LAW The legal relationships between American Indian tribes and the national and state governments define a distinctive but growing body of federal law. As tribes seek to exploit both their natural resources and their seeming independence from state and much federal regulation, they are brought into conflict with other citizens. The availability of legal remedies, both for tribal members and others, is a second theme of the course.

INDOCHINA WAR: LEGAL AND POLICY ISSUES Few national security law issues have been more controversial or more misunderstood than America’s tragic involvement in Indochina. The conflict provides a rich case study for examining national security legal and policy issues, including the legal regulation of the initiation of coercion and the conduct of military operations, the role of Congress in the use of military force (e.g., the 1973 War Powers Resolution), and legal regimes governing war crimes and the treatment of prisoners of war.

Innovative Contracting This course examines the process and techniques of innovative contract design. Through a combination of theoretical readings and case studies, students look at the role of contracts in business transactions, how they evolve over time, what instigates significant improvements in the structure of deals, and the role of lawyers and law firms in such innovations. Along the way, the class discusses how a lawyer can be usefully innovative in the service of a client.

INSURANCE Insurance is an increasingly important tool for the management of risk. This course provides a working knowledge of basic insurance law governing insurance contract formation, insurance regulation, property, life, health, disability, and liability insurance, and claims processes.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY COLLOQUIUM This colloquium is intended for students interested in cutting-edge intellectual property law and theory. Classes focus on a series of presentations by invited intellectual property scholars and other speakers.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: COPYRIGHT In this course we study the federal copyright statute. Topics include copyright, infringement, fair use, ownership, rights and remedies of copyright owners, copyright protection of computer software, copyright issues peculiar to the Internet, the propriety of reverse engineering of copyrighted computer programs, peer-to-peer file sharing (i.e., Napster), and technological protection measures.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: PATENT This course examines both the theory and practice of patent law. In addition to legal and policy analysis, the course teaches some practical aspects of patent litigation and interpretation.

Intellectual Property: A Survey of Patent, Copyright, Trademark This survey course is designed for students who want a general introduction to intellectual property as opposed to those who want to concentrate on one or more of its special subjects. The main focus will be on patent, copyright, and trademark, but with a brief treatment of trade secrets and some common law treatments of intellectual property (e.g., contractual protection via shrink-wrap licenses, tort actions for misappropriation) outside the realm of specially designed property rights.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: TRADEMARK This course covers the law that governs how a distinctive marketplace identity can be legally protected. Topics include: federal and state protection of trademarks, the common law of unfair competition, the federal remedy for unfair competition under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, and international treaties relating to trademarks.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: TRADEMARK AND UNFAIR COMPETITION This course surveys the theory and the law of trademarks and unfair competition. Topics include the acquisition of trademark rights, registration of trademarks, loss of trademark rights, infringement, false designation of origin, advertising, author’s and performers’ rights of attribution and publicity, dilution, Internet domain names, trademarks as speech, and remedies for trademark infringement.

INTELLIGENCE LAW REFORM This seminar traces the development of intelligence law from the creation of CIA in 1947 to the War on Terrorism. It looks at the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the recent effort to strengthen intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the inaccurate intelligence on Iraqi WMD, both administratively and with passage of intelligence reform legislation in December 2005. Students shall answer the question of whether the creation of a Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and a National Counter-Terrorist Center really strengthen the intelligence community’s (IC) performance against the terrorist target and overcome destructive rivalries within the IC. Finally, students decide whether the threat of international and domestic terrorism is primarily an intelligence problem or a law enforcement/military one. The class also examines the propriety and legality of coercive interrogations, pre-emptive incarcerations, and intrusive surveillance in a constitutional democracy.

INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ON THE QUESTION OF DISCRIMINATION This seminar focuses on perspectives from economics and critical theory on the question of discrimination, particularly in employment settings. It emphasizes the issue of how different perspectives can and should influence how courts tackle employment discrimination cases.

INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS OF EMPLOYMENT LAW AND LABOR LAW This research seminar will explore topics at the intersection of employment and labor law with international law and business, including international conventions on labor rights, comparative studies of national labor laws, public and private efforts to enforce labor standards around the world, and the extra-territorial application of U.S. employment and labor laws.

INTERNATIONAL BANKING TRANSACTIONS This short course is an introduction to basic international banking products such as loans, deposits, foreign exchange transactions, swaps, options, and documentary credits. Discussions focus on the purpose of these transactions, their workings, legal documentation, and commercial and legal risks.

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS This course deals with domestic and international legal regimes that affect or regulate transnational business transactions. Topics include: the finance and capital markets, the regulation of technology transfer and international investment, and competition law.

International Civil Litigation This course examines the issues that arise in international civil litigation, including personal jurisdiction, choice of law, enforcement of judgments, sovereign immunity, and the developing law of human rights. In addition, the course covers arbitration and discovery outside the United States. Across all these issues, the course examines the fundamental question of how the ordinary rule of civil litigation must be modified to take account of foreign interests and international concerns.

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW This course covers the investigation or prosecution of criminal laws in the international arena. It first explores the foundations of international criminal law, then covers in depth two issues central to international criminal law: the extradition of fugitives and international evidence gathering.

INTERNATIONAL DEAL MAKING: LEGAL AND BUSINESS ASPECTS This short course analyzes high-profile transactions in the Asia-Pacific region. Examples include: role playing in-house counsel to the investment bankers for a U.S. $1 billion gas pipeline from Burma to Thailand during a period of U.S. sanctions against the Burmese government, and working through the regulatory steps for Tsingtao Brewery to become the first Chinese company to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

INTERNATIONAL DISPUTE RESOLUTION This seminar focuses on the development of and advocacy before international dispute settlement bodies. It stresses the difference in context and method between advocacy settings and expectations in domestic tribunals in the United States and those settings and expectations in international tribunals. Topics include the importance of the international context for all aspects of dispute resolution, such as negotiation, litigation, and formation of dispute settlement systems.

INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW This course examines the legal, political, and scientific aspects of problems of biodiversity and atmospheric pollution that are the subject of international treaties. The course includes a series of simulated international negotiating and drafting sessions aimed at reaching agreement on a climate change treaty.

INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE This course focuses on the history and evolution of the market for sovereign debt. There have been numerous proposals for a sovereign bankruptcy court to be established, and the course will examine the viability of some the leading proposals, as well as market alternatives.

INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CRIMES This short course looks at the criminalization of financial transactions that may arise in the course of operating an international business. The class focuses principally on U.S. federal criminal law, although the implementation by other countries of international agreements relating to bribery and money laundering will also be considered. The class concentrates on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, money laundering, the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and wire and mail fraud. The course emphasizes the role of private lawyers in advising clients about the prevention of criminal charges and in-house compliance policies, rather than the strategic choices to be made in the course of criminal trials.

