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Students
who are interested in registering for upper-class courses but who
have not completed all first-year required courses must consult with
the vice dean for academic affairs or the professor offering the
specific upper-class course.
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Accounting for Lawyers
The basics of accounting including Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and the governmental, quasi-governmental, and private regulatory bodies that are their source.
This course will examine the conventions, techniques, and limitations of financial accounting, including the accounting process, cash and accrual accounting, construction of the basic financial statements (the balance sheet, income statement, statement of retained earnings, and statement of cash flows), and their use by creditors, regulators, and others. No accountants or students who have taken an undergraduate or graduate course in accounting may register.
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Administrative Law
An introduction to the law controlling how administrative agencies work. Such agencies have become extremely important; much law is made by agencies using rulemaking authority, or is implemented by agencies acting in a judicial capacity. The advent of administrative agencies raises difficult constitutional and institutional issues. How can we ensure that agencies are responsible to the elected branches and, through them, to the people? To what extent is the creation of administrative agencies a proper response by legislatures to tough public policy issues? How can individuals be protected from arbitrary treatment by agencies? When is an individual entitled to a hearing before harmful administrative agency action? How should administrative agency procedures be structured to take advantage of agency expertise without shutting out interested parties? How can agency bureaucracies be prevented from assuming an overly powerful role in decision making? To what extent should the president be able to control administrative agency action? How stringently ought the courts review administrative agency action? Who ought to be able to challenge administrative agency action in the courts, and when? All of these issues are addressed.
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Administrative Law Practice
This skills course provides upper-level students an opportunity to learn administrative law while working on cases for clients who are appealing the denial of Social Security benefits or special education services. Students will gain an understanding of general administrative law principles with an in-depth examination of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Social Security Act. Depending on the status of the cases, students will have an opportunity to develop skills in interviewing, counseling, case theory development, fact investigation, brief writing, and trial advocacy. The course includes 2 credits hours of classroom instruction and 1 credit hour of individual/team consultation each week.
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Admiralty Law
Study of admiralty jurisdiction of the federal courts and of selected topics in maritime law, including maritime torts, piracy, marine pollution, maintenance and cure, general average, salvage, maritime liens, carriage of goods by sea, charter parties, and limitation of liability.
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Advanced Antitrust
This class will explore cutting-edge issues in antitrust law today. It will cover topics including the smartphone patent wars, patent trolls, sports, pharmaceuticals, innovation, standards, climate change, and Google.
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Advanced Civil Procedure
This problem-based advanced course covers select topics addressed in the first-year civil procedure course in greater depth and also covers select topics that may not be covered in the first-year course. Range of topics includes pretrial procedures, jury trials, motions, verdicts and judgments, appealability and review, and alternative dispute resolution.
Prerequisite: Civil Procedure.
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Advanced Contracts
This course continues the exploration of essential contractual and commercial rules and concepts introduced in first-year Contracts. It focuses primarily on the law of sales under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, including consideration of contract formation, the parole evidence rule, statute of frauds, warranties, performance, and remedies. The work in this course will involve close and sustained attention to the statutory language of Article 2. In addition, throughout our consideration of Article 2, we will examine how this modern statute alters (or maintains) the established rules of common law contracts. Advanced Contracts is thus relevant not only to those students with a special interest in commercial law, but to any student who wishes to reinforce and deepen his or her understanding of the foundational concepts, principles, and critical rules of general contract law.
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Advanced Contracts: TV Production
This course will provide an introduction to the business side of the television industry, with emphasis on the nonscripted/reality side of the television business. The course will focus on contract drafting in the television industry with respect to production and related agreements, with stress on the underlying rights issues involved, while also learning about appropriate contractual wording and phrasing techniques. Thus, students will continue to develop the skills required for transactional attorneys, while concentrating on the issues required to be addressed to get programming on the air. This will be accomplished by a combination of case law study and contract drafting assignments, along with mock negotiations and related classroom discussion.
Prerequisite: Contracts.
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Advanced Legal Research
This course is designed to simulate how practitioners approach legal research problems. Students will develop effective research skills and an in-depth knowledge of the research tools available in different subject areas. Specifically, this course will expose students to research methods, strategies, and techniques that are employed in practice to effectively and efficiently conduct research of statutes, regulations, cases, legislative materials, model rules, secondary sources, and practitioner materials. The course will also expose students to a wide range of resources that are used to conduct research in specific areas of the law such as federal taxation, intellectual property, commercial law, administrative law, litigation, and transactional practice. Class time will include lectures and discussions and application of legal research concepts through practical exercises. Approximately six out-of-class assignments will expand upon classroom exercises and reflect the types of research tasks that new attorneys face when they enter practice, including, but not limited to, (1) communicating research results orally, (2) drafting memoranda, (3) electronic communications, and (4) correspondence with clients and/or judicial personnel.
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Advanced Legislative Advocacy: A Living Laboratory
Building on the fall introductory course in Legislative Advocacy, students will work as a unified advocacy shop with preselected nonprofit organizations from across New Jersey to help them develop, advocate, and pass public interest legislation through the New Jersey Legislature. As in the fall, our approach will be holistic, encompassing every road of advocacy not only traditional lobbying, but also the media, grassroots organizing, and other innovations rooted in political and interpersonal behavior. Students, together with our partner organizations, will work closely with Senators and Assembly members who become the prime sponsors of legislation developed in the course, as well as with staff, legislative leadership, and other key stakeholders. The course will meet in all-day conferences on four Fridays throughout the semester, with four additional hours scheduled with the instructor based on developments with the selected legislation in the New Jersey Legislature.
Prerequisite: Legislative Advocacy.
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Advanced Trial Advocacy
Open to second-year students, and all third-year students, who have completed Trial Advocacy or who are current or past members of the Student Trial Advocacy Competition Team. This course is designed to build upon skills previously learned. All students are expected to have an understanding of basic trial principles such as refreshing recollection, handling exhibits, and impeaching witnesses. Focus is on developing case theory and strategy applicable to persuasion in the courtroom or boardroom. Basic courtroom technology will be a part of student presentations. Student performances will be videotaped for critique. Final trials may take place in Judge Mellon's Buck County Courtroom.
Prerequisite: Evidence II.
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Advertising Law
Advertising law explores the legal problems raised by advertising, marketing, and branding. The course will cover false advertising law (with particular emphasis on the Lanham Act), aspects of trademark and copyright law, and the law relating to digital marketing practices. We will consider the special issues that arise with green marketing and other socially conscious marketing practices, as well as conflicts between consumer protection and free expression interests. Students will be expected to write short papers, with the best being selected for publication on the RIIPL blog. There will also be an exam.
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Alternative Dispute Resolution
Familiarizes students with a wide range of dispute resolution processes both in theory and in practice. These processes are examined critically, with consideration of their strengths, weaknesses, and appropriate areas of use. Class sessions focus on negotiation, mediation, and arbitration as the primary dispute resolution alternatives to litigation. Heavy emphasis on experiential exercises involving students both in and outside the classroom.
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American Legal History
This course explores the social and cultural meaning of legal texts in American history. It covers topics ranging from 1776 through the 20th century, but focuses on 19th-century themes (e.g., the women's rights movement, the Civil War and Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments, and 19th-century morals regulation, including laws against obscenity and polygamy). A central, though by no means exclusive, organizing frame for the course will be constructions of gender and sexuality in American legal history. Readings will consist of both primary and secondary historical sources.
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Analytics for Lawyers
This course is not a prerequisite for any upper-level course or seminar. Nonetheless, familiarity with its subject matter will support subsequent studies within the existing curriculum, e.g., the law school's offerings in antitrust, debtor-creditor relations, corporate counseling, law and economics, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, public finance, securities regulation, and other courses or seminars with significant business or tax components. Holmes told us that to "do things with law," lawyers must be able to predict how the legal system would respond when presented with our clients' behaviors. Modern law practice and employment involve other sorts of prediction and analysis. This course introduces several of them: we study probability, decision and game theory, accounting, finance, microeconomics, and statistics. There is no final exam. Assignments are based on five projects during the semester.
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Anatomy of a Civil Case
This skills seminar will utilize a semester-long simulation to take the class through all of the practical and strategic aspects of a relatively simple personal injury action. The class will be divided into teams representing the plaintiffs or defendants throughout the semester. In these capacities, students will interview their respective clients; draft a complaint or answer; engage in fact investigation, including an inspection of the scene of the accident; work with experts to develop a theory of the case and produce expert reports; conduct and defend a deposition; argue or defend against a motion for summary judgment; engage in settlement negotiations; and conduct an abbreviated trial.
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Animal Law/Animal Rights: Theory and Practice
This is a seminar-type course in which students discuss animal law/animal rights topics at greater length. Students will be expected to do a major written presentation, such as a pleading, brief, etc., or a significant theoretical project.
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Antitrust
Topics covered include horizontal restraints (price fixing, conspiracy, data dissemination, concerted refusals to deal); monopolization, attempts to monopolize, and oligopoly; problems concerning the relationship of antitrust to patent law; vertical restraints (restricted distribution, tying arrangements, exclusive dealing); mergers (horizontal, vertical, and conglomerate); selected Robinson-Patman Act problems; remedies and enforcement.
Previous study of economics is not a prerequisite.
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Arbitration
Arbitration is growing in complexity and popularity. It is an alternative to court, with rules and case law unique to it. Unlike mediation, it is a binding form of dispute resolution. It is also controversial. Some businesses find its promise of speedy and cost-effective resolution to be a mirage. Certain government agencies, judges, and consumers find it to be an unfair process, while others see it as a viable alternative for businesses seeking to rid themselves of the judicial process altogether. From a theoretical academic perspective, arbitration law continues to be a battle between the application of the statutory language of the Federal Arbitration Act, which Congress passed in 1925 to protect arbitration agreements from judicial hostility, and common law contract interpretation. This course will blend the theoretical and practical teachings of arbitration, focusing primarily on domestic arbitration issues. Topics for discussion will include:
(1) What is the meaning of arbitration?
(2) How do you determine what disputes are arbitrable?
(3) Can arbitration clauses insulate companies from class action liability?
(4) When do the principles of contract common law align and conflict with the FAA?
(5) How do you get into arbitration?(6) How do you pick an arbitrator? (7) When is an arbitrator conflicted out?
(8) What are the procedures and discovery rules unique to arbitration?
(9) How do you get an arbitration award enforced?
The course will include lecture using the Socratic method (but in a supportive way) and also practical exercises.
There are two strongly recommended prerequisites: (1) all students should have taken first-year Contracts; and (2) all students should have a strong predisposition to class participation.
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Asset Management Regulation
Employee benefits issues arise in the context of business acquisitions and divestitures, labor negotiations, health care, family law, and a host of other practices. Knowledge of employee benefits is highly valued by many in private practice and in-house. This course examines employee benefits governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and its subsequent amendments. It will cover defined benefit and defined contribution plans, and employee welfare benefit plans. The course examines the rules on eligibility, participation, vesting, funding, and plan discrimination; it also considers cafeteria plans, flexible spending accounts, and other employee welfare benefits. The course will review portions of the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
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Aviation Law
Aviation Law is a skills development course based upon the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on March 8, 2014. We will create a hypothetical lawsuit with teams alternating between defense counsel and plaintiff counsel. Each student will develop and prepare a written strategic litigation plan and discuss the best way to implement it. We will learn how to draft an appropriate complaint and answer; and we will brief motions and then argue those motions in a mock courtroom setting. Substantive legal issues we will explore include international and domestic aviation law principles, preemption and removal jurisdiction, forum non conveniens, principles of legal liability and recoverable damages, and various other concepts that have unique application in this area of the law. By the end of the course the students will have gained skills on issue spotting, case development, and management, all with the goal of improving their ability to efficiently represent clients in complex litigation of all types. Grades will be based upon demonstration, performance in issue spotting, writing, oral argument, and class participation. There will be no final examination.
