Western law—like Western religion, Western fashion, Western individualism, and Western education—has been imposed on African people enslavement, colonialism, and imperialism. But the history of African people and their thinking on “law” or rules for social living does not begin with these atrocities. This is the central, initial recognition of “Africana Legal Studies.” This seminar focuses on the indigenous African ways of knowing “law” and governance constructs. It will explore the need for application of an Africana Studies lens to legal scholarship, the tenets of Africana Studies, and the contours of Africana Legal Studies. The course will explore a theoretical framework for how to identify and distill precolonial, pre-enslavement (“pre-Maafa”) ways of knowing law. It will include an examination of how Africana legal frameworks have evolved in the face of Western colonialism, European enslavement, and other externally-imposed social structures and how Western law interrupted and interfered with Africana legal frameworks. From participating in this African-centered exploration of “law,” governance, and persistence, students may derive insights and strategies for addressing the issues of today, legal and beyond. The writing requirement offers students an opportunity to write on a topic of their choice pertaining to Africana legal frameworks.

Learning Objectives:

Students successfully completing this course will be able to (1) identify the Africana Studies conceptual framework, (2) de-center the West in their thinking about “law” and indigenous ways of knowing governance, (3) identify methods for researching and identifying Africana “legal” frameworks, (4) through class readings and discussions, analyze avenues of inquiry surrounding the relationship between Africana “legal” frameworks and other frameworks of governance, and (5) discuss and consider ways that American jurisprudence and statutes interfere(d) and interact(ed) with Africana governance protocols. The primary course evaluation is by the traditional two-draft seminar paper.

Lawyers in every type of practice (corporate, litigation, government, public interest, etc.) routinely deal with problems that require a basic understanding of concepts and methods from economics and statistics. This course provides an introduction to these subjects and their application and relevance to law and legal practice. Topics covered include decision analysis, game theory, probability, and statistics. Grades will be based on a graded problem set and a take-home final examination. No prior background in economics or statistics is required; however, we will regularly use elementary algebra and geometry. Students with strong backgrounds in economics, mathematics, or statistics should consult with the professor before enrolling in the course.

Course Objective and Learning Outcomes: The objective of the course is to enhance students' ability to give sound legal advice and make effective legal arguments by introducing them to selected concepts and methods from economics and statistics that are relevant to numerous areas of law and legal practice. These concepts and methods include: decision trees, expected value, sensitivity analysis, risk aversion, present value; Nash equilibrium, game trees, backward induction, subgame perfection, moral hazard, adverse selection; probability, conditional probability, independence, Bayes' rule; descriptive statistics (including measures of central tendency and variability), hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, statistical significance, type I and type II errors, and regression analysis.

By the end of the course, I expect students to have a good understanding of these concepts and methods and to be able demonstrate a basic proficiency in applying them to: (i) unpack complex decisions of the kind that lawyers and their clients often encounter in litigation and transactions; (ii) analyze situations involving strategic interactions (i.e., situations where the outcome depends on the strategies and actions of multiple parties) of the kind that lawyers and their clients often encounter in litigation and transactions; and (iii) engage in probabilistic and statistical reasoning and evaluate probabilistic and statistical evidence of the kind that courts and lawyers often encounter in litigation.

This seminar explores legal, ethical, and social issues raised by developments in health, medicine, and the biological sciences at the U.S. and global levels. It first provides an overview of the normative theories that inform the development of the field of bioethics, as well as connects these theories to legal and social dynamics that continue to shape discussions of equity and justice. It then considers a spectrum of priority topics and themes, through both a theoretical and practical lens, such as end-of-life issues, reproductive rights, human subjects research, access to medicines, and vaccines. Students will develop an in-depth perspective on how law and ethics overlap and shape the discourse on these priority topics. This seminar will be especially informative for students looking to obtain a practical view into how the law interacts with ethical dilemmas in health, medicine, and science.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the normative theories that inform the development of the field of bioethics and the role that the law has played in this evolution
• Describe practical examples of legal and ethical dilemmas that arise across multi-disciplinary topics in health, medicine, and the biological sciences
• Articulate the ethical arguments on often opposing sides of priority bioethical issues, understanding the varied levels of nuance involved
• Analyze the role of legal institutions and law and in creating a framework to address the ethical, legal, and social issues that arise in the fields of health, medicine, and the biological sciences