INTERNATIONAL AND FOREIGN LEGAL RESEARCH International and foreign legal research employs materials, methods, and strategies that are different from those encountered in U.S. domestic legal research. This course provides a survey of research resources, methods and strategies unique to international and foreign law.

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW This course introduces the theory and practice of international human rights law. Topics include: an introduction to key principles of international law; the philosophical foundations of universal human rights; core international human rights norms; how states incorporate human rights principles domestically; human rights and development; and international systems and procedures for the protection of human rights.

International Ifs in the Long 19th Century The period from 1789 to 1917, sometimes called “the long 19th century” by historians, begins with the French Revolution and ends with World War I and the Russian Revolution. This seminar undertakes a variety of “what if?” speculations associated with crucial events affecting the United States and Europe during this period, with special attention paid to the actual and potential roles of domestic and international law. If Thomas Jefferson had not stretched the Constitution and made the Louisiana Purchase, how would the United States have developed? If Abraham Lincoln had rigorously adhered to the U.S. Constitution, or if France and Great Britain had recognized the Confederacy as a nation-state during the American Civil War, would the Union have survived? If the great powers of Europe had not entered into a series of tightly interlocking treaties of alliance, would World War I have occurred? In the context of developing these and other case studies, the course examines the role of international law and other factors in history, develops a typology of questions to ask in rigorously pursuing associated legal-historical hypotheticals, and debates whether one speculation about an alternative course of events can ever be more valid than any other speculation.

INTERNATIONAL IFS in the Mid-20th Century Every law student is familiar with the “hypo,” a hypothetical fact pattern spun out by a professor to test the applicability of a particular legal rule in an imagined but usually plausible situation. This seminar explores international law in a broader, more historically oriented hypotheticals. What if, for example, the great powers of Europe had paid slightly more, or slightly less, attention to their alliance treaties in July and August of 1914? What if the U.S. Congress had challenged the legal authority of the U.S. President to commit troops to the Gulf War absent compliance with the War Powers Act?

International Investment Law This course examines the substantive law governing international investment, explores how rights and obligations can be enforced in an investment dispute, and considers the proper role of investment law in the international legal system. It also challenges students to become advocates by litigating key issues that arise in investment disputes in a series of simulated mini-arbitrations. “Investor-state” arbitrations often allege breaches of bilateral or multilateral investment treaties and are often heard by tribunals established by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which is part of the World Bank group. These arbitrations raise important questions both about the rights and obligations of international investors (e.g., whether they should have substantive and procedural rights beyond those afforded domestic investors) and about the appropriate mechanisms for resolving investment disputes (e.g., whether the public should have the right to see and participate in what had traditionally been confidential proceedings).

INTERNATIONAL LAW This course is the basic offering in international legal studies. The emphasis is on the interaction between international legal rules, on the one hand, and international politics, domestic politics, U.S. law, and historical factors, on the other hand. Topics include the legal rules governing international trade and the international environment.

INTERNATIONAL LAW IN CONSTITUTIONAL JURISDICTION: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE This short course examines the incorporation of international law into Russian domestic law, focusing on the current Russian Constitution and the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. It reviews the Soviet and then Russian constitutional development and explores distribution of authority between branches of power in treaty-making and foreign military deployments.

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE SCHOLARLY PROCESS This yearlong seminar is designed for students interested in being a law professor. In the first semester we will read and analyze a variety of law review articles relating to international law. Students then draft an article of publishable quality, presented in class, with the final draft due at the end of the second semester.

International Litigation of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Can the rights to health, education, housing or adequate food be enforced by courts? Long viewed as mere programmatic goals to be realized progressively through political processes and within available resources, economic-social-cultural rights are increasingly being litigated in judicial and quasi-judicial instances at national and international levels. Some of these cases have been successful while others have not. Classic distinctions between economic-social-cultural rights and civil-political rights are being questioned. This seminar seeks to provide the legal and analytical tools to understand why distinctions between rights are unhelpful and why some claims succeed while others fail. The course considers the international normative framework for the legal protection of economic-social-cultural rights, the corresponding obligations assumed by states, the contentious procedures available internationally for the adjudication of individual complaints, and how cases must be framed to survive basic justiciability and admissibility thresholds. The course examines each of these matters through analysis of human rights instruments, procedures, and case law, as well as detailed case studies on the right to health and the right to housing.

INTERNATIONAL TAXATION A survey of the income tax aspects of foreign income earned by U.S. persons and entities, and of U.S. income earned by foreign persons and entities. The principal focus is on the U.S. tax system, but some attention is devoted to adjustments made between tax regimes of different countries through tax credits and tax treaties.

Islamic and Middle Eastern Law This course offers an overview of Islamic and Middle Eastern law, including a historical introduction and major legal subjects in the discipline with a focus on the modern period. Topics include judicial review, constitutional law, obligations, commercial law, family law, human rights and criminal law.

ISSUES IN STATE AND LOCAL TAXATION AND FISCAL POLICY This seminar examines the ways state and local governments tax, spend, and borrow. Specific topics may include treatment of unfunded mandates, financing education, and borrowing for public/private projects.

JAPANESE CONSTITUTION AND ITS AMERICAN LEGACY This short course focuses on the strong American influence on the Japanese constitution drafted in 1946. This course will deal with the extraordinarily complex and compressed process of the drafting of the new constitution; notable American influences on various provisions of the new constitution; how the constitution has fared in Japan for the last 60 years; and how the American legal model is currently influencing Japan’s move for judicial reform.

JUDICIAL ROLE IN AMERICAN HISTORY This course is a survey of leading American Supreme Court judges from the Marshall through the Burger Courts.

JURISPRUDENCE This course introduces the philosophy of jurisprudence, outlining the general legal philosophies of the 20th century, with a particular emphasis on contemporary analytical jurisprudence. Topics include the relationship between law and morality, the nature of legal authority and discretion, theories of rights, the nature of legal interpretation, and the legitimacy of judicial law-making.

JURISPRUDENCE, SEX, AND GENDER This course investigates the bodies of jurisprudence that regulate and construct sex, sexual orientation, and gender in contemporary culture. We study the emergence and development of constitutional and statutory rules concerning classifications based on sex and sexual orientation, and the ways in which they interact with formal and informal gender norms.

JURY TRIALS IN AMERICA: UNDERSTANDING AND PRACTICING BEFORE A PURE FORM OF DEMOCRACY The seminar will immerse students in the world of jury trials, and will examine: the history of our jury and current perceptions of its role; jury selection processes from summoning through voir dire; factors affecting juror performance during the trial; jury management challenges such as increasing juror comprehension in complex litigation and juror privacy; and current policy debates concerning jury proceedings.

