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Perspective Courses
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Fall Semester
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| Bioethics & the Law |
LAW 655 3 Hours |
| This course examines the interaction of ethics, medicine and law. Topics vary from year to year, but may include: defining death; "the right to die"; doctor-assisted suicide; informed consent; defining life; human reproduction, including abortion, sterilization, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy and genetic screening; and access to advanced technology. The focus is on an examination of the law covering these issues and the relationship of various ethical framework for analyzing these issues to this law. Examination. |
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| International Law |
LAW 481 3 Hours |
| An introduction to public international law. The substantive coverage of the course includes peaceful settlements of disputes, international agreements in international and domestic law, the evolving law of the sea, human rights, and international attempts at controlling the use of armed force. Particular attention is paid to the differences in the evolution and enforcement of rules in decentralized systems. |
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| Law and Religion |
LAW 215 3 Hours |
| The interaction of government and religion has produced and continues to produce some of the most controversial legal issues in our nation's history. This course will study this interaction using history, cases, and other materials, primarily through in-class discussions and role playing. After an historical introduction to the subject, the course will then focus on contemporary Constitutional controversies involving accommodation, establishment, public education, public culture, and religious political speech. The course will be graded using an essay exam. Students will have the option of doing a research paper for one third of their grade. |
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| Race, Racism & American Law |
LAW 667 3 Hours |
| This course explores the way in which law is used both to combat and to legitimate racism in American society. It will trace the relationship between racism and American law from the colonial period to the beginning of the 20th century. It will cover the Houston/Marshall legal strategy to dismantle separate but equal as an equal protection standard, and focus on current racism issues in the contexts of the criminal justice system, voting, education, housing, employment and domestic relations. There will be special attention to the theory of affirmative action and related remedial concepts. Reading will consist of three chapters from Higginbotham's, In the Matter of Color, selected court opinions, Professor Derrick Bell's treatise, Race, Racism and American Law, and selected articles.
Each week of the semester, the last class hour will be devoted to a Race, Racism and the American Law hypothetical. Each hypothetical will highlight the topic discussion for that week through the vehicle of a lawsuit, an administrative hearing, or some other forum where at least two sides will be heard. For that hour, students will be assigned to prepare for the hypothetical. Preparation and presentation for the hypotheticals will count for 1/3 of the course grade. A paper for the course will count the other 2/3 of the grade. |
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Spring Semester
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| American Legal History |
LAW 509 3 Hours |
| We will examine issues and themes of American law from the 18th Century to the present. We will look at the development of some areas of "traditionally" substantive law, such as Torts and Contracts, as well as other areas of substantive law, such as Slavery and Labor. We will explore the replationship between law and society in a number of areas, including race and gender, with attention to how law shapes society and how society shapes law. We will also consider the meaning of American law in the context of American democracy. The course will have a final examination and students may have a written assignment at the professor's discretion. |
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| Comparative Law |
LAW 420 3 Hours |
| The Comparative Law course in Spring semester 2006, which bears the working subtitle of “Comparative Civilizations and Their Legal Systems,” will seek to develop a basic familiarity with other legal systems in the world by exploring, in historical, jurisprudential and comparative perspective, the civilizations and legal traditions to which these legal systems belong. Such a basic familiarity is of great value to U.S. lawyers, both in their roles as legal practitioners and in their roles as leaders in society. Not only does such a familiarity help produce a breadth of outlook and habits of mind that enhance the quality of lawyers’ work in general in both types of roles; in addition to this “liberalizing” effect, such familiarity is also central to helping lawyers in both types of roles meet the mounting challenges posed by growing U.S. involvement in an increasingly interdependent world, including challenges posed, for example, by expanding economic relations with other countries, expanding immigration from countries with radically different cultures, and expanding national security concerns.