This seminar explores legal, ethical, and social issues raised by developments in health, medicine, and the biological sciences at the U.S. and global levels. It first provides an overview of the normative theories that inform the development of the field of bioethics, as well as connects these theories to legal and social dynamics that continue to shape discussions of equity and justice, including on the global stage. It then uses several in-class simulations to explore the practical challenges—both legal and ethical—that arise for counsel practicing in this field. The simulations are designed for students to “step into the shoes,” as it were, of different actors, from in-house counsel at an academic medical center to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, to gain practical insight into real-world situations. This seminar will be especially informative for students looking to obtain a practical view into how the law interacts with ethical dilemmas in health, medicine, science, and politics.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the normative theories that inform the development of the field of bioethics and the role that the law has played in this evolution
• Describe practical examples of legal and ethical dilemmas that arise across multi-disciplinary topics in health, medicine, and the biological sciences
• Articulate the ethical arguments on often opposing sides of priority bioethical issues, understanding the varied levels of nuance involved
• Analyze the role of legal institutions and law and in creating a framework to address the ethical, legal, and social issues that arise in the fields of health, medicine, and the biological sciences

This course covers basic business concepts that are useful across many areas of legal practice. First, it introduces financial accounting, with a focus on understanding and using financial statements. Second, it deals with core financial concepts, such as the time value of money, risk versus return, and methods for valuing assets. Third, the course discusses the basic categories of financial instruments: debt, equity, and derivatives. Although these topics all inevitably involve numbers, mathematical complexity is kept to a minimum. Much of the reading consists of excerpts from case law, which illustrate business concepts and their relation to legal practice.

Over the last 200 years, free market capitalism has proven itself as an unmatched engine for driving economic growth in the United States and around the world, resulting in unparalleled innovation, improving standards of living, and vastly lengthening the average life span. Yet big problems persist, including uneven economic opportunities, degradation of natural resources, and continuation of corporate scandals. Considering these problems as pressures on democratic capitalism, the course will evaluate the relationship between business and society. The course will focus on potential approaches to managing the tensions and trade-offs that present themselves when both economic vitality (growth, innovation) and system stability (fairness, sustainability, societal needs met) are desired outcomes.

Learning Objectives:
This course will explore potential approaches to reconciling the benefits of free market capitalism with the values and expectations of a democratic society. This seminar will raise important questions and highlight issues that are relevant to a number of potential law graduate career paths including that of in-house counsel, external counsel, senior management team member, corporate board member, and policymaker & staff. To that end, students taking the course will develop an understanding of:

• The evolution of views on the purpose of business in society (assumptions and realities of corporate governance)
• The current problems putting pressure on democratic capitalism (externalities, regulation or lack thereof)
• Emerging theories to address the inherent tensions in the system (new structures, governance priorities, industry self-regulation)
• Possible roles one can play in addressing the shortcomings of democratic capitalism

This simulation course will provide students with the fundamentals of organizing, managing, and executing an effective campaign for political office, within a bipartisan context grounded in ethical public service. Each enrolled student must identify a local, state, or federal public office that they plan to run for (plans to run for this office can be tentative and prospective). Students will then learn campaign basics, message development and delivery, fundraising strategies, communication and media strategies, applicable campaign finance and election laws, and debate preparation. Students will prepare and give “stump” speeches and participate in a simulated candidate forum. Students will also develop policy platforms and learn how to assess and respond to the needs of a constituency and the public.

In a project-based practicum course, students participate in a weekly seminar and work on a project under the supervision of their professors. This project-based practicum course will expose students to the varied uses of computer technologies in the practice of law, with an emphasis on technologies that enhance access to justice and make legal services more affordable for individuals of limited means. Students will participate in a two hour/week seminar and carry out 10 hours/week of project work under the direction of the course professors.