LABOR LAW This course surveys union/management relations in the workplace. It includes how unions gain representation rights and how managers oppose them; collective bargaining; strikes, picketing, and boycotts; and individual employee rights vis-a-vis a union.

LABOR RACKETEERING This seminar explores the persistent and pervasive problem of labor racketeering and considers its origins in organized crime and the American labor movement. To understand the legal context, students consider the basic statutory scheme—the LMRDA, Taft Hartley, and ERISA—in which unions, their affiliated funds, and the mob operate; as well as the criminal statutes—RICO, the Hobbs Act, etc.—that have framed the government’s response. The class uses these tools to study the strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures of the government’s efforts to address labor racketeering, with an emphasis on real-world materials and outside speakers—federal agents, attorneys, and trade union officials—who deal daily with this problem.

LAND USE LAW This course explores the legal regulation of how land may be used, with an emphasis on the constitutional and environmental dimensions of land use law. Topics include: the basics of zoning and planning, constitutional constraints on land use regulation, “environmental justice” issues, and land use law as environmental regulation.

LAUNCHING THE ENTERPRISE: SELECTED TOPICS IN THE START-UP OF A BIOTECHNOLOGY COMPANY This short course is an introduction to the entrepreneurial process involved in the start-up of a biotechnology company. The course covers the entrepreneur’s evaluation of a scientific opportunity, the business issues in negotiating and drafting a patent license, the key elements of the business plan, and a PowerPoint presentation to potential investors.

Law and Economics Colloquium Each week a leading scholar presents a working paper in law and economics. These workshops are also open to the faculty and interested students. Students must write a short critique of each paper and are expected to engage in the discussion.

LAW AND ETHICS IN THE PRACTICE OF NEUROLOGY This interdisciplinary seminar addresses legal and ethical issues in neurological care, such as the definition of death, diagnosis of persistent vegetative state, competence to consent to or refuse treatment, surrogate decision-making and guardianship, and genetic testing and counseling.

LAW AND HIGHER EDUCATION This seminar focuses on the law governing institutions of higher education. Topics include faculty and student rights and responsibilities; constitutional issues involving application of the guarantees of the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments; civil rights issues, including diversity and affirmative action, the rights of the disabled, and gender-based issues; liability issues in the institutional setting; and the legal implications of increasing technology in higher education.

LAW AND LITERATURE This class begins with the premise that we can know more about both law and literature by thinking not just about each one but through each one. In the first half of the course, students read literature through texts drawn from two areas of substantive law: torts and immigration. In the second half of the course, students move away from these legal frameworks and read cases and texts selected with recourse to a set of concepts that originate in literature and literary criticism. There is a focus on authorship, authority, gender, and self-fashioning — or the creation of a self through language — and the way legal mandates may shape that self-fashioning. Throughout, the class is interested in the ways literature represents, resists and reworks models of legal thinking and legal action. In turn, students consider how legal storytelling sometimes subverts narrative forms and patterns to innovative ends.

LAW OF OCCUPATION AND POST-CONFLICT REBUILDING Most features of the Iraq occupation, from a legal standpoint, were designed to fit within the outdated model of international occupation law. This led to a number of contradictions within the U.N. Security Council Resolutions themselves, as well many Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) orders. This short course studies these contradictions in the context of specific CPA orders. The class focuses on the development of these orders through the CPA and the Iraqi Governing Council and demonstrates how lawyers channeled policy-makers through international law parameters. Students evaluate whether the lawyers succeeded in this endeavor, and the extent to which the existing structures of international occupation law even permit nation-building in its modern sense. Students also examine the international law bases for Iraq's interim constitution (or Transitional Administrative Law), consider its force and legitimacy prior to ratification by a freely elected assembly, and assess the chances for constitutionalism to take root in Iraq. Finally, students evaluate the early performance of the Iraqi Interim Government. Has it lived up to the ambitious standards of human rights and separation of powers set forth in the Transitional Administrative Law? Throughout, the course will compare the Iraq occupation with those in Germany and Japan.

Law of Politics This seminar examines the variety of laws governing the political process in America, particularly voting rights, redistricting, campaign finance and lobbying and ethics regulation. The class focuses on the development of these laws over the last century, with emphasis on recent areas of controversy such as the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, litigation over partisan redistricting, attempts to address allegations of voter fraud, and efforts to more strictly regulate so-called ”527s.”

Law and Psychology This course considers the psychological assumptions underlying various legal theories and doctrines. Topics include the psychology of stereotyping and discrimination, descriptive theories of justice, psychological studies of jury decision-making, the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and a comparison of rational actor versus quasi-rational actor approaches to judgment and decision-making. We will also consider the difficulties of using psychological research to form legal theory and doctrine.

LAW IN SOCIETY This seminar examines how law operates in society, how society presses upon law for responses and how advising a client is very much tied to considering the role of law and the intended and unintended consequences of legal actions. The course explores several legal disciplines with a focus on understanding the questions that must be addressed in making informed decisions and in advising clients effectively. Areas of review include the operation of law and science, law and business, law and markets, and law and social issues, and illustrative materials range from the trial of Jeanne D’Arc to “Mein Kampf” to current Enron-type corporate scandals and problems relating to cloning, child pornography, and federal guidelines for killings.

LAW AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY This short course focuses on the coming of age of Internet operations and the legal framework surrounding such concerns.

LAW OF WAR This seminar introduces students to the contemporary law of war. Participants will discuss several current issues such as the Bush Administration’s pre-emption doctrine and applicability of the laws of war to the war on terrorism. This course is particularly useful for law students interested in taking the Judge Advocate General’s School Advanced Topics in the Law of War course.

LAWYERS AND JUSTICE: ETHICS IN PUBLIC INTEREST LAWYERING This seminar focuses on how ethical and moral considerations intersect with law practice by public interest or social cause lawyers. Topics include: inadequate defense, “impact,” or class-action litigation in which lawyers seek to alter social and/or economic relations through “test” cases; government lawyering; lawyering for specific status groups; and legal services lawyering.

Legal and Moral Reasoning in Public Policy This seminar explores uses of legal and moral analysis in the American political culture through case studies of current policy problems. The range of possible case studies includes organ transplantation, tobacco control, immunization, mental health policy and physician-assisted suicide. Co-listed in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the course is required for students earning a Masters Degree in public policy, and will be designed to introduce them to the basic structure of American law, while exposing law students to the fundamental tools of policy analysis

Legal Careers and Life Satisfaction This seminar explores the relationships between careers in law and life satisfaction. The large body of psychological research on the determinants of “happiness” that has emerged in the past decade will form the foundation of the seminar. From there, the course examines the empirical literature on attorneys’ job satisfaction and their reactions to job dissatisfaction (e.g., depression, alcoholism). The seminar aims to identify factors that promote or attenuate job satisfaction in particular, and life satisfaction more generally, among attorneys practicing law in various settings (e.g., large firm, small firm, in-house counsel, public interest). This is a research, rather than a clinical, seminar.