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Bankruptcy
Introduction to the state and federal law governing debtor and creditor relations. Reviews state law collection techniques and practices (statutory and judicial liens, writs of garnishment and execution, exemptions), fraudulent conveyance rules, assignments and receiverships. Presents federal law of consumer and business bankruptcy, both liquidation and reorganization.
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Bankruptcy Litigation
A skills course focusing on bankruptcy litigation practice. Course will follow one or more hypothetical adversary proceedings to trial focusing on client interviews, discovery, depositions and document production, expert reports, examining witnesses and cross-examinations, trial binder preparation, and oral argument strategies in the bankruptcy context. The course will also discuss the appeal process and preparation of a record on appeal. There will not be an exam. Students will be graded on class participation and class projects tied to the course materials.
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Bankruptcy Workshop
A skills course with a focus on Chapter 7 consumer bankruptcy practice. Examples and possibly some real-client experiences will be drawn from the law school's Pro Bono Bankruptcy Program. The intersection between Chapter 7 and other forms of bankruptcy and professional responsibility issues arising in bankruptcy practice also will be included.
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Business of Law
Designed to help students succeed in the business of law, this course explores the economics and management of law firms. It covers accounting basics, profitability, budgeting, and planning. It expands into understanding how law firms are structured, how partners are compensated, and the associated tax consequences. Governance and risk management of law firms is examined, as well as more current topics such as project management and alternative pricing models. The course allows students to learn using case studies for several of the topic areas. Whether a student plans to practice in-house or with a large or small law firm, understanding how law firms are managed and the economics that drives how services are delivered is important in helping student achieve their career goals.
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Business Organizations
Business Organizations, the introductory business law course, addresses the law governing business entities, including sole proprietorships, general and limited partnerships, limited liability companies, and both closely-held and public corporations. It covers agency, choice of organizational form; fundamentals of entity formation, finance, and taxation; duties of fiduciaries including agents, partners, directors, and officers; limited liability and its exceptions; the role of the corporation in society and corporate social responsibility; corporate governance; and the basics of regulation of securities issuance and trading. Students without any prior business background or knowledge of business concepts should feel comfortable enrolling in this course.
Business Organizations should be taken before more advanced business law courses such as Securities Regulation, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Corporate Finance.
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Business Planning
This course aims to combine tax, business, and securities law skills in an intensive drafting and negotiation format. Working alone and in pairs, students work on assignments including choice of business entity (corporation, partnership, LLC); preparation of basic corporate documents (articles of incorporation, bylaws, and shareholders agreement); LLC operating agreement; and a simulated venture capital transaction. The LLC and venture capital units include a negotiation component, with students proceeding to draft the agreement that they have negotiated. The course includes substantial background readings and regular meeting with the instructor(s) to review negotiating positions and drafts of documents. The course includes a short final examination as well as extensive in-class writing.
Prerequisites: Introduction to Federal Income Tax and Business Organizations.
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Business Torts
"Business Torts" traditionally refers to a collection of discrete, loosely related actions for economic harm, mostly arising out of business competition. Although this course retains the traditional name, it deals more broadly with the doctrine, jurisprudence, and practice of liability arising out of economic relationships. The course surveys a variety of causes of action for nonphysical harm that ordinarily are not covered in the basic contracts and torts courses but form the core of many lawyers' nonpersonal, injury civil litigation practice; develops ways of understanding the causes of action, the connections among them, and their relation to the general law of tort and contract; and considers how the issues are presented to lawyers in practice. Topics covered may include breach of contract as a tort, misrepresentation, interference with contract and economic advantage, economic negligence, good faith, trade secrets, employment torts, unfair competition, and liability for consequential economic harm.
Prerequisites: Contracts and Torts.
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Business Torts Lab
This course is the lab component for Business Torts, in which students must be enrolled concurrently. Students will engage in simulation-based exercises of lawyering tasks in business litigation. Assignments may include interviewing, counseling, preparation of litigation documents, and oral argument.
Corequisite: Concurrent enrollment in Business Torts.
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Canadian Legal System
The United States and Canada, our neighbor to the north, share a good deal in the way of culture, history, and legal tradition. But Canada is also profoundly different in several important respects: Its system of government is parliamentary rather than presidential. Its equivalent to the United States Bill of Rights dates back only to 1982 rather than 1789. The legal system of Quebec, Canada's second-most populous province, is grounded in French civil law rather than English common law. Perhaps most important, Canada achieved its independence, not by revolution or war, but by a peaceful and gradual process of separation from the United Kingdom.
This course will explore the special character of Canada through an introduction to its legal system and constitutional doctrine. General topics at the start of the course will include the nature of parliamentary government, the role of the courts and structure of the judicial system, the understanding of aboriginal rights, the place of Quebec in Canada, and the substantial differences between the Canadian and United States systems of federalism. The remainder of the course will focus on topics in Canadian constitutional law, particularly with regard to rights and freedoms including freedom of expression, equality, and cutting-edge questions such as same-sex marriage.
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Casino Law
Provides an analysis of federal and state laws governing legalized gaming in the United States with emphasis on gaming in Atlantic City, Pennsylvania, and the internet. The powers of the state and federal regulatory agencies are examined, and the underlying reasons for regulation and methods utilized to ensure the integrity of the gaming industry are discussed. The course focuses on the history of legalized gaming activities, the licensing process, and the regulation of the gaming industry. The course also discusses the current and future trends of gaming, including the expansion of gaming domestically and on the internet.
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Charitable Nonprofit Organizations
This course focuses on the tax treatment of U.S. public charities and private foundations, tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. The course will also include a survey of other tax-exempt organizations, including business leagues and social welfare organizations, as they compare to charities. The course provides an analysis of the requirements for federal tax exemption, including the prohibition on private inurement and benefit, excess benefit transactions, lobbying, and political campaign activities, and also includes an analysis around the unrelated business income tax, the private foundation excise taxes, and the current tax issues affecting certain public charities, such as donor advised funds and supporting organizations. The course will also examine a number of legal challenges facing charities around formation, obtaining tax-exempt status, governance, and maintenance of tax-exempt status. Through case description and analysis, this course aims to give students a solid introduction to grant-making practicalities and operations within public charities and private foundations.
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Child Abuse and Neglect
Examines how the state serves the best interest of maltreated children through child welfare and dependency court systems. Case studies, videos, and speakers supplement assigned readings on the legal, social, and historical underpinnings of the child welfare and dependency court systems in the United States, with emphasis on the New Jersey and Pennsylvania jurisdictions. Students participate in simulations of various stages of an abuse and neglect case and study how civil and criminal proceedings, including those in the juvenile justice system, affect the children, families, and professionals involved in the child welfare system. Grades are based on class participation, which may include short writing assignments, class presentation, and a final paper on a legal and policy issue or reform initiative.
Prerequisite: Family Law; Domestic Violence Law; or permission of the instructor.
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Child Migration and U.S. Immigration Policy
This timely course will examine the factors leading to the recent surge in Central American children coming to the U.S. border alone. In a weekly two-hour seminar, this course will examine four main areas: (1) U.S. immigration policy toward children, including substantive law and procedure; (2) current push and pull factors leading to child migration from Central America; (3) best practices in working with children in crisis; and (4) the challenges of reintegration after deportation. By traveling to Guatemala over spring break, students will have the opportunity to meet with social service organizations and government agencies that work with child migrants and repatriated children. Students will learn firsthand the reasons why children emigrate and the difficulties they face in the United States, and after repatriation. The in-country experience will provide a unique and valuable setting for students to enrich their understanding of U.S. immigration policy and the effects of that policy on children. There may be a service-learning component incorporated into our time in Guatemala.
This interdisciplinary course will be offered simultaneously to students on the Camden and Newark campuses, with one professor present in each location. A few of the classes may feature guest speakers from disciplines other than law (psychology and social work, for example) to enhance the students' learning of child development and the needs of children, especially those who have lived through traumatic experiences. Grades will be based on class participation, performance on in-class exercises, and a final research paper.
Prerequisite: Requires permission of instructors.
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Children and the Law
Children in the last few decades have been given special recognition and increased protection under state, federal, and international law. But doctrines and beliefs developed in periods when the social value of children was low and the legal duties of parents and the state was minimal, continue to influence the way the law views children.
This course will survey various areas of the law concerning children and examine their sources and influences. Topics to be covered are: (1) the responsibilities of the state and family in the care of the child, including education; (2) the legal treatment of abused and neglected children; (3) rules concerning the medical treatment of children; (4) adoption, surrogacy and parentage; (5) the treatment of children accused of crimes; (6) children's disabilities; and (7) government entitlement programs for children. The course will also examine the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty that seeks to render universal certain rules respecting the treatment of children.
Prerequisite: Family Law.
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Children, Parents, and the Law
Examines children's rights and interests in the context of law and public policy about childhood, parenthood, and family life. We will consider how law divides responsibility for children between parents and the state and consider what balance should be struck, including the role the government does and could play in helping families to meet children's needs. We will look at law and policy governing parent rights, nonmarital childrearing, child abuse and neglect, foster care, adoption (domestic and international), education, disability, and juvenile justice. Constitutional and international human rights norms will also be considered. Throughout we will think about how we could change law and policy to create a better world for children and families.
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Civil Mediation
This skills course provides both a theoretical and practical approach to the use of mediation in the courts and community. It has met the judiciary training requirements for various municipal and other mediator rosters.
Theoretical: Students will be required to write a paper on a key aspect of mediation, such as confidentiality, immunity, or challenges of specific case type mediations. The paper must be a minimum of 10 pages double-spaced.
Clinical: There will be guest speakers, including judges and lawyers, who are intimately involved in the use of mediation and can provide a practical perspective to students. The students will also engage in numerous role plays and exercises illustrating the skills necessary to both effectively mediate cases and advocate a client's position in a mediation forum. The professor will assist connecting students with veteran mediators so to complete a brief interview assignment.
Students will be strongly encouraged to participate in the Rutgers pro bono mediation project and/or other court and community mediation programs. The professor will assist interested students in obtaining volunteer experience.
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Civil Rights Litigation-Current Issues
This course responds to the Carnegie Foundation's critique of traditional legal education by integrating the teaching of doctrine and skills. Students learn the basic constitutional and 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 statutory doctrines necessary to litigate the most common current constitutional claims, those arising under the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. To help students explore the roles of attorneys in shaping and applying legal doctrine, this course is structured around a series of realistic law practice simulations. Unlike most constitutional law courses, this course focuses on doctrinal development in the federal circuits by exposing students to circuit court decisions, as well as to model jury instructions, appellate oral arguments, appellate briefs, pleadings, expert reports, and other practical materials.
Prerequisite: Constitutional Law.
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Class Action Litigation
We will examine class action litigation under both the federal and New Jersey class action rules. Topics will include the history of class action litigation, FRCP 23, New Jersey Court Rule 4:32, the Class Action Fairness Act, pleading a class action, discovery to establish or defeat certification, the class certification motion, notice and claims administration issues, winning or defeating class decertification motions, awarding of attorney's fees, strategic considerations throughout the class action litigation process, and hot topics in both federal and New Jersey class action litigation practice, including pending federal litigation to change several aspects of class action practice (Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017).
Since this is a skills course, there will be no final exam. Instead, there will be three writing assignments involving drafting a class action complaint; writing a memo to a law firm partner about your research on a legal issue related to a class action; and drafting a brief in support of a motion related to a class certification issue. These assignments will be spaced out over the 14 weeks of the course.
Goals of the course include exposing students to the complexities of class action litigation and the various legal issues and strategic considerations involved, as well as developing writing skills in the context of class action issues.