SEMINAR: The seminar portion of the class is devoted to two topics: the access to justice crisis and the role of digital tools in bridging it. Among the issues we will discuss throughout the semester are: the extent of the justice gap, the economic and regulatory barriers to access, and the problem of resource constraints. We will also discuss how legal technologies are altering the landscape for persons of limited means and empowering disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and communities. The second topic is learning to design and develop legal expert systems. To create our systems, we use a software platform that does not require a coding background.

PROJECT WORK: Students will work in small teams for a legal service organization to develop a platform, application, or automated system that increases access to justice and/or improves the effectiveness of legal representation. These organizations include civil rights organizations, direct service providers, and other public interest organizations. The course culminates in a design competition: The Georgetown Iron Tech Lawyer Competition. Along the way, students learn systems logic, teamwork, and visual literacy skills. By the end of the semester, each team will have built a functional app intended for adoption by the participating legal services organization to put into use for its clients.

No programming background is required. Students are not required to have coding experience and will not be expected to learn to write software.

Students are encouraged to check out these apps created by Georgetown Law students in earlier semesters and in use at various organizations. They are also encouraged to contact Professor Rostain at (tr238@law.georgetown.edu) with questions.

This is a Week One, project-based simulation course.

Communication is at the heart of law. As lawyers, we capture and share our work through briefs, memos, reports, legislation, contracts, presentations, articles, and email.

The core idea driving this course is that lawyers can have a bigger impact if they create written work that more people can understand.

This class will help you do that through the lens of communication design. Legal writing is often opaque, dense, and intimidating. Communication design is the theory and craft of transforming this into something that is approachable, actionable, and empowering.

Over four fast-paced, intense days, you will:

• Learn about the principles of communication design
• Practice evaluating design and giving feedback
• Redesign a complex document into something understandable using the document design and plain language.

We include several small-but-meaningful in-class challenges to illustrate key concepts.

The class culminates with an overarching communication design project. Some examples of this final project may include re-designing:

• The Supreme Court opinion
• A legal contract
• The sign-up process for a government benefit.

By the end of the course, you will share your work with the class for shared feedback.

This class provides an introduction to computer programming for law students. Students will learn to code in Python, a language which is both easy to learn and powerful. There are no prerequisites, and students without training in computer science or engineering should be able successfully to complete the class.

The course is based on the premise that computer programming has become a vital skill for non-technical professionals generally and for future lawyers and policymakers specifically. Lawyers-- irrespective of specialty or type of practice--organize, evaluate, and manipulate large sets of text-based data (e.g. cases, statutes, regulations, contracts, etc.) Additionally, lawyers are increasingly asked to deal with quantitative data and complex databases. Very simple programming techniques can expedite and simplify these tasks, yet these programming techniques tend to be poorly understood in legal practice and nearly absent in legal education.

In this class, students will gain proficiency in various programming-related skills. Recognizing that artificial intelligence (AI) is changing what it means to program, the course will instill both fundamental programming knowledge and, once basics are established, techniques for using AI to solve complex problems. The course is designed to give students the skills and understanding necessary to create time-saving programs amid a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

The course will also feature discussions around the social and ethical implications of computer programming, with a focus on privacy, intellectual property, consumer protection, equity, and antidiscrimination.

This class will consist of weekly lectures, consisting of both lectures and guided group and independent activities. There will also be weekly labs, in which students will go over issues they might be having with the problem set and work in small groups with their TA.

Students will be required to complete problem sets between class meetings. To obtain a passing grade, students must complete problem sets, participate in class sessions, and demonstrate that they have learned the assigned skills.

At the completion of this class, students should be able to write simple to moderately complex computer programs that can automate text-handling and data-handling tasks that would be difficult or impossible to perform without programming skill. Students will also gain a solid foundation of programming knowledge and skills they can build upon to progress toward mastering more advanced programming techniques and other programming languages.

This class builds on Computer Programming for Lawyers: An Introduction by introducing students to intermediate-level concepts of computer programming and computer science relevant to legal practice. The students in this course will serve as the Teaching Assistants for the introductory course, which will always be taught concurrently. In addition, students in this course will complete at least one substantial programming term project.