LEGAL ISSUES IN CORPORATE FINANCE This course examines how and why different financing choices affect the value of the firm, and how the courts have viewed such choices.

LEGAL TRANSITIONS AND LEGAL UNCERTAINTY This seminar examines issues that arise with legal transitions, such as the repeal of a tax deduction, a shift from a fault-based tort regime to a strict-liability regime, or even the governmental taking of private property for public use. We examine the general problem of retroactive application of law and the extent to which private insurance arrangements can provide a response to the problem.

LEGISLATION This course is concerned with statutes, and in particular with the process that creates them, the methods used to interpret them, and the relationship between the legislative process and statutory interpretation.

LEGISLATIVE DRAFTING AND PUBLIC POLICY Each student drafts legislation and supporting documentation on an issue of particular interest to the student. Where possible, students are put in touch with the staff member of the Office of the Attorney General, General Assembly, or Division of Legislative Services who is interested in the issue being researched by the student.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT LAW The course considers the federal and state constitutional provisions, statutes, and structural arrangements that affect the capacity of state and local governments to perform basic functions effectively, equitably, and in a politically accountable manner.

MEDICAL CARE FOR CHILDREN: LAW, ECONOMICS, AND HEALTH POLICY The short course includes students from both the medical and the law schools. It focuses on medical neglect, child abuse, decision-making by and for minors about their medical care, fetal alcohol syndrome, crack babies, the terminally ill child, the Virginia and Florida Neurologically Defective Infants Acts, and adoption of children with special medical needs.

MEDICAL MALPRACTICE AND HEALTH CARE QUALITY Medical malpractice litigation in this country is alternatively characterized as in crisis and the bane of conscientious health care providers or as an invaluable means to enhance the quality of health care and compensate individuals who received inadequate care. This course examines the regulation of health care quality in the United States through medical malpractice liability (including professional, institutional, and managed care liability), professional licensure, obligations flowing from the professional-patient relationship, and external and internal regulation of health care facilities (including accreditation, staff privileges, and peer review).

Mental Health, Juvenile Justice, and Family Law This interdisciplinary seminar, offered by faculty of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, examines the role of mental disorders and mental health professionals in juvenile justice and family law. Students include graduate students in psychology as well as law students. In addition to traditional seminar class sessions, the course includes the observation of live and videotaped forensic mental health evaluations conducted through the institute. Seminar sessions explore issues in juvenile forensic mental health (e.g., adjudicative competency, criminal responsibility, waiver to adult courts, juvenile sexual offending, school violence, and the prevalence of mental illness within juvenile justice system) and family law (e.g., child custody, termination of parental rights, child sexual abuse).

MENTAL HEALTH LAW Students address legal issues that pertain to the treatment of individuals with mental illness or mental retardation. The course explores the delivery of mental health services, the regulation of the mental health professions, and the relationship between society and people with mental disability.

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS This course focuses on the role of law and lawyers in the evaluation, design and implementation of corporate acquisitive transactions, including mergers, asset sales, share exchanges, and tender offers.

Mergers and Acquisitions: Corporate Finance Perspectives This short course explores merger and acquisition activity primarily from the perspective of the corporate actors (management and board of directors) and their investment banking and legal advisors. Emphasis is on a practical introduction to mergers and acquisitions of publicly traded companies. The class examines valuation techniques in acquisitions using tools from corporate finance, and the pro forma financial effects of such transactions. Policy topics include: What strategic rationales drive merger activity, and are they analytically sound? What valuation techniques are used in board discussions? How does a board determine if a deal was successful? What does fairness mean in the merger context? How do stock market investors look at merger activity, and how should they? Students investigate basic parts of the transaction tool kit used to structure transactions.

MODERN AMERICAN LEGAL THOUGHT: A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION This short course provides students with an understanding of the main jurisprudential ideas and perspectives that have informed American legal thought since the late-19th century.

Moral Psychology and Law This seminar examines the implications of empirical research on morality for legal theory and policy. Topics include the role of disgust and vengeance in moral and legal judgments, evolutionary psychology and the law; the implications of neuropsychological research for conceptions of free will and the moral foundations of political and legal ideology. A number of prominent morality researchers and legal theorists lead class discussions of their work, which is the subject of prior discussions and written critiques by the students.

Nationalism and Cultural Identity This course makes use of cultural studies, political theory, history, and law to study forms of group identity and membership as well as the politics of inclusion, exclusion, and recognition of groups by states. The course decouples the concepts of nation (a community of ethnic, racial or cultural relatedness) and state (a geo-political body) in order to explore the relationships between the two. The course focuses on attempts at national definition by the United States (through immigration and citizenship law, holidays, monuments, etc.) and on the struggles by nationalist groups for recognition within pluralist states, but it also provides a solid foundation for anyone interested in nationalism in an international context.

NATIONAL SECURITY LAW The course examines the historical development of the international law of conflict management, including the U.N. system and the role of the Security Council, and addresses and examines the institutional framework for the control of national security, the national command structure, and intelligence and counterintelligence law.

NATURAL RESOURCES LAW This short course examines the legal regimes that govern the acquisition and control of natural resources. Topics include: the history of the federal public domain, including statehood grants, homestead acts, and the creation of the national forests, national parks, and the Bureau of Land Management.

NEGOTIATION INSTITUTE This course examines the negotiation process employed regularly by legal practitioners. It covers the stages of the process, negotiator styles, negotiation techniques, and other factors that influence negotiation interactions.

Nonprofit Organizations This course examines the law and regulation of charitable and other nonprofit organizations, including foundations, political organizations, trade associations, and social clubs. Topics include institutional governance, accountability to the general public and other constituencies, and justifications for special tax treatment.

OCEANS LAW AND POLICY The course examines the goals of oceans policy, defining oceans claims and their political, economic, and strategic context.

ORAL Presentations Outside the Courtroom This short course helps students improve their ability to communicate persuasively in the wide variety of settings, including client meetings, business negotiations, and presentations to public agencies.

PARTNERSHIP TAX This course examines the basic principles in the application of the federal income tax to partnerships and their partners. Operation of the rules are related to and explained by the underlying tax theory, and the technical rules and tax theory are applied to tax and business planning.

PERSONAL INJURY LAW This course examines personal injury litigation and then takes up proposals for tort reform as applied to auto accidents, medical malpractice and product liability. The course closes with a study of the contingent fee in personal injury cases.