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Climate Governance
Climate governance is a sweeping term for measures aimed at providing tolerable climate conditions for life on earth as we know it. It raises classic issues of distributional justice, law and science, risk, uncertainty and precaution, technology policy, and international relations. Students will leave this course with an understanding of the sources and impacts of climate change; the key state, national, and international policies; and the role of law. This course is intended for law students who wish to improve their understanding of governance options in managing mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, and who wish to apply their knowledge to analyze and develop recommendations for a particular aspect of climate governance.
Seminar participants will obtain an overview of the domestic and transnational governance strategies for reducing climate disruption (mitigation) and adapting to unavoidable climate disruptions. Participants will develop their ability to analyze a policy problem and develop law-based recommendations. They will develop their research, analytical, writing, and presentation skills.
Grades will be based on the preparation of a paper, a class presentation, and class participation. Students will be responsible for leading class discussion at least once during the semester. Grades may be revised upward for exceptional class participation and downward for failure to attend class on a regular basis.
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Commercial Law
A basic course in sales, secured transactions, and negotiable instruments. Depending on the professor, course coverage can include Uniform Commercial Code articles 2 (sales), 2A (leases), 3 (negotiable instruments/payments), 4 (bank deposits), 4A (funds transfers), 5 (letters of credit), 8 (investment securities), and 9 (secured transactions).
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Common Law Capstone
The Advanced Common Law Capstone course complements and brings together the multistate core curriculum, with a particular emphasis on topics tested on the New Jersey bar examination. The capstone reinforces concepts covered in the required curriculum and introduces new legal issues in the seven core subjects of torts, property, contracts, civil procedure, constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, and evidence. It serves as a capstone to a student's legal education by filling in curricular gaps and reviewing topics tested on the multistate and New Jersey bar examinations. Course evaluation will be based on the student's performance on multiple-choice testing that simulates the Multistate Bar Examination. The capstone will be beneficial for students planning to take the New Jersey bar examination, but it is not a substitute for a postgraduate bar preparation course, the completion of which is key to passage of the bar examination.
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Community Reentry Practicum
Students in the Community Reentry Practicum work with ex-offenders, as well as young adults at risk of involvement with the criminal justice system, to resolve civil legal matters that present barriers to employment, education, and advancement in society. In conjunction with a community partner agency, students interview young adults, determine their eligibility for expungement, and then draft expungement petitions for eligible clients. Students also work with ex-offenders who are referred to the program through the U. S. District Court for assistance with issues such as municipal court warrants and family court matters. Students attend a weekly seminar where they will learn interviewing, counseling, and drafting skills along with substantive law. The course also examines the challenges and public policy implications of our work within the legal system.
Prerequisite: Students must have already taken Professional Responsibility or must be taking the course concurrently. Open to second-, third-, and fourth-year students.
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Comparative Bioethics: The New Genetics
This course examines the legal, social, religious, and political issues raised by the new genetics.
Substantive issues include such areas as genetic testing, cloning, and stem cell research. The
course is centered on western secular bioethics and law, focusing of course on the United States.Other legal systems, beliefs, practices are used as contrasts. The principal contrast is drawn through materials on Jewish law, beliefs, and practices, but other systems, both secular and religious, will be used in the course over the years. This course is separate from other bioethics courses, and there are no prerequisites. Grades are based on class participation and a take-home examination.
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Comparative Law
This course is an introduction to Comparative Law with an emphasis on the European Civil Law. We will have about six weeks of readings following which students will do presentations and papers on a subject of interest in Comparative and Foreign Law. There is no final examination. Beginning spring 2016, the course includes a trip to Europe during Spring Break for which a fourth of a credit is awarded.
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Complex Civil Litigation
The dynamics of multiparty, multi-issue, and multiforum litigation, and consideration of policies and procedures pertinent to its regulation. Topics examined include joinder of parties and claims, class actions, consolidation and disposition of duplicative or related litigation, management of complex cases, settlement, the aggregation debate, and recent legislative efforts at civil justice reform.
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Conflict of Laws
This course examines the legal problems that arise when a lawsuit involves parties and events connected to two or more states. These problems concern personal and subject matter jurisdiction, choice of the applicable state law, and recognition of the judgment by courts of other states. In addition, students will explore the theories used by courts and recommended by scholars to resolve these problems.
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Constitutional Law: Powers of the President
This course will cover the constitutional power of the President of the United States. Much more so than the constitutional powers of the federal courts and of congress, the constitutional powers of the president are defined by custom, tradition, and events, and comparatively less by the text of the Constitution. We will look at the powers of early presidents, the expansive claims of executive power of President Lincoln during the Civil War, the development of presidential powers with the rise and expansion of the administrative state, and the growth of the Commander-in-Chief powers since the mid-20th century, among other areas. What constrains the constitutional power of the presidents? Are judicial or congressional checks on presidential power effective? Does the modern era require stronger presidents than the founding era? Do separation of powers systems inevitably devolve into overly powerful presidential managed democracies?
Upper-class writing credit available.
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Construction Law
Construction is one of the largest, if not the largest segments of the
U.S. and world economy. Lawyers play a significant role in the
construction process, as both counselors and litigators. The American
Bar Association's Forum on the Construction Industry is one of the
largest groups within the ABA, with over 6500 members. This course will
expose the law student to the legal, business, and technical issues
construction lawyers must master to effectively serve their clients. The legal and business relationships that define the construction process
will be examined from the point of view of all participants, covering
every stage of a construction project from conception through final
completion and the resolution of disputes. Legal issues involving
contractual relationships, damages, liens, defects, insurance and
suretyship, and dispute resolution will be presented from the perspective
of the construction practitioner.
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Consumer Fraud Act Litigation
This course will focus on the law and practice of consumer fraud litigation in New Jersey, a practice which is important to attorneys practicing at solo and small firms. Students will gain proficiency in analyzing and initiating consumer fraud cases through a comprehensive examination of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act and associated New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs regulations, as well as other consumer protection statutes, relevant case law, and the practical application in the litigation context. The course will also focus on the practice aspects of consumer fraud litigation, through discussion and fact-based problem-solving exercises geared toward developing the skills needed for assessment and initiation of consumer fraud cases from review and analysis of transaction documents to identify viable claims through to the drafting a complaint.
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Copyright Law
This is a general course in U.S. copyright law, the federal law which recognizes and protects authorial and artistic property. Among other topics, we will explore the history of copyright, the evolution of its subject matter (e.g. literature, visual art, music, and computer software); infringement; fair use; remedies; and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Students will study the text of Title 17 in depth but will also be encouraged to form and articulate their own viewpoints about contemporary policy. Special emphasis will be placed on the business models and legal conflicts created by new and popular technologies of information production, selection, and distribution.
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Corporate and Commercial Mediation
This course will focus on the theory and practice of mediation and will address the legal, ethical, and practical issues that arise during the course of a mediation. It will explore each stage of a mediation and compare and contrast a mediation with an arbitration or trial and will focus on the skills one must acquire to facilitate a successful conclusion of the mediation. This will satisfy the skills requirement.
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Corporate Finance
Builds upon financial and legal concepts introduced in Business Organizations, applying them primarily to public corporations (those companies whose shares are held by sufficient numbers of shareholders to permit public trading in the secondary markets such as the New York Stock Exchange and the over-the-counter NASDAQ system). Particular attention is paid to mergers and acquisitions, debtholders' rights, and valuation concepts used by managers, lawyers, and judges. No previous experience with corporate finance is necessary.
Prerequisite: Property, Business Organizations, or permission of the instructor.
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Corporate Law-Advanced Topics
This course is designed for students who seek a more advanced understanding of corporate law concepts and debates than can be provided in the introductory Business Organizations course. The course will cover core topics in corporate law theory, such as the theory of the firm and capital markets, legal characteristics of the corporation, the production and structure of corporate laws, financing the corporation, internal governance structures, and external governance structures. Students will be required to prepare two short discussion papers and a final longer paper due toward the end of the semester. Students will also present their final papers in class. This course has no exam.
Prerequisite: Business Organizations.
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Corporate Lawyering
The course provides students with an opportunity to gain practical skills relative to the dynamics of understanding and structuring corporate transactions, to learn about the role that lawyers and law play in these types of representations, and to gain experience in drafting communications and actual corporate documents. The course will also address substantive legal, business, theoretical, policy, and ethical matters that affect the lawyer's role within the workplace relative to transactions of this type. The course is structured around a simulated drafting, negotiation, and employment experience in which the students gain exposure to the types of corporate assignments they would likely receive as junior transactional associates. Our fictitious law firm, "Scarlet Knight LLP", will be representing a client on a seller-side stock acquisition transaction. Each student will take on the role of a first-year associate on this transaction, and the professor serves as the senior associate guiding them through their assignments and professional experience.
Pre- or corequisite: Business Organizations.
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Corporate Reorganization
This course explores the key legal and policy issues that are implicated when a firm reorganizes under or in the shadow of Chapter 11 of the federal Bankruptcy Code. These include the substantive and procedural requirements for confirming a plan of reorganization, the choice between judicial and market valuation of the reorganizing firm, the use of auctions and options in the bankruptcy process, the trade offs between liquidation and reorganization, priorities in distribution, the absolute priority rule and its "new value" exception, private workouts, prepackaged plans of reorganization, claims trading, the relevance of non-bankruptcy law to the reorganization process, and the use of Chapter 11 as a mechanism of corporate governance.
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Corporate Taxation
Examination of the federal income taxation of corporations and their shareholders. Topics include the formation and structuring of corporations, the payment of both cash and stock dividends, stock redemptions, issues associated with preferred stock, complete liquidations, and taxable and tax-free mergers and acquisitions. Corporate Taxation is designed for both tax and nontax students.
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Corporate Transactions
In this course students study a diverse mix of corporate transactions. Following the business school case study model, students analyze these transactions to provide a context in which to learn legal and financial principles and to understand the key agreements that implement the transactions (e.g., confidentiality agreements, letters of intent, merger agreements, and legal opinions). The course involves lectures and guest speakers who participated (as accountants, intermediaries, clients, or lawyers) in the transactions being studied. This is also a skills course involving negotiation exercises and the drafting of contract provisions. Ethical issues that arise in transactional matters are a key focus of the course.
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Criminal Law Theory: Sexual Offenses
Our law criminalizes a remarkably broad array of sexual, and sex-related, conduct. Among the offenses to be covered in this course are rape, sexual assault, human sex trafficking, female genital mutilation, voyeurism, public indecency, sexual transmission of disease, prostitution, pimping, statutory rape, child molestation, abuse of position of trust, child grooming, sexting, revenge porn, possession of child pornography, failure to register as a sex offender, adultery, assault by sadomasochism, incest, polygamy, bestiality, and necrophilia. We will consider these offenses from a practical and policy perspective, as well as from a more theoretical one. We will pay particular attention to the concepts of harmfulness, wrongfulness, offensiveness, consent, autonomy, deviance, and sex itself. Ultimately, we will be interested in the proper limits of the criminal law: Where has the law gone too far in criminalizing (or decriminalizing) various forms of sexual conduct? Where should it go further?
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Criminal Practice
An experiential approach to understanding the nature of the criminal attorney's practice and the criminal justice system. Students prosecute and defend simulated cases. Activities include client and witness interviewing, motions practice, voir dire, examination of witnesses, trial, and appeal. These activities allow for reflection on the intellectual, ethical, pragmatic, and personal issues confronting criminal practitioners and on the workings of the criminal process. As an advanced simulation course in criminal practice, students are assigned the role of prosecutor or defense attorney in one of two cases, which run throughout the semester. Students are responsible for exercises in all stages of the criminal process, including initial interview of client or police and complainant, fact investigation, grand jury practice, motions, plea bargaining, voir dire, aspects of trial (including planning the case, arguing to a jury, and examining and cross-examining lay and expert witnesses), sentencing, and appeal.
