This course explores the ways in which the law can regulate relationships between individuals. Some of this regulation involves rules that individuals crafted for themselves; that is the core of the field of Contracts.  Other aspects of the regulation of individuals’ interactions entails enforcing rules society has established for people’s behavior; this is the central focus of Torts.  Rather than approaching Contracts and Torts separately, as the standard law school curriculum does, this course engages them together, emphasizing how they have changed in similar ways over the years as dominant legal ideas have changed.  For example, both Contract and Tort must consider whether to regulate inaction as well as action.  Both must determine how much law should defer to other relationships among individuals.  Both face choices about how, if at all, to take into account the effects of broader societal conditions (such as inadequate employment opportunities or education) when assessing individuals’ legal rights and obligations.  And both must decide how much to focus on particular individuals’ capabilities or states of mind and how much to impose generalized, one-size-fits-all rules.  The first half of the course focuses on Classical Legal Thought, which rose to prominence after the Civil War and continues to have considerable influence on legal rules.  The second half revolves around various ideas broadly grouped as Law and Economics, which began to emerge early in the 20^th Century.

What is democracy? What would be required to realize aspirations to democracy in a country like the United States, with a history of enslavement, dispossession of Native peoples, highly unequal application of the criminal law, and more broadly persistent inequality? How has constitutional law shaped controversies over the terms of democratic life in the United States? What role should criminal law enforcement play in a democratic society and how, if at all, should constitutional law inform the criminal process? This course will explore these questions regarding democracy, coercion and constitutionalism, in both historical and contemporary perspectives, with particular attention to U.S. constitutional law and constitutional criminal procedure.

Foundations of American Legal Thought introduces students to styles of twentieth- and twenty-first century American legal thought. The course begins with classical legal thought and with the challenge posed by legal realism to classical conceptions of rights and legal reasoning. It then considers process theory, law and economics, legal liberalism, critical legal studies, feminist legal theory, critical race theory, conservative legal theory, and LGBTQ+ legal theory. Each week students attend a one-hour overview lecture given to all students in Curriculum B, and two hours of seminar, given in small sections. The aim of the course is to familiarize students with the theoretical and historical underpinnings of the doctrines studied in their other courses, in particular the other Curriculum B courses.

This year-long non-credit seminar meets approximately ten times a semester. Generally, this seminar aims to acquaint incoming GLS participants with the wide variety of practice areas in international and transnational law through presentations by faculty and practitioners. This also includes practical sessions with upper level law students related to navigating law school. 

This course examines the various instruments the legal system has to deal with social problems. It seeks to identify the advantages and disadvantages of each instrument as a means of dealing with social problems and to provide students with an understanding of why one rather than another instrument is chosen. Upon analyzing the various options, the course will then undertake an in depth analysis of the regulatory state. The emphasis will be on institutional analysis, exploring the institutional roles of public and private actors in the regulatory state and the procedural framework within which those various institutional actors operate.

This course introduces you to the modern administrative and regulatory state. You will come to understand both the tremendous power exercised by administrative agencies and the significant constraints (legal and political) under which they operate. You will learn to identify the design features that might make an agency constitutionally problematic, the factors that make one type of decision-making framework more appropriate than another, the prerogatives and limits of agencies in interpreting the statutes they are charged with administering, and agencies’ prerogatives and limits in adjudicating facts and exercising policymaking discretion. You will also learn to identify the factors that affect the availability and timing of judicial review of agency action.

Introduces students to the analytical and rhetorical skills used by lawyers in practice. Students receive training in legal research, planning, legal writing, and oral argument. Throughout this two-semester course, students write, revise, and receive criticism on a number of assignments. The course also examines how economic and technological forces have changed the nature of contemporary law practice. The course meets for two hours each week with the Professor.

Introduces students to the procedures used in litigation and alternative dispute resolution. A variety of materials will be read, including cases, rules, statutes, social science studies and historical analyses. The course will explore various structures American society uses to resolve legal and political conflict, and introduce the basic doctrinal, constitutional and jurisprudential concepts used to resolve disputes.

Takes up topics from the conventional Property course including the law of landlord-tenant, servitudes, nuisance, and takings law. Not only will students learn the basic doctrinal rules; they will also understand them in light of the history of American legal thought and some introductory concepts borrowed from the fields of law and economics and critical race studies.