PERSUASION FOR ADVOCATES This seminar explores techniques of persuasion as applied in the legal arena. After an initial review of techniques of oral advocacy, we treat the application of those techniques in opening, closing, witness examination and oral argument.

Philosophy of Law This course focuses on selected issues mostly within what is broadly termed analytical and normative jurisprudence. Treatment ranges from traditional topics such as the nature of law, legal systems, and legal rights, to the role of moral theory in private law and legal justification. Recent contributions to such topics (e.g., legal pragmatism) are considered and assessed. The approach is analytic, centering on particular readings and issues, rather than in the nature of a survey.

Plea Bargaining This seminar focuses on plea bargaining and the guilty plea system. In modern America, the criminal trial is a rarity. In some jurisdictions, it is practically nonexistent. Instead, almost all cases are resolved by guilty pleas, typically entered into after some form of plea bargaining. We will survey the variety of practices collectively defined as plea bargaining. We will discuss plea bargaining’s perceived advantages and disadvantages: whether, on the one hand, it unduly sacrifices accuracy and formality for the good of expediency; or, on the other hand, whether it facilitates compromise in arenas where adversarial heavy combat is less than optimal. We will explore the degree to which plea bargaining has affected the roles and responsibilities of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys, and we will examine the different contexts in which these changes make more or less sense. Additionally, we will analyze whether plea bargains successfully reflect probable trial outcomes, or whether cognitive biases and institutional arrangements and pressures lead parties to reach agreements outside the shadow of law and trial. Finally, we will evaluate the adequacy of efforts to regulate, reform and/or abolish plea bargaining.

Police Misconduct Police officers are given tremendous power and discretion to do a difficult and risky job. This seminar explores the legal issues that arise when officers abuse their authority, for example by using too much force against an arrestee or by robbing a drug dealer. The course emphasizes the constitutional and federal legal landscape, and topics include the causes and kinds of police misconduct, constitutional standards for police behavior, obstacles to prosecuting police officers, and the limits of litigation as a tool for preventing and redressing police misconduct, among others.

POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF DEREGULATION: THE CASE OF THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY This short course looks at the forces that brought about airline deregulation, the economic effects of deregulation, and the political response to those effects.

POST-CONVICTION REMEDIES This course covers remedies available to challenge criminal convictions, including federal habeas corpus, and examines systemic causes of faulty convictions such as unreliable eye witness identifications, faulty forensic science, inadequate defense counsel, fabrication of evidence, suppression of evidence, and false and coerced confessions. Advances in police practices, social science, forensic science, and DNA technology are discussed, including through presentations by visiting experts. Students also examine efforts to reform criminal appeals and our criminal justice system through legislation, auditing and establishing innocence commissions, as well as civil wrongful conviction suits.

PRACTICAL TRIAL EVIDENCE: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE This class explores the most commonly encountered evidentiary challenges in litigation. The class meets regularly in a Moot Court room and explores evidentiary issues in simulated trials.

PRESIDENTIAL POWERS This course considers a variety of issues involving the application of law to the president’s functions. Many such issues are of constitutional stature and fall under the general rubric of separation of powers or checks and balances. Therefore we also examine the powers vested in other branches of government. The course includes a review of some or all of the following: law enforcement (including the institution of the independent counsel); program administration (including the president’s authorities in relation to the so-called independent federal agencies); budgeting and accounting; the line-item veto; executive privilege; impeachment; immunity to suit for the president and other executive officers; authority over foreign affairs and the war powers, including claims to extensive powers in the war against terrorism (e.g., the use of coercive interrogation or even torture); detention of “enemy combatants”; and the chartering of military tribunals to impose criminal punishment. The class considers the major judicial decisions on these subjects, but one objective of the course is to derive an appreciation for how few of these questions have been or could be litigated and thus governed by clear judicial guidance.

Privacy and Surveillance Can we preserve dignity and privacy in the age of Facebook? This seminar will consider the history and current applications of technologies and cultures of surveillance. How and why did we get to the point where almost all of our activities leave a trace? What is our level of tolerance of mass surveillance? Are we willing to let the state into our bedrooms? Are we more comfortable letting our stores and shopping services understand us? What sorts of laws and policies do we need to protect our sense of personal integrity? And is privacy worth anything these days anyway? This course will allow students to survey a broad range of approaches and issues. We will read the latest work as well as some classic contributions to the field.

PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY This course presents an overview of the law of lawyering, focusing on the problems presented by the various roles of a lawyer as an agent of his or her client, an officer of the court, and a member of the legal profession.

PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY IN PUBLIC INTEREST LAW PRACTICE This course examines professional responsibility issues that arise in the context of a public interest law practice. These include the creation and termination of the attorney-client relationship, the scope of representation, conflicts of interests, confidentiality, and the attorney’s ethical obligations during litigation. The course also addresses an attorney’s relationships with the courts, the organized bar, and the community.

PROFESSIONAL SPORTS AND THE LAW The course focuses on legal issues relating to the business of professional sports.

PROPERTY THEORY This seminar examines theories of property, including natural rights and utilitarian theories. The seminar focuses on the rigorous evaluation of scholarly argument. Readings consist of classic works in the field and important contemporary contributions. After a several-week overview of the field, each session is devoted to an intensive study of a single law review article, with designated students criticizing or defending that article.

PROSECUTORIAL FUNCTION: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE The course examines the theoretical, ethical and doctrinal principles and the practical constraints governing the exercise of the prosecutorial function. We focus on the interplay between prosecutors and investigators, the nature of prosecutorial discretion, the political dimension of the prosecutorial function, issues and controversies surrounding the independent counsel statute, and the use and abuse of the grand jury.

PSYCHIATRY AND CRIMINAL LAW In this seminar, students address legal issues that pertain to the treatment of individuals with mental illness or mental retardation. The course explores the delivery of mental health services, the regulation of the mental health professions, and the relationship between society and people with mental disability.

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DECIDERS: JUDGES, JURORS, AND JURIES This seminar examines what psychologists know about the memory, reasoning, judgment and decision-making processes of some of the people who make legal decisions. We start by examining “normal” human cognitive abilities and then consider how these are relevant to the various tasks of juries and judges. Topics include: eyewitness testimony, admissibility of evidence, expert testimony, jury selection, group decision making, analogical reasoning and expertise. We end by debating who (judges, juries or other) should perform various trial-related tasks (e.g., fact-finding, assigning damage awards, evaluating confessions) and considering ways in which legal structures and processes might be changed to mesh better with how people really think and decide.