Through their experiences, students have the opportunity to develop lawyering skills, to learn experientially the use and integration of areas of doctrine, and to learn about and reflect on issues that arise in the criminal justice process. Skills include pretrial and trial skills, the exercise of lawyerly judgment, and strategic thinking. Doctrinal areas include criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence. Issues raised include: (1) Does the practitioner's view of the guilt or innocence of the defendant matter? How do prosecutors and defenders justify their roles? How do they feel about these justifications? As a defense attorney, what is it like to operate in a state of uncertainty about your client's guilt? How does this affect your relations with the client, your strategy, and your sense of self-worth?; (2) There is much discussion in the literature about whether the criminal process is basically an adversary system or a bureaucratic system. What insights do we have on this as we go through the process? In this regard, what is the role of plea bargaining? What are the pressures on judges, prosecutors, and defenders to move cases expeditiously?; and (3) What is the effect on the practice of mandatory minimum sentencing or sentencing guidelines? Is the cure of these statutes worse than the disease of discretion? What is the prosecutor's role in sentencing, and does it affect the defendant's right to a trial?
There is no final exam, grades are based on performance and participation during the semester, and final trials performed by the students.
Prerequisite: Criminal Law.
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Criminal Procedure: Adjudications
An examination of the criminal adjudication process, from initial appearance of an accused after arrest, through the formal charging process, pretrial motions, trial, sentencing, appeal, and collateral attack of conviction. The operation and effectiveness of present systems (focusing primarily on the federal system as an example) are considered, as well as proposed alternative procedures. Each step of the process and the system as a whole are evaluated as to their effectiveness in accurately determining the guilt or innocence of an accused while providing constitutional protections such as the right to be free from excessive bail and to have notice of the nature of the charges, the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, the right of the accused to confront witnesses, the right against compelled self-incrimination, and the right against being twice put in jeopardy for the same offense.
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Criminal Procedure: Investigations
An in-depth study of the investigatory stage of the criminal process. Focuses on the power of the courts to shape criminal procedure and their capacity to control police investigatory practices such as arrest, search and seizure, interrogation, and identification through the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Discusses the role of counsel in this process and explores competing theories of criminal procedure and related systems of social control, such as the juvenile justice system and civil commitment of the mentally ill.
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Crimmigration
The intersection of criminal and immigration law. This course addresses the historical and contemporary relationship between criminal and immigration law. In particular, the course explores how individuals perceived to have violated a criminal offense are treated in the immigration law system, how individuals thought not to be citizens of the United States are uniquely affected by criminal procedure norms and substantive criminal law, and how states and the federal government have sought to police criminal activity by noncitizens. In the process, the course participants will learn to analyze constitutional, statutory, and regulatory provisions concerning immigration, as well as procedural and substantive requirements concerning criminal proceedings as they affect noncitizens. To build upon the substantive coursework, students will prepare a motion for an immigration judge, a motion to vacate a prior guilty plea of a noncitizen, and an opinion letter from an immigration attorney to a criminal defense attorney outlining the immigration consequences faced by the defense attorney's client. The course final will be the preparation and argument of an appellate motion. Students will be placed in to teams and will argue the motions in a mock setting and they will also engage in simulated criminal plea negotiations and will play the roles of immigration attorney, defense attorney, and prosecutor. Students will receive individualized feedback from all mock skills exercises.
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Critical Legal Analysis
Advanced legal reading, analytical, and critical thinking skills. Students will complete multiple
written assignments with individualized feedback designed to increase legal problem-solving
acumen and ability to communicate analysis effectively. Multiple individual conferences will
provide opportunities to monitor progress and reflect on legal analysis skill development.
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Cyberwarfare and Security
In a world with almost limitless data collection capability, where cyberattacks can propagate instantaneously and where the identity or location of an adversary may not be known, individuals and institutions are increasingly vulnerable to network based intrusions that disrupt productivity, jeopardize privacy, and threaten national security.
It is more important than ever that in-house and outside counsel stay abreast of the most current developments and best practices in cybersecurity. Those lawyers who ignore cyber threats are risking millions of dollars for their companies or their clients.
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Deals
The job of the transactional lawyer is to build a legal construct that essentially creates a private regulatory framework that becomes the law applicable to the parties to a deal. Structuring the "law of the transaction" is the essential skill of the lawyer engaged in that practice. It requires him or her to identify the essential business terms of the deal, connect them to the legal concepts that may be used to build alternative legal structures for the transaction (e.g, selling a business by way of a merger or an asset sale), and analyzing the consequences of choosing one structure over another. This goes well beyond merely giving advice based on existing legal rules. Being a transactional lawyer requires proficiency with various fields of law, the ability to determine how they impact the transaction, and the skill to incorporate these doctrines into a coherent whole.
This course is intended to introduce the students to the skills and methodology necessary to "speak the language of transactions" and "draft the private law of the deal." It is centered around three transactions: a partnership/joint venture; a sale of a business; a distribution and licensing transaction with a financial credit facility. These are common deals that the transactional lawyer handles. We will study the relevant substantive rules that are often relevant, including taxation, partnerships, agency, intellectual property, environmental law, corporations and corporate finance, secured transactions, accounting, and various other subject matter areas that may be implicated. For each transaction, we will practice applying these doctrines to create the legal building blocks of each transaction, study other common contractual issues that typically arise, and practice creating the applicable private legal framework in the context of the deal.
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Debtor-Creditor Law
Course provides an introduction to the law of security interests in personal property under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code and the law of individual bankruptcy and corporate reorganization under the Federal Bankruptcy Code. Article 9 topics include the creation and perfection of security interests, priority among the holders of competing interests, and the enforcement of contract rights under the UCC. Bankruptcy topics include the rights of creditors in bankruptcy, individual's right to discharge, the relationship between bankruptcy law and state law, treatment of executory contracts, bankruptcy planning, restructuring of corporations in Chapter 11, and procedure for confirming plans of reorganization.
Course not open to students who have taken Bankruptcy or Secured Transactions.
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Deposition Advocacy
Intensive Deposition Advocacy program is an advanced civil practice skills course focusing on planning for and taking of discovery depositions through analysis of legal, factual, and persuasive theories as well as witness psychology, conducting information gathering and admission-seeking depositions, defending depositions through ethical witness preparation, making appropriate objections, and dealing with obstreperous opponents. The course provides students with opportunities to perform in a simulated deposition setting, followed by individual faculty critique. These performance workshops are supplemented by lectures on specific issues relating to deposition practice. The course is led by Professor Lore and includes several adjunct professors in order to maintain an 8:1 student-to-faculty ratio.
Prerequisite: Evidence.
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Discovery and Pretrial Process
This is an advanced skills course in civil litigation focused on pretrial proceedings and the strategy and use of discovery. Students will draft discovery devices such as interrogatories, requests for documents and requests for admissions; participate in oral and written exercises, including client interviews, depositions, and arguing discovery disputes; observe court proceedings; and receive individualized feedback on the performances. In addition, the course will include lectures and readings on relevant topics.
Enrollment limited to 14 students.
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Digital Privacy Law
Personal data in digital form have become the principal input for industries ranging from online advertising, social networking, cloud computing, and health and financial services. The use of personal data is becoming increasingly important to government activities too (e.g., national security, law enforcement, urban planning, traffic control, public health, and education). Emerging technologies such as wearables, drones, and sensor networks are accelerating data collection, storage, and analysis. Stakeholders at the state, national, and international levels struggle to adopt privacy laws to protect individual rights, while at the same time allowing for technological innovation, free speech, and productive use of big data. This course examines the tensions between privacy interests and other social and political goals in the digital world. Students will study the philosophical roots of the concepts of privacy, confidentiality, and individuals' right to control collection and dissemination of their personal information.
The course will review developments in American Constitutional law, tort law, and statutory law, and look at global fair information privacy practices. Student evaluation will be based on class participation and either an exam or a paper.
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Disability Law
This course surveys the significant laws that protect the civil rights of people with disabilities, with a primary focus on the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the cases that interpret them. The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act and the Fair Housing Act will also be addressed in lesser detail. In addition to the covering the doctrine that governs disability discrimination in the United States, the course will also explore the reasons why the disability laws have diverged from traditional Title VII doctrine and the benefits and limitations of the model of discrimination that is encompassed in the disability discrimination laws.
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Diversity and the Law
This seminar will explore the intersections of law with diversity, race, equal protection, civil rights, and pluralism/multiculturalism. Through an examination of judicial opinions, legislation, legal scholarship, social science research, and case studies, students will evaluate and critique diversity as an established and evolving legal, social, and political construct in our "post-racial" American democracy.
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Doing Business in China: Law and Politics
This course begins with an introduction to the legal system of the People's Republic of China. After a brief description of the historical, cultural, and political roots of China's legal regime, we will turn to a variety of Chinese laws governing business transactions and dispute resolution (e.g., anticompetition law, company law, contract law, IP law, joint-venture law, tax law, anticorruption law). We will also study cases and important legal issues American companies may encounter while doing business in China through agents, distributors, joint ventures, or wholly-owned subsidiaries.
Course not open to students who have taken Introduction to Chinese Law.
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Economic Regulation
This course explores the legal and economic bases for the economic regulation of business. Included are a review of the constitutional limits upon regulation and the evolving rationales for regulation, and, with increasing frequency, deregulation. While the materials will be drawn from several industries, the greatest focus will be on the great transformation, which has occurred in the last quarter century in the regulation of the traditional public utility firms--particularly those in the energy fields.
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Education Law
A survey of the law governing public elementary and secondary education. The course considers the substantive legal issues that arise in public schools as well as the role of the law and lawyers in public education. Topics include education administration, governance, and policymaking; school desegregation, school choice, and school finance; students' rights, including the right to attend school, due process, privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of religion; special education; and employment law issues as they arise in the public school context, including tenure, seniority, discipline, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and collective bargaining.
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Elder Law
Because the U.S. population is aging, elder law is one of the fastest growing legal specialties. The course will examine a variety of interesting and in some cases politically charged topics including: planning for the possibility of incapacity; obtaining benefits from programs like Medicaid and Medicare; addressing abuse and exploitation; discrimination in employment and medical treatment; and counseling the terminally ill client. Students will have the opportunity to draft several key documents.
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Electronic Discovery
This course explores an essential element in modern litigation--the discovery and use of electronic information (emails, databases, and other digital data sources). Recent changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as well as changing judicial attitudes toward best practices in this area will be examined. For litigators of the future, basic skill in this area will be critical to success.
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Employment Discrimination Law
A study of the federal law prohibiting discrimination in employment.
The 2-credit version of the course focuses primarily on the paradigm employment discrimination statute, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, but briefly considers the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
The 3-credit version includes more coverage of the latter two statutes along with other sources of federal employment discrimination law.
Both courses examine theories of proof, defenses, exceptions, procedures, and remedies under the statutes studied, and specific topics in the field, including seniority, pregnancy-related discrimination, sexual harassment, and affirmative action.
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Employment Law
Current topics in employment relations that fall outside the system of collective bargaining, including: regulation of employment termination; privacy rights on the job (including hiring questionnaire, disclosure of personnel information, searches and seizures, drug testing, electronic monitoring); employment relations of independent contractors and home workers; employee representation on board of directors; employee-owned businesses. Problems relating to invention agreements and covenants not to compete also may be considered.
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Energy, Economics, and the Environment
This course will explore the legal and economic basis for the regulation of the financial and physical energy markets in the context of environmental concerns, consumer costs, and safety. It will also cover legal issues arising in the context of energy production, sale, and distribution or transmission of energy derived from renewable energy including wind and solar power as well as more traditional forms of energy including coal, natural gas, and nuclear. The course will describe jurisdictional issues of entities like Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Commodities Futures Trading Commission, Justice Department, regional transmission organizations, Secretary of Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, state public utility commissions, and the interplay between national energy policy and state and local energy and land-use issues. Policy issues associated with deregulation of the energy industry; rate regulation; siting of liquid natural gas facilities, pipelines, and new transmission lines; and policies that encourage new generation and renewable energy; as well as the impact of fraud and market manipulation in the financial markets will also be covered. Students will participate in a dialogue on carbon tax and cap-and-trade and other policies to reduce CO2 emissions. Students will have an opportunity to participate (on a volunteer basis) in a half-day program on site at power plant (past classes have had presentations from the Atlantic City Utilities Authority and the Oyster Creek Nuclear facility).