Enrollment in this course is by prior permission of the Professor only. All students must have prior computer programming experience. Students who have successfully completed the introductory course meet this requirement. Other students must demonstrate comparable prior experience, but this experience need not be formal training or professional experience. Students need not possess a technical degree, and self-taught programmers are welcome.

The course is based on the premise that computer programming has become a vital skill for non-technical professionals generally and for future lawyers and policymakers specifically. Lawyers, irrespective of specialty or type of practice, organize, evaluate, and manipulate large sets of text-based data (e.g. cases, statutes, regulations, contracts, etc.) Increasingly, lawyers are asked to deal with quantitative data and complex databases. Programming techniques can expedite and simplify these tasks, yet these programming techniques tend to be poorly understood in legal practice and nearly absent in legal education. In this class, students will gain proficiency in various programming-related skills.

A secondary goal for the class is to introduce students to computer programming and computer scientific concepts they might encounter in the substantive practice of law. Students might discuss, for example, how programming concepts illuminate and influence current debates in privacy, intellectual property, consumer protection, antidiscrimination, antitrust, litigation and criminal procedure.

This is a hands-on class. Each student will spend most class sessions using his or her own computers, reading, writing, and debugging code. Every student must bring to every class a computer, on which free software will be provided to be installed.

This course introduces students to the field of law and economics. Law and economics is the application of tools from microeconomics to perform positive and normative analysis of the law and the legal system. We will focus on five core legal subjects: torts, contracts, property, criminal law, and legal procedure. No prior background in economics is required.

This seminar is intended to help students become better consumers of empirical work in the law and social sciences. By the end of the semester, students should: (1) understand the basics of some common empirical methodologies; (2) see how empirical work can inform public policy; and (3) have a better sense of the limits and problems inherent in empirical work.
 

Each week, we will cover one or more policy-relevant empirical papers that students will be expected to read. Students will submit a 1-2 page analysis of an assigned paper before class. Each paper will introduce students to a particular empirical methodology, or show how it might be applied in a particular policy setting.
 

Topics will be drawn from a variety of areas, including criminal law, education, health, development, and labor. For example, we might study questions like: what is the impact of education on earnings? How do 401(k) plans affect people’s savings decisions? How does a change in the minimum wage affect labor supply? Do minimum drinking ages reduce drunken driving deaths? What are the benefits and limits of randomized controlled trials?
 

Toward the end of the semester, students will be asked to write an 10-12 page paper that analyzes in detail an empirical paper of their own choosing. If there is time, students will be asked to present their analysis to the class in a final presentation.
 

Grades will be based on the short 1-2 page analyses, the 10-12 page final paper and presentation, and classroom participation.

Please see the Federal Legislation Clinic website for more detailed information about the program.

For registration-specific supplemental materials, please see the Federal Legislation Clinic PDF.

For information about clinic registration, please see the Clinic Registration Handbook.

This course will examine traditional accounting topics with emphasis on their practical application to the practice of law. It will do so based on the development of an understanding of corporate financial statements and the underlying accounting concepts used in preparing those statements and related accounting records. Issues will be considered against the backdrop of current SEC and professional requirements. Particular attention will be paid to current issues and enforcement trends raised by the SEC and to the latest pronouncements of the FASB, AICPA and SEC. Selected public filings will be analyzed to give students additional insights on the actual quality of reported earnings and financial condition of the reporting company, and the apparent effect of various alternative accounting methods.

Learning objectives:

Upon completion of this course, you will have a fundamental understanding of the basic architecture of financial reporting and a working knowledge of the federal regulatory framework for public companies, as administered primarily by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. You will learn the history of this framework, its primary goals, and its basic requirements. You will see how basic principles of administrative law regulate the financial reporting of public companies. You will become familiar with the structure of a Balance Sheet and Income Statement and the essentials of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

Three decades after the end of the Cold War, authoritarianism remains a major political force across the world.  This seminar considers the relationship between authoritarianism and law.  It mixes theoretical works with historical and contemporary case studies, drawing on insights from social science, political philosophy, and law.  The course will address: the roles of constitutions, courts, lawyers, and legal activists in authoritarian societies; the growing use of digital technologies by autocratic governments; authoritarianism’s challenges to American and international law; and the relationship between law and democratic erosion.  This course is intended to be inviting to all students, and does not assume any specific knowledge of foreign legal systems.   