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE RIGHTS IN AMERICAN LAW This seminar explores the distinction between public and private rights in American law. The course situates the debate about public and private rights historically and examines various areas where the contest continues, including standing to vindicate public and private rights, punitive damages, legislative retroactivity, state action, and the right to privacy.

PUBLIC HEALTH LAW AND CHRONIC DISEASE This seminar explores how law and legal frameworks can be used to prevent and control chronic disease. We study specific issues such as prevention of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, asthma, obesity, cancer—and health promotion, such as reducing tobacco use, increasing physical activity, and improving nutrition.

PUNISHMENT IN LAW AND CULTURE This short course considers connections between punishment and culture in the contemporary United States. The class examines punishment through philosophical literature, literary texts, legal cases, and film. Among the questions discussed are: Do we punish too much and too severely, or too little and too leniently? Does punishment express our noblest aspirations for justice or our basest desires for vengeance? Can it ever be an adequate expression of, or response to, the pain of the victims of crime? When is it appropriate to forgive rather than punish? Students consider these questions in the context of arguments about the right way to deal with drug offenders, sexual predators, and terrorists. In addition, students examine the treatment of punishment in constitutional law, e.g. the prohibition of double jeopardy and of cruel and unusual punishment.

QUANTITATIVE METHODS Lawyers in a wide variety of practice areas are increasingly called upon to apply quantitative tools to frame arguments and advise clients. This course provides an introduction to quantitative methods from microeconomics, decision theory, game theory and statistics and discusses how these concepts can be applied in legal contexts. Applications include litigation, settlement, environmental law, corporate law, employment law and antitrust.

Race And Politics This course focuses on the Voting Rights Act and the relationship between racially polarized voting and electoral outcomes. We will look at political science articles on the impact that a candidate's race has on voters across different regions. We will also explore the law's response to racial bloc voting through the Voting Rights Act.

Race, Inequality, and Economics This course focuses on the law and economics of race discrimination and inequality. Students read articles by economists and economically oriented legal theorists on related topics including the measurement of race discrimination in various markets, the causes of discrimination, racial profiling, hate speech and hate crimes, affirmative action, and the economic costs of inequality.

RACE AND LAW With such watershed events in the civil rights movement as Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights acts of the 1960s, the eradication of racial subordination in America seemed an achievable goal. Yet, in America today, racial minorities continue to suffer and race relations have even deteriorated in many respects. Whether the law has aided or impeded the cause of civil rights in the past, and the extent to which the law can help to resolve racial issues in the present and future, are questions of considerable controversy. This seminar examines the response of law to racial issues in a variety of contemporary legal contexts. Topics may include education, employment, criminal justice, voting, interracial relationships and adoption, and hate speech. The materials consist of a mix of cases and scholarly commentary. Classes will center on candid discussion about the issues raised in the assigned materials.

Race, Marriage, and Inequality This short course considers the intersection of race, marriage, and inequality. Students examine differences in rates of marital formation and dissolution among various racial and ethnic groups, project the consequences of such differences for the well-being of adults and children, and consider the link, if any, between a group’s rate of marriage and dissolution on one hand and rate of intermarriage on the other. In addition to examining the views of legal scholars and a small number of cases, students consider the work of sociologists, psychologists, and economists. In particular, the course draws heavily on empirical research about the causes and consequences of marriage and divorce. To provide context, the course reviews prior debates among scholars, policymakers, and other commentators about the connection between family life and racial inequality. The class also covers current controversies about government regulation and promotion of marriage.

Real Estate TRANSACTIONS: Principles AND Practice This course deals with financing techniques used in acquiring and developing long-lived assets, including the techniques for evaluating investment in assets that generate long-term cash flows, and the financial structures used to invest in real estate.

REFUGEE LAW and policy This course covers refugee law and the procedures involved in adjudicating claims to political asylum, as well as such topics as: the theory and philosophy of refugee protection, the special dimensions of gender-based persecution claims, U.S. overseas refugee programs, and extradition law.

REGULATION AND DEREGULATION OF U.S. INDUSTRIES This seminar covers the deregulation of such industries as energy and telecommunications, with emphasis on the legal and financial impacts of deregulation.

REMEDIES This course is about the actions courts take for litigants who have been wronged or who are about to suffer legal wrongs. Topics include damages measurement, injunctive relief, declaratory judgments, restitution, and punitive civil remedies.

RETIREMENT SECURITY This seminar examines key issues in the federal regulation of employee pension and health benefit plans.

Rhetoric This course focuses on readings from Aristotle, Cicero, and other ancients and modern rhetoric writers, lectures on rhetorical style and substance, review and analysis of videotapes of distinguished oral presentations, informal discussion, student presentation of three videotaped speeches and critique thereof.

RIGHTS This seminar examines the nature of and possible justifications for claims of right. Topics include the nature of rights (e.g., their roles in moral and legal theory and reasoning, their proper analyses and constituent parts, their possible contents, etc.), the (alleged) general varieties of rights (e.g., moral, natural, human, conventional, institutional, legal, cultural), the possible properties of rights, and possible justifications for claims that particular rights exist. The seminar concludes with a careful consideration of one kind of right—to many theorists the most important (or, perhaps, the only) kind—namely, property rights.

Rights, Bills Of Right, Constitutions: Britain Begins To Emulate The United States Until 2000, the United Kingdom did not possess a Bill of Rights enforceable in the courts. The passage of the Human Rights Act of 1998 was contentious, even though Britain had largely created the European Convention on Human Rights that the act incorporated into British law. It was (and to some degree still is) widely believed that Britain had no need to incorporate the convention into domestic law, and that it was impossible to entrench rights in British law due to the absence of a written constitution. This short course explains why the British obsession with the “sovereignty of parliament” made incorporation difficult; why politicians, judges and academic observers were hostile to expanding judicial review of government and parliament; why they changed their minds; what the impact of the Human Rights Act has been over the past seven years; and what may happen next. The course will involve some jurisprudence as well as the analysis of interesting recent cases on freedom of religion, sexual self-expression, the rights of suspected terrorists, and the right to a fair trial. The British government has recently proposed a number of further constitutional changes; together they raise the question whether Britain will come to resemble the United States – and in what respects.

Rights of Indigenous Peoples From the United Nations and regional human rights institutions to the World Bank and other international institutions, indigenous peoples have made significant gains in recent decades. This seminar will explore emerging norms and principles of indigenous rights within the international legal framework. We will discuss such issues as the definition and concept of indigenous peoples and rights; tensions between individual rights and group rights; historical discriminatory practices (e.g., removal of children from indigenous communities); indigenous peoples’ land rights, environmental law and the activities of multinational corporations; cultural survival and indigenous peoples’ rights under international trade and intellectual property regimes; and indigenous mobilization and international advocacy.