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Entertainment Law
A practical and comprehensive overview of the business and legal issues arising in the entertainment industry, including motion pictures, television, music, publishing, and multimedia. Topics include structure of the entertainment industry, contract issues, grant of rights, credit, artistic control, and social regulation. Surveys the various areas of the law that impact the entertainment industry, such as contracts, labor, copyright, trademark, right of privacy/publicity, and censorship law.
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Environmental Justice
Environmental justice is a social movement grounded in the synthesis of environmental and civil rights law and policy. This course will provide students with a broad overview of environmental law and introduce the concept of environmental justice. It will allow students to engage in an analysis of theories of causation, competing claims of evidence concerning the degree of environmental disparity based upon race and class, and theories of risk assessment. The course will provide grounding in the practice of environmental and land-use law, including facility permitting, mechanisms to address contaminated properties, and litigation responses to claims of injustice. We will regularly use case studies to focus on the multiple roles of a lawyer and the realities of environmental justice practice.
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Environmental Law
Examination of the concepts underlying such laws as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, not only to provide a general introduction to these statutes, but also to explore the many difficult policy and implementation issues involved in trying to protect the environment and public health. Examples of questions to be addressed include: How should cost be taken into account in determining environmental standards? Can environmental standards be designed in ways that will encourage cost-effective means of control? How should scientific evidence be considered in determining standards? What are the proper roles of administrative agencies, legislatures, and courts in designing environmental protection strategies? How can citizens best participate in determining the answers to complicated technical and political issues?
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Environmental Litigation
This is a simulation course based on one superfund site, participating in all aspects of the handling of a superfund matter, from initial information gathering through limitation and settlement. Activities include information gathering; preparing and responding to administrative orders; motion practice; remedy selection; negotiation; and written and oral advocacy. Simulation and classroom instruction/discussion provide an opportunity to consider the intersection of the legal and technical aspects of environmental law, as well as broader environmental law-related issues, such as risk and responsibility. Goals of the course include exposing students to the complexities of environmental litigation, enhancing their negotiation skills, affording opportunities for both oral and written presentation, and fostering discussion of the principles that underlie CERCLA (the Superfund statute).
This is a 2-credit course that is scheduled to meet two hours each week. Students must be available at other times for activities such as team meetings, client consultations, and critique sessions.
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ERISA and Employee Benefits
Employee benefits issues arise in the context of business acquisitions and divestitures, labor negotiations, health care, family law, and a host of other practices. Knowledge of employee benefits is highly valued by many in private practice and in-house. This course examines employee benefits governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and its subsequent amendments. It will cover defined benefit and defined contribution plans and employee welfare benefit plans. The course examines the rules on eligibility, participation, vesting, funding, and plan discrimination; it also considers cafeteria plans, flexible spending accounts, and other employee welfare benefits. The course will review portions of the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
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Estate Planning
A continuation of Estates and Trusts. Topics include an examination of complex trusts, life insurance, charitable giving, estate and trust administration, powers and duties of fiduciaries, and the Wealth Taxation System, culminating in practical drafting.
Prerequisite: Estates and Trusts.
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Estates and Trusts
American law gives an individual substantial control over what happens to his or her assets at death through leaving a will, setting up a trust, or using other devices. (Is it right for individuals to have so much control?) This course introduces students to some of the fundamental law relating to these devices. We explore what limits exist on an individual's control of what happens to his or her assets after death; what happens if there is no will; what the requirements are for making a valid will and what counts as part of the will; what to do if a beneficiary dies before the maker of the will; how we construe wills; how much capacity an individual needs to make a valid will; what the limits are on pressure by others on the will-maker; what is a trust and how one might be used to accomplish an individual's wishes; how we handle attempts to disinherit a surviving spouse or omissions of a child from a will.
This course must be taken before Estate Planning.
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Evidence
A study of the law and rules (with particular attention given to the Federal Rules of Evidence) governing the proof of disputed issues of fact in criminal and civil trials, including the functions of judge and jury; relevancy; real and demonstrative evidence; authentication and production of writings; the examination, competency, and privileges of witnesses; hearsay; impeachment; and burden of proof, presumptions, and judicial notice.
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Evidence II
Practical applications of evidence law and an examination of topics not covered in depth in the basic Evidence course. Topics include the authentication and admission of a business record, qualification and voir dire of an expert witness, impeachment techniques, making and recognizing the grounds for objections, and other applications. Readings explore subjects such as foundations of proof, evidentiary privileges, and DNA evidence.
Prerequisite: Evidence.
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Family Law
Examines the legal aspects of the family unit, including establishment of the marital relationship, intrafamily rights and responsibilities, marriage dissolution, problems of support and the custody of children, and, as time allows, the role of the state in protecting the welfare of children. The changing role of women is implicated and explored in each area. The four-credit version of this course will include a greater focus on the relationship between parents, children, and the state.
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Family Law ADR
Introduces the student to the basic divorce mediation process and skills development. Through discussion, simulations, and role-play exercises, this course will highlight the structure and goals of the divorce mediation process. The course will focus on the negotiation skills and techniques mediators use to help parties in resolving their disputes and reaching a mutually acceptable durable agreement. The course also examines the underlying negotiation techniques and strategies that mediators may use; the roles of attorneys and clients; dealing with difficult people and power imbalances; cultural considerations; the ethical issues mediators may face; and drafting agreements. The course also addresses the use of other professionals, including financial mental and health practitioners in the mediation process. The course also compares the mediation process with the collaborative process.
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Family Law Motion Practice
A skills course focused on motion practice in the Family Part of the Superior Court of New Jersey. The course components include interviewing/counseling, drafting of pleadings, and oral argument on various family law issues including custody, support, and equitable distribution issues.
Prior or concurrent enrollment in Family Law is strongly encouraged, but not required.
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Federal Courts
An inquiry into the powers of the various federal courts; into their relations among themselves and to other arms of governments (state and federal); and into the science, art, and politics of successfully invoking their powers. The major focus is on the role of the federal courts in our constitutional system. Consideration of the types of cases the federal courts should adjudicate, the circumstances under which they should hear cases, when they should defer to proceedings in state courts or decisions by state officials, and the extent to which Congress can alter federal court jurisdiction.
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Federal Income Tax
Basic course in the structure and operation of the federal income tax and its application to individuals and business organizations.
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Federalization of Land Use
Although traditionally seen as a state matter, with the incorporation of the Fourteenth Amendment against the states and with the expansion of the modern regulatory state, the federal constitutional and statutory law increasingly affects how land can be developed and used. This course seeks to undertake a survey of the Federal Constitutional provisions and statutes that impact the development and use of land, as well as to analyze current and future developments in this area of the law. The course grade will be based upon a midterm and a final exam.
There are no prerequisites, although having taken introductory courses in Constitutional, Land Use, and Environmental Law would be helpful in understanding the material presented.
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First Amendment Law
This course provides an overview of constitutional protections afforded to speech and to freedom of religion. The course will begin by exploring political speech and the limits placed on expression that advocates illegal or harmful conduct. We will then study every other major area of free speech law, including obscenity law, hate speech, commercial speech, symbolic speech, campaign finance reform, public forum law, and the right of expressive association. We will finish the semester by exploring how the Establishment Clause limits the ability of the state to promote religion and how the Free Exercise Clause protects the right to religious liberty.
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Food and Drug Regulation Law
A course in the federal regulation of food, drugs, cosmetics, and medical devices--four of our most vital industries. The seminar is designed to provide an understanding of the statutory provisions and administrative actions that govern marketing of these critical consumer products. It deals with development of federal regulatory controls, pursuant to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, with particular focus on the response of Congress to such problems as the use of chemical additives in food, the assurance of the safety and effectiveness of drugs and medical devices, and the safety of cosmetic ingredients. A study of both case law and administrative rule-making is undertaken by examining a variety of actions taken by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in implementing the act. The seminar is presented to reflect the concerns of the regulated industries as well as those of the FDA.
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Foreign Relations and National Security
An analysis of the interaction between the conduct of United States foreign affairs and the constitutional distribution of powers among the executive, the legislature, and the courts. Among the topics discussed are the foreign relations powers of the president and Congress, treaty making under United States law and practice, war powers, international law, "customary and treaty" as the law of the land, recognition, and justiciability of foreign affairs issues.
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Fourth Amendment Practice
Learn from a seasoned practitioner how to handle the most fundamental motion in criminal practice: the motion to suppress evidence. Whether a lawyer chooses to pursue a criminal, civil, or municipal practice, it is important to acquire a working knowledge of this basic motion in the criminal justice system to service the full needs of any client. Acquiring a comfort level with making this type of court appearance will allow students to be an immediate asset to their summer employers, and make them marketable to future employers. In this intensive course, students prosecute and defend a simulated case, from start to finish. Activities include gathering evidence, writing and responding to a suppression motion, conducting witness interviews in advance of taking testimony, examining witnesses, making objections and admitting evidence in court, and making an oral argument based on the evidence presented. These activities involve high-level strategic thinking about the goals of the motion within the case, and facing ethical issues in a practice setting. Students may take this course after completing the first-year full- or part-time schedule. The course will provide the targeted overview of any relevant law, including criminal procedure, evidence, and professional responsibility. Grade will be based on writing and skills performances, class participation, and attendance. No exam.
Students may take this course before or after Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Evidence, or Criminal Procedure.
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Freedom of Expression: Comparative Perspectives
This course will cover the basic theories and structure of First Amendment free speech jurisprudence. It will examine how First Amendment law has evolved over the past century to address such issues as incitement, national security, hate speech, campaign speech, the role of the press, defamation, privacy, compelled speech, commercial speech, intellectual property, and government speech. The course will focus on the ways in which American free speech law balances freedom of expression with other values such as equality, dignity, security, consumer protection, and privacy. It will then (in approximately the last quarter of the course) turn to select case studies of how other national (Canada and UK) and supernational (EU) regimes strike very different balances. The course may feature participation where appropriate by a practicing lawyer on select issues.
Prerequisite: Constitutional Law. This course and Freedom of Expression in the 21st-Century are mutually exclusive.
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Freedom of Expression in the 21st Century
Explores selected topics in the law of free speech, press, and association, with particular reference to contemporary issues such as political demonstrations, access to the media, campaign financing and other aspects of the political process, restrictions on expression attached to government funding and employment, access by the press and others to information, and journalists' privilege to protect confidential sources.
Prerequisite: Constitutional Law. This course and Freedom of Expression: Comparative Perspectives are mutually exclusive.
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Fundamentals of Legal Analysis
This 3-credit course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the bar review and bar examination process, with a primary focus on the New Jersey and Pennsylvania bar examinations. The New York bar exam will also be addressed briefly. The course is designed to assist students in mastering the specific skills needed to successfully complete the three major components of any bar exam: (1) the multiple choice questions; (2) the essays; and (3) the performance test portions. The course will instruct students on how to learn from and utilize bar review outlines and lectures.
Students will learn how to employ self-regulating learning theory techniques to memorize and apply specific topics from bar-tested subjects to practice bar exam questions, including multiple choice, essay, and performance test questions. Students will also learn how to self-assess comprehension and individual performance, skills critical to success on the bar exam. The course will also address student attitude, and stress and time management as related to the bar exam and provide specific skills to help students manage these factors.