The Law and Economics Workshop is a research workshop. In a majority of the class sessions, outside speakers (typically faculty members from other institutions) will present their current work in the field of law and economics. The specific topics considered will vary depending on the interests of the speakers, but the general focus will be the application of economic concepts and tools to legal and regulatory issues. Other class sessions will focus on selected basic topics in law and economics, including methodology commonly used in law and economics scholarship. Students are responsible for preparing brief weekly memoranda that discuss and question the presented papers.

Course Objective and Learning Outcomes: The objective of the course is to expose you to current research in the field of law and economics in order to enhance your ability to: (i) employ economic and statistical analysis and reasoning to make effective legal and policy arguments; (ii) comprehend technical economic and statistical analysis and interact with economic and statistical experts; and (iii) analyze, critique, and engage in academic legal writing.

This seminar will examine legal issues arising at the intersection of law and neuroscience.  Advances in neuroscience have led to increased understanding of the brain and its relationship with issues such as behavior, decision-making, reasoning, memory, and emotions. The interdisciplinary field of law and neuroscience (sometimes referred to as “neurolaw”) has been exploring the implications of the science for law and public policy.  This seminar will examine cutting-edge issues and proposals currently facing courts, lawyers, legislators, administrative agencies, and other policymakers.  The issues explored will likely include assessments of criminal responsibility, insanity and capacity, juveniles, proving pain and other injuries, lie detection, memory, and practical issues in court, among others.  No prior background in science is necessary or will be assumed.​

This seminar explores the interaction between law and rhetoric.  It begins by examining a variety of rhetorical methods or perspectives for evaluating how language persuades legal audiences.  Weekly assignments include posting a short response to the reading.  Students will also be assigned to working groups that present on and lead discussion of the assigned reading for one class during the semester.  To satisfy the writing requirement, students will select one or more rhetorical perspectives to analyze and evaluate a legal artifact—judicial opinion, trial or appellate brief, oral argument transcript, etc.—of their choice. Students should leave this course with a broader understanding of how language functions in the law, a better appreciation for its power, and the ethical implications for lawyers in their role as advocates. 

Robots, artificial intelligence, and autonomous systems have long been the realm of science fiction, but they are increasingly a part of contemporary life as well. Computers fly airplanes, write compelling text, play Jeopardy, drive cars, trade stocks, and fight in wars. Autonomous systems are no longer a thing of the future, but a fact of modern life, and Moore’s Law suggests that these changes will increase not incrementally, but exponentially. This course will examine whether or when we need a Law of Robots to regulate these autonomous agents, or where it is more appropriate to reason by analogy and regulate these systems by existing statute, regulation, or common law. The course will examine emerging issues across the spectrum of tort law, property law, copyright law, the laws of war, laws of agency, and criminal law. The class will not be a survey of existing law, but instead an examination of how to regulate emerging issues in law – how to extrapolate and reason by analogy, in robotics and beyond. Paper required.

In this seminar, we use children’s literature and participatory methodology to explore the relationships between law and literacy simultaneously as we bring to the surface fundamental principles of law, justice, and democracy. We do this using a dynamic, experiential approach, with examples from children’s literature, children’s writing, and learner-centered teaching methodology and a combination of readings, interactive seminars, and placements involving weekly reading with emergent readers.  We examine learning theories and practices regarding emergent literacy and discuss their legal, educational, and social implications. Readings are drawn from law, educational theory and practice, and children’s literature. We explore the variety of learning approaches that now inform literacy instruction in America. Legal implications to be considered include restrictions on literacy due to historical oppression and educational disadvantage, equal protection and diversity, freedom of speech, school finance, discipline, gender, and English as a second language.  We also focus on the relationship between interactive, experiential learning, civic skills, and the democratic process. 