With these considerations in mind, the Comparative Law course in Spring semester 2006 will seek to cover most of the following topics (with a special emphasis, within the list, on Islamic civilization and the Islamic legal tradition): (1) Orienting perspectives (including an overview of legal systems in the world today and their classification within different civilizations and legal traditions); (2) Western civilization and the Western legal tradition (including a comparison of the civil law, common law, and (possibly) socialist law subtraditions); (3) Varying perspectives in broadening out to non-Western civilizations and their legal traditions--the “end of history,” a “clash of civilizations,” or . . .? (4) Islamic civilization and the Islamic legal tradition; (5) Jewish civilization and the Jewish legal tradition; (6) Hindu civilization and the Hindu legal tradition; (7) Chinese civilization and the Chinese legal tradition; (8) Japanese civilization and the Japanese legal tradition; (9) Customary legal traditions of indigenous peoples (including those in Africa, Asia and Latin America); (10) Concluding perspectives.
The course is graded. It is planned to administer a final take-home examination, the logixtics of which will be determined in consultation with the class. Members of the class may also be asked to make one or more class presentations based on the material assigned (in part, this depends on the number of students enrolled). |
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| Conflict of Laws |
LAW 422 3 Hours |
| This course surveys a topic that sometimes gives state or federal court litigators an edge in controversies (1) involving parties from different states; (2) those based on transactions occuring at least partly outside the forum state; and (3) those at issue in federal court but involving state law claims.
We look first at traditional and modern approaches taken by the 50 states to this question: on any given issue, should the forum state apply its own substantive law or that of another state? We then look at the general obligation of both federal and state courts to adhere to the judgments reached by other courts. We next examine special choice of law and recognition problems raised by divorce, child custody, and decedents' estates litigation. And we conclude with a fuller examination of the Erie Railroad Co. decision and its implications for choice of law when state law claims are heard in federal courts.
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| Fundamental Perspectives on Law |
LAW 490 3 Hours |
| This general, graded course will explore three types of fundamental perspectives on Western law and Western legal systems--the perspective of legal history, the perspective of jurisprudence, and the perspective of comparative law. It will do so by weaving these three fundamental perspectives together into a single integrated narrative that traces the development of law and legal institutions, and jurisprudential ideas about law and legal institutions, from the ancient Greeks until modern times, while making appropriate comparisons along the way. After briefly introducing the areas of legal history, jurisprudence and comparative law, the course in Fall 2006 will seek to cover all or most of the following topics: (1) ancient Greece and the Greek philosophical tradition; (2) ancient Rome and the Roman legal tradition; (3) ancient Israel and the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition (i.e. the Jewish religious tradition and the Christian religious tradition); (4) early medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic tradition and the German folklaw tradition; (5) later medieval and premodern Europe, the reworking/synthesis of preexisting traditions, and the emergence of the civil law and common law legal traditions; (6) earlier modern European civilization and the origin of the liberal-democratic tradition; (7) modern Western civilization in the nineteenth century, and the development of the liberal-democratic tradition; (8) law and legal systems in liberal-democratic societies during the later modern and postmodern era; (9) concluding perspectives: characteristics of the Western legal tradition; the end of history or the clash of civilizations? It is planned to administer a take-home examination, the logistics of which will be determined in consultation with members of the class. Open to 2L and 3L students. |
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| Jurisprudence |
LAW 492 3 Hours |
| An overview of the major concerns of legal theory, the validity of law and the legitimacy of legal systems, and the relative merits of hierarchical legal structures as opposed to decentralized, customary systems.The topics that are usually covered include: natural law, positivism, American and Scandinavian realism, Marxism, and the historical and anthropological schools of jurisprudence. Second-year students only. |
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| Law, Genetics & Neuroscience |
LAW 308 3 Hours |
| The course will explore the four major areas in which law and genetics now intersect: (1) prediction, the ability to anticipate or forecast human disease and behavior based on powerful new techniques in neuroimaging; (2) litigation, which includes DNA testing, lie detecting, evaluating memory, and so on; (3) confidentiality and privacy, which includes but is not limited to the use of genetic data by insurers and others; and (4) patents–specifically, patenting biological findings related to genetic materials. Other topics that will be reached include reproductive technologies and behavioral genetics. |
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Summer Semester
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| Law & Economics |
LAW 498 3 Hours |
| This course explores current issues in the interplay between law and economics. For example, who "owns" wildlife, natural resources, pollution, DNA, body parts, fetuses, art, trademarks, discoveries and ideas? Are contract, tort and criminal law principles efficient? Should government regulate sports leagues, banking, cable t.v., and the professions? No economics background required. |
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