While the course will discuss and teach doctrinal law in the context of these test-taking skills, the course is not designed to provide a review of the substantive law tested on the bar examination. Nor is the course designed to replace or be a substitute for a comprehensive, commercial bar review course.
Prerequisite: Permission of instructor required.
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Global Business Regulation
This course will review different mechanisms for regulating the social conduct of businesses operating outside the Unite States. We will cover hard public law (e.g., U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Alien Tort Claims Act, and securities regulation), as well as soft or voluntary mechanisms (e.g., the UN Global Compact, private certification schemes--such as B(enefit) or Fair Trade labels in global value chains, industry association standardization programs, and consumer-led "civil regulation"). We will rely primarily on case studies to examine different types of corporate misconduct and explore the interactions between hard and soft law. This approach will provide students with a practical framework for assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of different sources of regulation. A central aim is to expand students' understanding of key terms, such as "compliance," "law," "governance," and "enforcement." In addition to a final paper (capable of meeting the writing requirement, as desired by the individual student), students will prepare case studies to be presented in class.
Course can count toward Business Law Certificate (previously offered as Transnational Business Regulation).
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Global Climate Change: Science, Law, and Economics
People are now faced in varying degrees by the worst pollution problem of all time, the worst environmental problem of all time, and likely the
worst human problem of all time. Yet, the major greenhouse gas polluting states have not established effective policies and practices
to mitigate climate change risks and most climate programs are now headed in the wrong direction. Professor Latin has recently completed a
book Climate Change Policy Mistakes.
The topics and materials are certain to change each year.
The course will explore recent legislative and EPA efforts to impose
climate regulation; cap-and-trade systems, carbon taxes, and other
economic-incentive approaches; international climate treaties and
continuing negotiations on climate and development issues; and
alternative remedies or partial solutions for climate change hazards.
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Great Books of the Common Law
I didn't understand Contracts in law school, so, when I became a professor, I decided I'd teach from the same casebook and try to figure it out. But it still made no sense. After a few frustrating years, I remembered that my professor had suggested a number of books he thought we should read. When I finally picked them up, I realized they were the hardest books I'd ever read. Slowly I figured out the question to which these writers were all responding. Then Contracts became clear, really clear, as did the rest of the private law. This is the class I wish someone had taught while I was in law school, though I probably would have been too cool to take it.
This course will also focus on your writing by carefully examining good writing in the law. Readings vary each semester and will include texts by some of the following authors, among others: Max Weber, Blackstone, Holmes, Maitland, Cardozo, Llewellyn, Hart and Sacks, Gilmore, Paul Freund, Roberto Unger, Richard Posner, Mary Jo Frug, Pat Williams, and Roger Fisher.
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Health Care Fraud and Abuse Law
Health care fraud and abuse is one of the most important problems in our health care system and perhaps the largest area of health law practice. When one accounts for the amount of fraud and the resources devoted to prosecution, defense, and prevention, health care fraud involves literally hundreds of billions of dollars. Additionally, health care fraud encompasses a vast array of entities engaged in the health care sector, including, among others, hospitals, physicians and physician group practices, HMOs, medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical researchers, clinical laboratories, and nursing homes. This course will examine the most important of the numerous laws used in prosecuting criminal and civil actions against fraudsters, including the False Claims Act, the Anti-Kickback Statute, and the Stark Law. The course will also examine the increasingly important areas of voluntary and mandatory compliance. As a writing-intensive course, much of this learning will occur in the context of particular practice exercises, such as (but not all of) the following: drafting a gain-sharing agreement between a hospital and its orthopedic surgical group; interviewing a client (or a potential witness) in deciding whether to bring a civil action under the False Claims Act; giving advice to a doctor-client who has drafted an agreement to be a medical director and his or her draft is rife with illegal provisions; drafting an agreement between medical researchers and a pharmaceutical or device company; responding to a compliance agreement proposed by a prosecutorial authority; writing a memorandum about whether the United States Department of Justice should intervene in a whistle-blower suit; and explaining to a board of directors why self-disclosure of an actual instance of fraud is necessary.
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Health Care Law
Health Care Law I
An introduction to the basic tenets of health law, this course will
cover fundamental legal principles, laws, regulations, and issues facing
health care lawyers, with a focus on health system structure,
accreditation, licensing, as well as emphasis on regulatory aspects of
the discipline including Medicare fraud and abuse laws, Stark laws, and
other federal and state laws. Students who take this course will develop
a basic understanding of the practice of health law and the fundamental
principles thereof.
Health Care Law II
The law of Health Care is one of the most expansive and dynamic areas of
law practice today, principally because of the passage in March 2010 of
the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Because the new law
encourages cost reduction through the coordinated provision of health
services by new entities that include hospitals, primary and specialty
physician practices, and insurance companies, increased demand for
lawyers with expertise in health law regulation is inevitable. This is
an overview introductory course that will attempt to cover the major
contemporary legal and policy issues in health law. Topics to be covered
include the following: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; the
doctor-patient relationship; medical malpractice; refusal of life
support and physician assistance in end-of-life treatment; reproductive
rights; governmental regulation (federal and state), including ERISA,
Stark Law, Anti-Kickback Law, False Claims Act, Civil Monetary
Penalties; certificates of need and licensure; health care insurance,
including Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and reimbursement
issues; policy issues relevant to health insurance reform.
Health Care Law II is open to all students, even if they have not taken Health Care Law I, which offers a thorough grounding in health law basics.
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Health Care Transactions
Introduces students to a transactional practice in the health care sector. Combines, in a simulation, a study of case law, statutes, and regulations applicable to the type of transaction studied, and the practical means of accomplishing the transaction. Students engage in real-world exercises that involve learning how to obtain the requisite facts, drafting various documents, and providing legal advice. Students will draw on substantive doctrinal issues such as health care fraud, nonprofit tax law, reimbursement, and privacy requirements, as well as general corporate and contract law. Students are exposed to various parts of a transaction, including structuring the deal and creating important operational agreements like employment contracts with key medical personnel.
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Health Law, Policy, and Community Colloquium
This class will explore the interplay between health law and policy and social, economic, and cultural health drivers. We will analyze the basic structure of the health care system and the laws and policies that define it, including "Obamacare," the private and public insurance systems, and patient protections such as informed consent requirements and antidiscrimination laws. Special attention will be paid to how these policies interact with factors such as race, socioeconomic status, and gender to influence the health of different communities. While the course will primarily address U.S. law, we will also touch on international and comparative law approaches. Students will explore the topics using in-class exercises, group projects, and other interactive approaches. The course will have no exam, and grades will be based on oral presentations, class participation, and a final written project.
Please note that this course is cross-registered between the law school and the Rutgers University's Department of Public Policy and Administration (Camden). It will meet in the law school and follow the law school's academic calendar (with the first class on 1/14). The course does not have a final exam, but will require a final research paper in accordance with the law school's WI policy.
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Health Law: Regulating Financing
This course examines the complex and interesting manner in which law regulates the financing of health care in the United States. Compared with other advanced countries, our finance system is largely private, with the public sector filling in gaps left open by a market-based foundation. This blend creates fascinating divisions of authority between private and public actors and between the federal government and the states. The course studies the manner in which these basic divisions play out across particular topics such as traditional state regulation of health insurance; the manner in which the federal Employee Retirement Income and Security Act (ERISA) displaces much of state law without providing much substantive federal regulation; numerous state and federal laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, aimed at discrimination in the provision of health insurance and health care; Medicare and Medicaid; and methods of paying health care providers. Necessarily, emphasis is placed throughout the course on the manner in which the Affordable Care Act does, or does not, reform the system. Further, the course examines the laws regulating the transactional base of our private health care system: fraud, tax, and antitrust. Along with its companion course, Health Law: Regulating Quality and the Patient-Provider Relationship, this course is designed to form the foundation for much of the health law curriculum and for the practice of health law.
This course is designed to be taken by itself, or before or after Health Law: Regulating Quality and the Patient-Provider Relationship.
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Health Law: Regulating Quality and Patient/Provider Relationship
This course is about how best to provide high-quality medical care and promote patient safety in the context of remarkable developments in medical technology and ever more complex financial, business, and institutional models for delivering health care. Substantive themes include the patient safety movement, checklists and systems approaches to quality of care, evidence-based medicine, clinical practice guidelines, and the opioid epidemic. We will study the formation of the patient-provider relationship; the duty provide emergency care; informed consent; malpractice liability of physicians, hospitals, and managed care organizations; confidentiality; accreditation; licensing; and hospital staff privileges, as affected by state common law and statutes, and by federal statutes including EMTALA (emergency care), ERISA (federal preemption of state law and remedies), HIPAA (privacy), the Affordable Care Act and competing approaches currently being debated.
The course will have no exam, and grades will be based on class participation and writing projects.
Along with its companion course, Health Law: Regulating Financing, this course is designed to form the foundation for much of the health law curriculum and for the practice of health law.
This course is designed to be taken by itself, or before or after Health Law: Regulating Financing.
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Higher Education Law
This course will provide students with a solid introduction and exposure to a vast range of legal issues, theories, policies, and considerations affecting colleges and university, from the perspective of in-house counsel. Students will identify, discuss, and analyze legal trends and developments in higher education. Students will further develop their legal advocacy skills through factual problem analysis and related classroom discussions and presentations of "ripped from the headlines" issues. Students will have an opportunity to produce a substantive paper with feedback provided by the instructor. Topics include the public/private dichotomy; right to privacy; social media; sexual harassment and assault; tenure; faculty and staff contracts; student discipline and dismissal; fraternities and sororities; athletics; and student debt.
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History of the Common Law
This course will survey the deep historical origins of our legal system and set its development in social and cultural context. We will begin by examining the extraordinary, lost world of ancient Germanic and Anglo-Saxon law, including the system of dispute resolution among the Vikings. We then will examine English legal history after the great Norman conquest of 1066 and the legal revolution wrought by Henry II and the Angevin court, the ultimate foundation of our legal system today. Topics will include Roman law and its reception in England and on the continent; the significance of Magna Carta; the legal foundations of feudalism; the development of Parliament and Parliamentary supremacy (against which our federal constitution poses itself); Chancery and the history of equity jurisdiction; the development of forms of action; hundred, shire, seigniorial, and borough courts; the Court of Common Pleas, King's Bench, and Exchequer; compurgation, trial by battle, ordeal, and the history of the jury; the development of the legal profession and the history of legal education; crime and punishment in early modern England; classics of legal historiography, especially the work of F. W. Maitland, and the history and ideological significance of how the development of the common law has been understood and imagined; and the reception of the common law in colonial and revolutionary America. The course will be based in lectures and supplemented by student discussion.
No previous historical knowledge required.
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Housing Law and Policy
This course explores selected legal and policy issues in housing and urban development (often omitted in the first year Property course because of time constraints) such as: (1) is there a right to housing? (2) how private is private property? (3) the limits of eminent domain; (4) private government through homeowner associations; (5) Mt. Laurel and exclusionary zoning; (6) landlord/tenant reform efforts (rent strikes, tenant unions, housing courts, the implied warranty of habitability, protection against retaliatory eviction, and other changes); (7) public housing; (8) homelessness; (9) squatting; (10) rent control; (11) antidiscrimination legislation; (12) federal subsidy programs; (13) predatory lending; (14) farmworker housing; (15) housing integration programs, etc.
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Human Rights Advocacy and Litigation
This 4-credit course will combine class study of international human rights litigation with substantial written assignments prepared at the request of nonprofit litigators and human rights groups. The course will meet four hours a week. Students will research and write briefs, complaints, memos, and reports for nongovernmental, nonprofit human rights litigators and advocates. Class time and assigned readings will study domestic and international human rights advocacy mechanisms and explore the legal, strategic, ethical, and theoretical issues raised by such work. Some classes will focus on issues triggered by the particular projects assigned that semester. Some class time will be used for group or individual meetings with the professor. Outside class, students will work on projects in collaboration with one or more other students. Projects will be designed to expose students to the different tools available to promote respect for human rights and to integrate the theory and practice of human rights advocacy. Assignments will vary each semester. All assignments will require extensive research and writing. The clinic will provide significant opportunity to develop international human rights law research and writing skills.