Students are required to spend at least one hour per week working with an emergent reader. The placement may be a literacy program at a local school or center (e.g., the Early Learning Center at Georgetown Law), or some other arrangement of a participant’s choice, approved by the instructors (e.g., siblings, relatives, or parents/grandparents). The reading sessions may be conducted in person or online. Writing requirements include both a monthly 5-page journal and a short paper. The paper may be a conventional paper or, the more frequent choice, the writing of a children’s book that integrates legal and educational issues and which is accompanied by a short analytical essay describing the book’s connections between literacy and law. Please contact the professors for more information.

This seminar is about the phenomena of national and cultural identity formation within states and non-state groups (ethnic, racial, regional, religious, cultural, tribal) and the roles played by law and culture in defining and distributing membership in a collective or “national” community. The course material will provide a foundation in political theories of nationalism and will focus on two different forms of contemporary nationalism: the rise of a new American and predominantly white nationalism (since the 2016 election) and a non-US example of a sovereignty or self-determination movement (such as the Catalan independence movement in Spain). Along the way we will discuss additional and alternative forms of belonging and exclusion, such as monuments and memory, statelessness and diaspora, and postcolonial and cosmopolitan forms of citizenship. This interdisciplinary and comparative seminar is geared toward better understanding how law and culture are used to divide and unify diverse populations, and exploring how democratic, heterogeneous states and communities might find common purpose.

Students in the Policy Clinic provide services to make democracy work several policy themes. Recent projects include:

• Community equity – Combat gentrification and displacement in low-income communities of color, develop a community support fund, develop a community resilience hub.
• Health and food – Organize a consortium to improve working conditions in university food supply chains, expand access to oral health services, reinvent a better food chain for institutions (universities, hospitals, schools, and shelters), analyze social determinants of health (housing, food security, etc.) for state health officials.
• Labor and human rights – Organize a consortium to improve working conditions in university food supply chains (same as health above), protect worker rights in global supply chains for the FIFA World Cup and other mega-sporting events.
• Trade and climate – Develop mutually supporting climate and trade policies, develop options for international cooperation on climate policies through “climate clubs,” recommend strategies to decarbonize steel production without violating WTO rules, and identify strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions while preserving manufacturing jobs.

Please see the Policy Clinic website for more detailed information about the program.

Learning outcomes for this clinic: Students are supervised, evaluated and graded on three skill sets, each of which has specific evaluation criteria in the Policy Clinic Operations Guide.

1. Management and professionalism – includes “managing up” with supervision meetings, initiating self-evaluation, managing effort and deadlines, collaborating, and expectations in a professional culture.
2. Analysis and strategy – covers legal, policy and strategic analysis.  It includes identifying issues that require analysis, learning the context efficiently, using diverse sources to avoid bias, explaining analytic methods, using a logical framework, and drawing conclusions that meet client needs.
3. Communication, writing and speaking – includes organizing documents and presentations, meeting audience needs for context and decision-making, relating analysis through stories and examples, presenting visual information, and editing for plain language, clarity, and English style.

Emblematic of the ongoing tensions between America's expansive democratic promises and its enduring racial realities, Washington often has served as a national battleground for contentious issues, including slavery, segregation, civil rights, the drug war, and gentrification. But D.C. is more than just a seat of government. The city has a rich history of local activism as Washingtonians of all races have struggled to make their voices heard in an undemocratic city where residents lack full political rights.

Tracing D.C.'s massive transformations—from a sparsely inhabited plantation society into a diverse metropolis, from a center of the slave trade to the nation's first black-majority city, from "Chocolate City" to "Latte City"—the course offers students an opportunity to experience the city in which they have decided to attend law school at a deep and meaningful level. The historical narrative explored during the course is peppered with unforgettable characters, a history of deep racial division, but also hope, resilience, and interracial cooperation.