RULE OF LAW: CONTROLLING GOVERNMENT IN CONTEMPORARY LEGAL THOUGHT The seminar reviews information about government failure internationally and domestically; and examines theoretical approaches to explaining such failure, including public choice theory.

SECURED TRANSACTIONS This course covers the law governing the use of collateral in credit or lending relationships. The principal statute is Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, which regulates the enforcement of security interests in collateral.

SECURED TRANSACTIONS (Law & Business) This course is an introduction to debt financing, with particular emphasis on the use and enforcement of security interests in collateral and on the priority structure of creditor claims against a business organization. As part of the Law & Business track, the course assumes familiarity with accounting, valuation, and corporate finance concepts and methodology.

SECURITIES FRAUD Investors who have purchased securities based on false information have a wide range of remedies against numerous parties. This course evaluates the effectiveness of the available remedies in light of the problems suggested by recent events such as the Enron debacle and the controversy over the role of stock analysts.

SECURITIES REGULATION (Law & Business) This course covers the federal regulation of the issuance and trading of securities.

SEMINAR IN ETHICAL VALUES The yearlong Seminars in Ethical Values are designed to enhance students’ understanding of ethical issues and address the broader ethical and moral responsibilities of the lawyer as citizen and leader. Typically, about 17 sections are offered: 15 traditional sections and two sections co-sponsored with the Institute for Practical Ethics involving students and faculty from different disciplines.

SEXUALITY AND THE LAW This seminar explores the role of the law in shaping the social meaning of heterosexuality and of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities in a number of contexts, including employment, education, sexual expression, family relationships, and the military.

SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE LAW This course deals with the uses of social science by practitioners and courts. No background in methodology or statistics is necessary. Both applications in the criminal context (e.g., obscenity, parole, sentencing) and in civil law (e.g., desegregation, trademarks, custody) are considered.

Social Welfare Law This course examines the legal and policy issues surrounding the redistribution of money and other goods to achieve social welfare goals. The course starts by considering the theoretical underpinnings and practical goals of redistribution, as well as some of the central dilemmas associated with it. After surveying the purpose and scope of the modern “welfare state” (which includes not only welfare checks and food stamps, but also Social Security and Medicare), students explore the rhetoric and reality of welfare reform, legal approaches to poverty and dependency, and some of the constitutional issues surrounding government benefits (including benefits that come with various “strings” attached). Other topics include the law’s role with respect to family choices made by the poor, and the ways in which the law structures access to resources such as education, housing, and health care.

Special Education law This course is designed to give students an introduction to the field of special education law. It will focus on the main federal statute governing special education – the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) – and the numerous cases interpreting and enforcing it. Some attention will also be given to the No Child Left Behind Act, the Rehabilitation Act and relevant state laws, as well as to the policy issues presented by special education.

SPORTS LAW This course explores the legal rules regulating professional and amateur sports. There is a substantial treatment of both labor law and antitrust regulation.

STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR IN CORPORATE AND SECURITIES LAW Firm managers practicing corporate and securities law use a variety of strategic behaviors; this short course will use game theory and economic analysis to explain and predict some of those behaviors. Topics include capital structuring, mechanics of public offerings, choice of corporate governance, corporate takeovers, executive compensation, and shareholder voting.

STRATEGY IN CIVIL LITIGATION: PLEADING AND PROCEDURE This seminar concentrates on skills needed in effective pretrial litigation. Through frequent in-class exercises and preparation of litigation documents, the seminar stresses both the style and substance of winning litigation techniques.

SUPREME COURT AND CRIMINAL LAW This seminar focuses on the role of the Supreme Court in establishing general doctrines governing the scope of substantive criminal law. Each session focuses on one or more Supreme Court opinions dealing with matters such as: statutory interpretation principles applicable to federal crimes, retroactive decision-making and the meaning of fair notice, whether there is a constitutionally required minimum content of a “criminal” law that must be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, constitutional limits on allocation of the burden of proof between prosecutor and defendant, constitutional limits on fact-finding relevant to sentencing, the constitutionality of guideline sentencing schemes, and constitutionally imposed proportionality limits as they apply to the death penalty, prison sentences, and fines.

Supreme Courts from Warren to Roberts The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren is remembered as having been one of the most activist courts in American history. During the years of Chief Justice Warren Burger, the Court seemed to lack a sense of direction, and the counter-revolution some observers had predicted never came about. What will be the legacy of the Court during the time of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist? What may we expect of the Roberts Court? Among the themes likely to be developed in this seminar are the origins of the Warren Court, that Court’s legacy, and the extent to which that legacy survives today; the relation between presidential politics and the work of the Court; the interplay between the Court and the country at large; specific doctrinal developments; the philosophies of the individual justices; and voting blocs and behavior on the Court.

Supreme Court Justices and the Art of Judging Key figures on the modern Supreme Court are the focus of this seminar. We consider selected justices—their background before coming to the Court, their major decisions, their jurisprudence, their interaction with other justices, their legacy. We will take stock of these justices both through their own writings and through the views of commentators, including judicial biographers.

TAKEOVER LITIGATION This short course examines the issues and events that typically arise in corporate control litigation. Students become familiar with practical litigation tactics and strategies, including what claims to bring, strategies for drafting pleadings, and where, when, and how to file.

TAXATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT This short course asks a simple question: what role does a developing country’s tax system play in assisting or impeding the country’s economic development goals? The course assumes that participants already have a basic understanding of the goals and impacts of tax and transfer systems.

Tax Policy This course examines the legal, economic and political considerations relevant to formulating tax policy. Specific topics will be drawn from: the concept of income and the tax base; economic efficiency; equity and distributive justice; tax expenditures; consumption taxation and fundamental tax reform; wealth transfer taxation; social security and other social insurance programs; tax compliance and enforcement, including tax shelters; and current tax policy legislative initiatives.

Tax Practice and Procedure This course is intended for serious tax students who intend to pursue a career in tax law, whether in tax planning or in tax controversy work. The course follows the progression of a tax dispute from the planning stages through to litigation. Students consider how to properly and accurately characterize a transaction on a tax return, defend the transaction at the administrative stage in an IRS audit, prepare a Protest rebutting the IRS's proposed treatment of the transaction, and, finally, prepare a brief supporting the proper tax treatment of the transaction. Other topics include certain ethical issues, IRS Circular 230, and other issues that may arise in the course of a taxpayer's dealings with the IRS and the courts.

The 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund and Mass Torts: Aberration or Precedent? This course focuses on a unique federal statute, the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, and analyzes why the statute was enacted as an alternative to the traditional civil justice system. After examining the policy considerations underlying the traditional tort system, the course focuses on the design, implementation and administration of the 9/11 compensation fund, reviewing public policy objectives and legal and political challenges to the very idea of an administrative, no-fault compensation system.