Enrollment is limited to eight students.
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Immigration Law
An examination of the constitutional, statutory, and administrative law governing the entry, presence, expulsion, and naturalization of aliens. Considers the scope of governmental power with respect to both substantive immigration decisions and immigration procedures and the nature of aliens' corresponding rights. Specific topics include admission of aliens as immigrants and nonimmigrants, exclusion, deportation, naturalization, and the law of refugee status and political asylum. Detailed and complex statutory and regulatory analysis, examination of fundamental constitutional questions concerning separation of powers and individual rights, and treatment of broad-ranging policy and theoretical concerns about the nature of the American community and the appropriate status of immigrants within that community.
Prerequisite: Constitutional Law.
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Insurance Law
An introduction to insurance and insurance law. Basic concepts of risk, risk spreading, and insurance. Interpretation of the insurance contract and application of doctrines such as waiver, estoppel, misrepresentation, and damages. Selected topics in health, life, property, and liability insurance. Rights and duties among insurer, policyholder, tort victim, and attorneys. Insurance regulation.
Prerequisites: Contracts and Torts.
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Intellectual Property
This course covers the laws of copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and other forms of intellectual property. The works affected include artistic, literary, and musical works as well as inventions and brands.
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Intellectual Property Practicum
Students will follow the intellectual property (IP) issues that arise during the life of a simulated tech startup client. In a series of simulations, students will negotiate business transactions and dispute settlements. In addition to preparing legal opinion/advice letters to their simulated client, students will also draft a commercial agreement and a brief in a litigation. Course assignments will cover a representative array of IP projects to allow students to develop proficiency in dealing with the IP issues that tech startup companies typically face.
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International Business Transactions
A study of the private law aspects of international transactions. General topics include U.S. law as it affects the entry of persons, goods, and investment to national markets; multinational corporations, export controls, international institutions that affect private transactions, such as GATT and the EEC; and the comparative study of similar topics in both developed and developing countries.
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International Commercial Arbitration
The course is intended to provide students with an understanding of the law and practice of international commercial arbitration. Using the issues presented in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration ("Vis") Moot problem as an integral part of the learning experience, this course will cover the basics of international commercial arbitration, from the drafting of the arbitration clause, selection of the arbitrators, presentation of the case to the arbitral tribunal, to the recognition/enforcement and/or setting aside of the arbitral award. The course will explore the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, the Federal Arbitration Act, the UNCITRAL Model Law, as well as other treaties and conventions that largely account for why international arbitration is one of the leading mechanisms for resolving international business disputes. The course will introduce the students to the major international arbitral institutions and review their rules of procedure. Students who enroll in this course may also be interested in competing in the Vis Moot Court Competition.
Prerequisite: Contracts.
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International Tax
This course deals with U.S. taxation of income from international transactions. U.S. income taxation of foreign persons and of foreign-source income derived by U.S. persons is examined. Topics to be addressed include: operation of the foreign tax credit and of U.S. income tax treaties; the new definitions of U.S. residency under the Tax Reform Act of 1984; U.S. taxation of foreign investment in U.S. real estate; deferral of U.S. tax on income derived by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies; and U.S. tax consequences of differing methods of conducting international business transactions.
Prerequisite: Federal Income Tax.
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International Trade Doctrine and Practice
This course combines the study of international trade and investment treaty law with training in the practice skills and rules governing international business transactions among private parties. We will study the international treaty framework liberalizing and regulating the flow of goods, services, capital, and persons across borders, including nontariff barriers to trade, international intellectual property, international bids, and other procurement contracts, the regulation of international finance and foreign ventures, and the institutional and constitutional framework applicable to trade and investment in the international context. We will also cover the principal issues faced by cross-border practitioners structuring the sale of goods, licenses, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, and other sample transactions that individuals and corporations effectuate in the ordinary course of their business. Students will have the opportunity to structure a cross-border merger and to work on an international investment filing, and to practice the skills necessary to those areas of legal practice. The course will cover selected provisions of the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, and European Union treaties, and case law decided thereunder, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement currently under negotiation, with a view to giving the students the doctrinal and practical tools to understand the policy choices made under each regulatory framework.
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International Trade Regulation
This course introduces students to the principal legal, business, and policy aspects of international trade, with a strong focus on United States trade law within the context of the WTO-GATT Agreements. The course will generally explore "globalization," in terms of the forms of international business penetration, income determinations, country classifications, and principles of sovereignty. The individual topics covered will include: 1) the foundations of International Trade Law; 2) international legal structures such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the North American Free Trade Alliance (NAFTA); 3) the intersection of international trade and domestic standards; 4) Antidumping and Countervailing Duty law; 5) unilateral United States retaliation against foreign practices under Section 301 of the U.S. trade statutes; and 6) trade in the context of intellectual property rights.
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Interviewing and Counseling
Theory and skills of the lawyer/client and lawyer/lawyer roles. Includes simulations, some of which will be videotaped and individually critiqued. Topics include the nature of the lawyer/client interview, planning and structure of an interview, the lawyer's development and testing of factual and legal theories, psychological and ethical issues, techniques and ethics of assisting clients to make decisions, techniques of problem solving. Simulations enable students to develop a beginning level of proficiency in these skills.
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Introduction to International Law
The content of the course will cover the role of legal processes, institutions, and organizations in the evolving world community. It covers the manner in which traditional international law arose and calls for an analysis of the basic concepts of international law: sources, subjects, sovereignty, treaties and agreements, jurisdiction, state responsibility, the use of force, and peaceful settlement of disputes. Insofar as possible, it deals with the interrelated problems of war, poverty, and maldevelopment; social injustice; and ecological instability throughout the globe.
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Introduction to UCC
This course provides an introduction to the concepts and methods of commercial law. A survey course, it explores all articles of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) as well as international dimensions of commercial law. The student will be required to digest, deconstruct, and synthesize with the applicable legal principles of commercial law the very complex factual patterns presented in the cases in the textbook. In addition, while the primary emphasis of the course will be on cases, we will also devote a considerable amount of time to the statutory provisions of the UCC that are cited in the cases or the text.
Completion of this course gives students a firm footing for any advanced course in commercial law. Students taking only one course in commercial law will, in this course, receive broad exposure to the basics of commercial law.
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Islamic Jurisprudence
This course introduces the student to the history, sources, and methodology of Islamic Law and Jurisprudence (the Shari'a). The student will gain a basic familiarity with the four primary sources of the Shari'a: The Holy Qu'ran, the Sunnah (precedent) of the Prophet Muhammad, the Doctrine of Ijma' (Consensus), and Qiyas (methods of analogical reasoning used by Islamic jurists). The course is divided into two parts. In Part I, students study the history, theory, and sources of Islamic jurisprudence. Part II comprises Islamic family law, with specific reference to Islamic family law in American courts.
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Jewish Law
Covers the evolution and development of Jewish Law from Biblical to Talmudic to post-Talmudic to current times. Included among the various categories of law are torts, real estate, criminal law, and commercial contracts. Addresses the judiciary and the legislative and other rule-making systems. The course culminates in an intensive study of personal property.
No prior knowledge of Judaism or Hebrew is necessary.
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Jurisdiction
Examines fundamental questions about the idea of "jurisdiction" in the law. The course asks how questions of judicial jurisdiction differ from other sorts of legal questions, and what the consequences of those differences might be. Specific topics include the varying criteria for identifying which legal rules are "jurisdictional," the direct and collateral authority of judicial decisions rendered in the absence of jurisdiction, the threshold character (or not) of jurisdictional issues, the possibility of "jurisdiction to determine jurisdiction," waiver of jurisdictional bars, attitudes to the interpretation of jurisdictional statutes, the special problems posed when jurisdictional questions overlap with questions on the merits, distinctions between courts of inferior and superior jurisdiction and between courts of general and limited jurisdiction, notions of "inherent" and "hypothetical" jurisdiction, judicial immunity, jurisdictional facts and the preclusive effect of factual determinations made in dismissals for lack of jurisdiction, habeas corpus as a jurisdictional doctrine or not, the use of jurisdictional concepts in administrative law, and the doctrine of "jurisdictional time limits."
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Jurisprudence: Human Rights and Animal Rights
In this course, we will first examine the concept of a right and the differences between moral theories based on rights and those based on consequences, virtue, or other considerations. As part of this portion of the course, we will consider the relationship between law and morality. We will then explore the ways in which race, sex, sexual orientation, and species limit membership in the moral and legal community. We will examine rights issues raised in various contexts involving humans and nonhumans, including abortion, the status of women in a patriarchal society, gay rights, affirmative action, capital punishment, vegetarianism, the status of nonhumans as property, and the use of animals in biomedical experiments.
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Labor Law
A study of the law's response to employees' efforts to organize and take concerted action to improve their wages, hours, and other employment conditions. The course traces the evolution of a national labor policy in this country through the New Deal and later federal legislation. Focus on the protections afforded by federal law to union organizational activities; the procedures established by federal law for the selection of representatives for the purposes of collective bargaining; federal regulation of concerted economic activity by unions, such as strikes, boycotts, and picketing, and of countervailing employer action; and the extent of federal preemption of state regulation in the labor area.
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Landlord-Tenant Law
This course will examine common law and statutory approaches to landlord-tenant law, with an emphasis on New Jersey's unique Anti-Eviction Act. We will also cover the various federal public housing programs, including the Housing Choice Voucher program (commonly known as Section 8). We will explore theoretical as well as practical approaches to the material.
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Land-Use Law and Policy
This course examines how the development and preservation of land is shaped and controlled through government regulation. Among the major issues this course will examine are: the law of zoning, the constitutional constraints on land-use regulation, and the establishment and enforcement of subdivision controls, building codes, and other development regulations. The course will explore several current topics in land-use regulation, including exclusionary zoning, environmental justice, smart growth, and historic preservation. Students will approach these questions from both theoretical and practical vantage points. A hot topic in New Jersey land-use law is the aftermath of the New Jersey Supreme Court's March 2015 decision in In re Adoption of N.J.A.C. 5:96 & 5:97, 221 N.J. 1 (2015), an opinion that returned Mount Laurel compliance to the trial courts (in place of the New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing), and this course will include consideration of the issues that arise from that landmark opinion.
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Law and Economics
Courts increasingly look to economics to help analyze legal issues. In a variety of legal domains --including civil procedure, contracts, torts, criminal law, and intellectual property--courts have made (and will make) assumptions about how individuals will respond to incentives, choices, and risks to help guide their rulings. In this class we will look at the foundations of these underlying assumptions and at the ways that courts use economics to craft their decisions. We will also look at a number of critiques of economic theory and consider--in light of those critiques--whether and how much we can learn from economics.
Special Note: If enrollment is 14 or fewer, course may be offered at the professor's discretion as a 3-credit writing course in which a paper is required in lieu of a final examination.
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Law and Mass Communications
This course explores the law that impacts upon the publication and broadcast of news and related content by traditional media, primarily newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. The course covers defamation, privacy causes of action and related newsgathering torts, journalist's access to government information and government proceedings, reporters' privilege to protect confidential sources and material, broadcast regulation, and the impact of new technologies on media law. Some emphasis is placed on the problems of developing a coherent theory of "freedom of the press" in the context of the media today.
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Law and Neuroscience
The interface between law and neuroscience has become one of the fastest-growing subfields in law. Use of neuroscientific evidence in and out of the courtroom has become routine in many parts of the world and is gaining traction in the United States. This course will provide an overview of the field with a detailed look at some of the key questions. These include the role of brain anomalies as a defense in criminal proceedings, free will, and the nature of human agency.