Students will develop a critical legal framework for understanding the role of law in shaping the racialized democracy of America. They will do so by engaging law cases touching on  segregation, disenfranchisement, urban renewal, and the drug war—all ways in which the law was weaponized to disproportionately impact Black people in Washington, D.C. 

Learning Objectives:

• Gain familiarity with the geography, history, and current issues defining city politics, economy, and culture
• Acquire analytical tools to frame and understand the dynamics of race, politics, and power in the nation’s capital

This course explores the ways in which American law is implicated in histories of racialized differentiation, subordination, expropriation, and exploitation.  Beginning with histories of colonial settlerism, native dispossession, and black bondage, this course will explore the distinctly racial character of capital accumulation, in the United States and now globally. We continue though the revolutions of emancipation, racial segregation, and selective migration, to understand the racialized patterns of economic inequality rooted in our present. Though the readings assigned in this course have been selected to provide students with a richly historical framework for understanding contemporary crises, students are encouraged to introduce questions that concern them most immediately. Students are also encouraged to think critically across intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

There are no prerequisites for this class, but students should be prepared to engage with variety of materials, not limited to legal cases or statutes. Students will be introduced to foundational essays in the critical legal tradition, as well as emerging interdisciplinary scholarship in postcolonial studies, critical indigenous studies, black radicalism, ethnic / American studies, and feminist / queer studies.

Students will be expected to draft short weekly reflections, to participate in leading our seminar discussion at least once during the semester, and to submit a final paper on a topic of their own choosing.

This interdisciplinary seminar will examine theories of justice and the relationship between law and morality in light of religious and theological visions of the good life and accounts of order. Materials and discussions will probe questions such as: What are the moral values underlying the law? How does the law achieve justice or fall short of this goal? How can moral judgments be brought to bear, if at all, in modern, secular legal institutions and in the formation of public policies?

Throughout the class we will have opportunities to consider how morality and ideas of justice shape, and are shaped by, contemporary legal problems such as: the legal regulation of sexual activity and marriage, controversies regarding federally mandated health insurance, abortion, euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, immigration, regulation of financial institutions, and/or other issues which emerge as topics of particular student interest.

Particular attention will be paid to understanding methods for dialogue across differing thought systems and disciplines and to developing the skills for communication across claims that would otherwise tend to generate religious and political polarization.

This seminar requires a series of short reflection and reaction papers which aim to facilitate thoughtful and active student participation in seminar discussions throughout the course. This course does not satisfy the JD Upper Level Writing Requirement.

Substantive Goals: This interdisciplinary seminar will examine theories of justice and the relationship between law and morality in light of religious and theological visions of the good life and accounts of order. Materials and discussions will probe questions such as: What are the moral values underlying the law? How does the law achieve justice or fall short of this goal? How can moral judgments be brought to bear, if at all, in modern, secular legal institutions and in the formation of public policies?  Throughout the class we will have opportunities to consider how morality and ideas of justice shape, and are shaped by, contemporary legal problems. 

Recent topics have included: arguments for and against exemptions, public health and religious freedom amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, migration, environmental justice, and other issues which emerge according to student interest.

This course does not satisfy the JD Upper-Level Writing Requirement.

Skills-oriented goals: 

1. This seminar requires a series of short reflection and reaction papers which provide an opportunity for students to hone the art of brief writing for a professional setting.  For J.D. and L.L.M. students, the final paper is not a research project, but a short engagement (6-8 pages) with a particular set of issues arising from across the range of topics covered in the course.
2. Reflection papers also aid in preparation for thoughtful student participation in seminar discussions throughout the course, and the further opportunity to hone skills in speaking fluently and comfortably, even about difficult or contentious questions.
3. Seminar discussions will not shy away from sensitive, difficult, or even polarizing cultural and religious questions.  Frequent breakout groups and exercises in communication aim to help students hone cognitive empathy, a capacity to listen to understand (rather than simply to debate), and agile skills for dialogue even across claims that would otherwise tend to generate religious and political polarization.