Tobacco Policy in the United States This course explores the unsolved puzzles of tobacco regulation. Used by 46 million people in the United States, tobacco is regarded as the underlying cause of more than 400,000 deaths every year. Although the prevalence of smoking has declined steadily since 1965, the initiation rate among teenagers remains stubbornly high (around 25 percent) and adult prevalence also seems to be flattening. Class sessions focus on several key issues in the ongoing debate about tobacco regulation, including the proper scope of smoking restrictions, the constitutionality of restrictions on advertising and marketing of tobacco products, and the most sensible approach to regulating tobacco products, especially those that purport to be “safer” than ordinary tobacco products. Although tobacco control is a worldwide problem, the class focuses on U.S. tobacco policy, and will be grounded in a National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine study chaired by Professor Bonnie.

TORT THEORY This seminar explores contemporary issues in tort law, including the proper scope of liability for accidental harm, problems of causation, and liability for inchoate and future loss. The focus is on the rigorous evaluation of scholarly argument.

TRADE SECRETS: HISTORY, THEORY, AND PRACTICE This short course studies the development of the primary right and tracks its development as a common law doctrine up to the passage of federal and state legislation in both the criminal and civil arenas. We explore the various methods available to protect trade secrets and how the rights are litigated.

Tragedies of the Commons and Anticommons This seminar explores the tragedies of the commons and anticommons as conceptual templates within property theory and as lenses for understanding concrete legal problems in natural resource, real property, and intellectual property contexts. The standard “tragedy of the commons” story focuses on the tendency for multiple parties with access to a given resource to use it in a way that degrades its value for the group. The “anticommons” tragedy involves the dispersal of veto rights over a resource’s access to multiple parties—a situation that can prevent anyone from accessing the resource. Moving between broader theoretical questions and specific applications, the course examines the conditions that create these tragedies, the problems that they present, and possible ways of addressing them. Important dilemmas are presented by different kinds of resources—from natural resources like water, fish, and grazing lands, to urban land that might be assembled or configured in various ways, to cyberspace and various intellectual products.

Transactional Approach to Mergers and Acquistions This course involves analysis of different kinds of M&A transactions including both negotiated and hostile acquisitions of public companies, as well as acquisitions of private companies and subsidiaries and divisions of public companies. Special types of transactions such as leveraged buyouts, “going private” transactions, spinoffs and the use of proxy contests in hostile transactions will also be addressed. Structuring, documenting and negotiating transactions will be examined in-depth from a practitioner’s perspective, sometimes through the use of case studies, with an emphasis on the similarities and differences in the acquisition agreements applicable to different kinds of transactions. Although not a prime focus of the course, tax considerations will be addressed. The course will provide an in-depth look at the roles played by lawyers and investment bankers in advising boards of directors of target and acquirer companies as well as those played by other transactional professionals.

TRIAL ADVOCACY In this seminar students prepare to work in the trial court and for the atmosphere of the courtroom. Extensive use is made of simulated trial episodes. Students perform one or more of the functions of trial lawyers, such as direct and cross examination, opening statements, handling of exhibits, objections, and closing argument.

TRIALS OF THE CENTURY: LITERARY AND LEGAL REPRESENTATIONS OF GREAT CRIMINAL TRIALS This seminar examines famous, even sensational, criminal trials. The seminar focuses on rhetorical and narrative strategies for representing the facts, as well as the legal rules, adversarial norms, and ideological stakes, in such trials. Trials may include: Oscar Wilde, the Scottsboro boys, Leopold and Loeb, O.J. Simpson, and the Scopes Trial.

TRUSTS AND ESTATES The course covers intestate succession (when a decedent dies without a will); probate procedure and grounds for will contests; requisites for the creation and termination of private trusts; inter vivos transactions that serve as will substitutes; planning for incapacity; and problems in the interpretation of wills.

Torts II This course is an overview of issues that are not covered in the first semester of Torts, such as some dimensions of defective products, defamation, privacy, and intentional economic harm.

The United Kingdom AND Europe: A Changing Legal Scene This short course focuses on important changes in the legal realm in the United Kingdom and Europe. Topics include British constitutional change (e.g., devolution of local sovereignty, the reform of the House of Lords, proposals to move to proportional voting); significant changes in the structure of European courts; enlargement of the European Union and, in particular, accommodation of EU institutions to the prospect of enlargement.

URBAN LAW AND POLICY This seminar examines the legal, economic, and political forces that have shaped American metropolitan areas, particularly cities and suburbs. The course considers issues such as sprawl, racial segregation, housing, education, land use, concentrated poverty, and community economic development.

Virginia and the Constitution In the 400 years since its first settlement, Virginia has been intimately intertwined with the central themes of American constitutionalism—the idea of rights, the balance between national and state power, the nature of religious liberty, the problem of race and discrimination, etc. In this course, students consider people, documents, and events that illuminate those themes. Examples include the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786), James Madison’s Virginia Plan (1787), the nationalist opinions of John Marshall, the Prince Edward County litigation, and Virginia’s own constitutions, especially those of 1902 and today.

VIRGINIA PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE The course includes a study of the Virginia judicial system and the workings of litigation in Virginia; problems of jurisdiction and venue within that system; pleading and practice both at law and in equity, involving a study of the Rules of Court; and the procedural statutes as well as the applicable case law.

WAR AND PEACE: NEW THINKING ABOUT THE CAUSES OF WAR AND WAR AVOIDANCE This interdisciplinary seminar explores the latest thinking about the causes of international armed conflict and ways future wars might be avoided. World history is examined to test competing theories.

Water Law Rivers, streams, lakes, and groundwater are subject to a diverse array of competing uses, including withdrawals for human use, receiving discharges of pollution, the generation of hydropower, and as habitat for aquatic life. The allocation of water and the resolution of disputes between competing water uses are governed by an array of state and federal laws. The course initially studies the two primary water law systems in the United States—the riparian system in the East and the prior appropriation system in the West. The course also examines public rights to water resources and mechanisms for resolving water-use disputes and protecting the environmental quality of lakes, rivers, and streams. Other topics include federal laws that affect the allocation and use of water, including the Clean Water Act, the Federal Power Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the law governing interstate water disputes.

WHITE COLLAR CRIME The short course begins by establishing a working definition of white collar crime and by reviewing pertinent statutes and procedure. Typical fact patterns, strategies, and outcomes from the varying perspectives of prosecutors, defense counsel, corporate targets, and individual defendants are considered.

WORKPLACE SAFETY AND HEALTH This course examines legal responses to work-related safety and health issues. Topics include the worker’s compensation system, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), workplace violence, drug testing, smoking, and health insurance.