Autonomous vehicles are roiling industries as diverse as retail, food delivery, trucking, and personal transportation. Although there is a rising consensus that autonomous, networked cars could save tens of thousands of lives, there is a similar consensus that they also will create tens of thousands of accidents that human drivers would not. Although the technology for autonomous vehicles is already on the roads, the law, ethics, and policy governing these machines is late evolving. This course will examine alternatives for regulating autonomous vehicles, including topics such as which parties should bear responsibility for the actions of autonomous vehicles, how theories of responsibility will change over time, as well as the appropriate modes and agencies of regulation. Paper required.

In this course, students will explore the relationship between open source software (OSS) and the law. OSS refers to a type of software whose source code is made publicly available, allowing anyone to view, use, modify, and distribute the software freely. Open source software makes up our digital infrastructure that we all use today across various industries, from web development and operating systems to AI and machine learning. Open source software is increasingly used to develop popular AI applications like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney.

This accessibility and openness encourage collaboration, innovation, and transparency, but also bring to the fore different harms that interact with the law. Indeed, many scholars, regulators, and entrepreneurs are concerned about how the open source nature and rapid adoption of such collaborative models interacts with harms such as discrimination, misinformation, bias and more. As the legal profession grapples with the increased role of OSS, students should be familiar with questions of legal compliance, intellectual property, contract and liability issues, data privacy and security, and ethical considerations as they relate to OSS.

This is a student-initiated seminar, which is student-led and supervised by a faculty member. This seminar is organized by Esther Tetruashvily and Ashwin Ramaswami and supervised by Professor Paul Ohm.

Developments in neuroscience and the psychological study of cognition and emotion are transforming our understanding of the mind. These developments have large implications for law and lawyering. They challenge some of civil and criminal law's central premises - about people's rationality, free choice, and consistency over time. This course will examine some of these challenges, and it will weigh the law’s possible responses. Legal topics to be explored will include health and safety regulation, the idea of the reasonable person, intent and culpability, mental disability, and the roles of revenge, regret, and other motives in civil and criminal justice. Other themes, relevant to lawyering and to the management of conflict, will include the psychology of negotiation, the nature of intuition and judgment, and the roles of trust and social norms. The course will also consider the causes and control of violence and extremism, as well as the use of emerging neuroscience technologies for legal and national security purposes.

Week One Teaching Fellows work with faculty to facilitate the first-year Week One simulation courses offered in January. Fellows usually work in teams of two to six fellows for their specific Week One class. More information, including course descriptions, will be available on the Week One website. Teaching Fellows receive 1 pass/fail credit toward their Spring course load.

Teaching Fellows should expect to meet with their faculty for two full-day training sessions, one before the exam period in December, and the second on Saturday, January 4, 2025, to review course topics, goals, simulation structure, and receive training on their role throughout the course. Readings will be assigned.

Fellows then attend all of the class sessions during Week One and assist in facilitating discussion and small-group work amongst the students enrolled in the course. For example, fellows may moot students as they prepare for a mock oral argument or client presentation, or play the witness in a key witness interview. Fellows also meet and consult regularly with faculty during the course to discuss student progress and course logistics. They should expect to participate in a daily debriefing for approximately 15-30 minutes after each class.

At the conclusion of Week One, all fellows must complete a 6-8 page reaction paper assessing how the course worked, overall student experience, and how the course could be improved (e.g., legal issues, factual issues, structure of exercise).

This course focuses on women and leadership. The class is not about organizational or systemic change, but is solely focused on individual skill building. The class is peer-driven and students will work in teams and receive feedback from peers on papers and oral exercises. Students will also reflect both individually and with the group on what you expect from your career and develop strategies for achieving those goals.  Topics include:  self-advocacy, career pathing, navigating organizational politics, and networking. There will be distinguished guest speakers, who will share their experiences. perspectives, and advice. These conversations will be supplemented with cases and readings about women leaders, as well as a review of the current state of empirical evidence about the status of women as leaders. 

Course Goals/Student Learning Outcomes:

• Develop self-advocacy tactics and styles.

• Develop critical and strategic thinking skills.

• Improve communication skills, both oral and written.

• Develop team and collaborative skills.