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Law and the Humanities I, II
Law is not the most effective means of social control. Custom, morality, ethics, religion, and habit are more pervasive and have much to do with the way people act in their day-to-day lives. Though cultures differ radically across the planet, the experience of being a human is remarkably constant in many respects; we are always in the process of trying to become, while culture is affecting us as we affect it. Drama, music, dance, architecture, painting, and literature are some practices which are conventionally labeled as humanities. The course will be concerned primarily with fiction, albeit other domains--painting, film, drama--will also be explored. Fiction is a useful way to explore the experience of being a human in various societies over time and around the world. Illustrative books from past courses (some will be repeated) include: The Book of Job; Aeschylus, The Orestian Trilogy; Plato, Phaedrus; Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Eliot, Middlemarch; Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov; Morrison, Beloved; Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Mahfouz, Palace Walk; Amado, Captains of the Sands; Allende, The House of Spirits; Gordimer, None to Accompany Me; Roy, The God of Small Things; and McEwan, Atonement.
Books may differ in two courses. Students may enroll in Law and the Humanities I and II in either sequence.
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Law, Justice, and Society
Surveys selected topics in social, political, and legal theory, emphasizing in particular recent philosophical work concerning legal authority and political legitimacy, democratic theory, distributive/economic justice, the theory of rights, as well as narrower topics like abortion and affirmative action.
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Law of Democracy: Elections and the Political Process
Provides a comprehensive overview of the political process, and examines the most significant contemporary legal and constitutional issues affecting federal and state elections. The course will cover rights of access to the political process, voting rights, group-based disenfranchisement, as well as structural issues such as campaign finance regulation, redistricting (generally, as well as partisan and race-based redistricting), the role of political parties, and Bush v. Gore. The course also will touch on critical aspects of New Jersey's election law including the nomination process, reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures, pay-to-play, public financing of campaigns, and other significant topics.
Course not open to students who have previously taken Election Law and the Political Process.
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Law, Religion, and Morality
Religion, law, and morality are three abiding impulses among human beings and forces in human history. Yet the precise relationships among the three have long been subjects of doubt and debate.
This course seeks to explore the following six distinct problems:
(1) What role can or should morality play in law and legal reasoning? In particular, (a) is consistency with morality a part of the very definition of a valid law, (b) in any event, can or should the law incorporate or directly enforce moral rules, (c) how have various historic trends in legal thought understood the answers to these questions?
(2) Is morality itself an essentially law-like set of rules, or something else?
(3) What is the role of legal or law-like rules in religious life? How have various religious traditions (for instance Judaism and Christianity), and competing strands within those traditions, understood whether something called "law" is central, peripheral, or even adverse to the life of the spirit, and how have those attitudes shaped more general understandings about the meaning and significance of secular law and politics?
(4) How has, and how should, religion figure in the development of secular legal systems? What has been the fate of efforts, as in some Islamic nations, to incorporate religious law directly into the law of the state?
(5) What is the place of religion in moral reasoning? In what sense, if any, did moral thought arise out of religion? And can or should moral reasoning detach itself from religious influences and modes of thought?
(6) What is the place of morality in religious life and thought? Can there be conflicts, even from within a given religious tradition, between morality and the demands of religious faith?
We'll also try to examine the resemblances, connections, and differences among these questions, and ask whether the various arguments can illuminate each other. Our readings will be philosophical, jurisprudential, legal, religious, historical, and anthropological. The hope is not to deal with any of these topics exhaustively, but rather to clarify a set of important questions, dig into selected treatments of those questions, and provoke lively discussions along the way. This is not (except for occasional discussions) a course in church-state relations or religious liberty. Rather, it focuses on a broader set of questions about the relations among law, morality, and religion as concepts, institutions, forms of reasoning, and aspects of culture and lived life.
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Law Revision in New Jersey
Statutory drafting requires a precision not demanded by other forms of legal writing. Every word chosen by the drafter of a statute must mean something unique, and should represent the option least likely to be misunderstood by the reader. Students who take this course will have the opportunity to work with staff of the New Jersey Law Revision Commission to intensively research various areas of the law and prepare draft statutory language for consideration by the commission and, ultimately, the legislature. Students will: identify, research, and analyze areas of the law in need of revision; reach out to members of the public for input; and draft a report including both explanatory material and proposed statutory language. In order to provide context and support for the students' hands-on experience, the course will include consideration of: the role of statutes and the legislature generally, the legislative and law revision processes in New Jersey, legislative structure and format, statutory interpretation, and other matters relevant to statutory drafting.
Students must enroll in both the classroom component and a field placement.
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Legal Profession
An introduction to the lawyer's role and the law governing it, including such subjects as confidentiality, conflicts of interest, the limits of advocacy, lawyer fees, delivery of legal services, malpractice liability, and client misconduct. The course will focus on a series of problems, which will be explored in the light of professional rules, readings, and personal choices.
Course not open to students who have taken Professional Responsibility.
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Legislation
An introduction to the laws governing the legislative process and the approaches to and principles of statutory interpretation. Among other topics, the course will examine interpretive canons focusing on statutory text, the role of legislative history, legislative intent, and legislative purpose, "plain statement" rules, the effect of the construction of statutes by administrative agencies, and resolving conflict between statutes. Depending on the professor, the course may cover topics such as lobbying restrictions and the law relating to the election of legislators.
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Media Law
Introduction to the law governing digital, broadcast, and cable media content, transmission, and use. We will explore questions such as: Who is a journalist? What liability is there for defamation online? What is the difference between cable regulation and internet regulation? Who exercises power over the media? What kinds of media regulation are consistent with the First Amendment? We will look at issues of First Amendment, tort, intellectual property and regulation, with special emphasis on how theories of newsgathering rights and responsibilities work in the digital world. There will be a final exam and short writing exercises.
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Mediation
Mediation, in which a neutral third party assists people in resolving their disputes, has witnessed a phenomenal growth in the last few years. Many court systems use mediation as a way to settle cases without a trial. Lawyers may urge their clients to try mediation to get better agreements less expensively, without the hostility and aggravation that often accompany litigation. The practice of mediation seems to be on its way to becoming a profession. Even if they do not act as mediators themselves, lawyers may find themselves representing parties in mediation sessions or drafting mediation clauses for contracts. But mediation raises substantial questions about fairness, accuracy, confidentiality, equity, and differences in power: Should it replace the traditional ways of resolving disputes? This course will cover the key skills that mediators should have, using simulated mediations in which students will participate. It will also cover the conceptual issues that should be understood to make sound judgments about the use of mediation. After initial skills training in the course, students may have the opportunity to act as mediators in real disputes, such as those pending in small claims courts, municipal courts, and other venues. Students should have enough flexibility in their schedules to make themselves available for this kind of work.
This course may be used to satisfy part of the requirements for the Certificate in Conflict Management. It is designed to follow up in a more intensive way some of the concepts introduced in Alternative Dispute Resolution, and may be of particular interest to students who have taken, or are concurrently taking, that course but Alternative Dispute Resolution is not required.
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Mental Health Law
This course will examine various ways in which American law responds to the existence of mental illness. Readings and discussions explore such matters as privacy and the psychiatrist/patient privilege, the psychiatrist's duty to warn potential victims of a patient's violent impulses, a patient's right to refuse medication, the standard for confining those mentally ill individuals who are "dangerous" in mental institutions, and the implications of mental illness for crime and punishment, including such issues as the insanity defense and competency to be executed.
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Mergers and Acquisitions
This course surveys the law and practice governing mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, and other business combinations. We will cover transactions ranging from the sale of small, privately held companies to the merger of large public corporations. The following subject-matter areas will be covered: due diligence and initial structuring of the transaction, including tax, antitrust, corporate governance, contractual, and other considerations relevant to the initial analysis of the deal; mechanics of the transaction, including the difference between mergers, stock sales, and asset sales, and a review of common contractual frameworks; fiduciary duties of directors; hostile takeovers, including antitakeover devices and statutes; legal frameworks relevant to individual representations and warranties, including intellectual property, contracts, labor, environmental, and tax; disclosure requirements arising from the securities laws and contractual practice; accounting issues; and post-sale issues such as the operation of indemnification provisions, covenants, purchase price adjustments, and deferred consideration; and like issues. We will focus on domestic transactions but also study selected regulatory frameworks commonly involved in cross-border mergers, such as the European Merger Regulation, other European antitrust concepts, and the evolving law applicable to "tax inversions."
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Military Law and Justice
This course will ground the student in the history and tradition of a separate military law for members of the armed forces. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, Court-Martial procedures and evidence, law of war authorities, and national security cases will be covered. Each session will contain specific legal concepts relevant to the subject matter. Students will develop a broad appreciation for the importance of a separate law and procedure for members of the armed forces. The final grade will be based on class participation, a presentation to the class, and a semester paper.
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Municipal Corporations
This course will consider the forms and functions of local government; the workings of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches thereof; the relationship of local government to county and state authority; and the legal issues likely to be involved with all of the foregoing. The course will consider the principal decisions of the United States Supreme Court and the New Jersey courts, with some emphasis given to zoning and planning matters, tort claims, and state and federal constitutional issues that have particular relevance to local government.
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National Security Law
This course will explore the ways in which terrorism has challenged the traditional legal constructs of international and domestic law designed to protect national security. It will begin with a historical discussion of the evolution of the international law of sovereignty and war, the doctrine of posse comitatus, and the type of terrorism that has led to today's war on terror. It will proceed to examine the ways in which acts of terror were handled pre-and-post 9/11, including the passage and implementation of the Patriot Act, the designation of detained individuals as enemy combatants, the use of immigration laws and material witness statutes to detain individuals, and the respective roles of domestic lawmakers and courts, international alliances, and the United Nations in conducting the war on terror.
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Natural Resources Law
This course is a survey of federal natural resources law, with an emphasis on current legal issues, including the development of both traditional and alternative energy sources. The course will cover the history of public land law; the constitutional issues in federal control of natural resources; environmental planning; wildlife protection; public land management; fisheries and marine resources; and minerals (including oil and gas), both onshore and offshore. Throughout the course, we will discuss the history and politics of natural resources law, as well as the practical aspects of practicing in this area. This class is designed to prepare students for practice not just in natural resources law, but in any area of the law that requires government regulation. The various resources we discuss pose different sorts of problems. In studying the regulatory responses to those problems, we build a toolkit of regulatory models that can be helpful in solving any resource problem.
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Negotiable Instruments
This course examines both the law that governs the check system in the United States as well as its practical operation. The discussion explores issues that arise both in daily life and in the practice of law. If someone steals your checkbook and cashes your check, when are you liable to the bank? If you buy a defective widget and then stop payment, can the seller sue you on the check? If you guarantee your friend's car loan, when can the creditor sue you? By the way, when you win that million dollar verdict, who should be listed as payee on the check, you or your client? No matter what type of law you intend to practice, you will want to know the answers to these questions. The course also explores the intricate system by which banks collect checks in this country. Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) will be studied, as well as applicable federal law.
Prerequisite: Contracts.
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New Jersey Practice
To prepare students for the bar examination and in representation of clients in civil actions, the course covers the entire litigation process from initial client interview through standing to sue; personal jurisdiction and service of process; federal removal procedure; complaint, answer, affirmative defenses, counterclaims, and crossclaims; venue; joinder of claims and parties; default judgement procedure; motions to dismiss on the pleadings, discovery, and summary judgement motions; interrogatories, requests for documents, depositions, and requests for admissions; offer of judgement and arbitration; preparation for trial; jury selection, openings, summation, and jury verdicts; trial and post-trial motions; attorney feed and interest on judgements and basic appellate rules for trial lawyers.
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New Jersey Supreme Court: Powers and Relationships
This course will explore the powers of the New Jersey Supreme Court under the New Jersey State Constitution and as described in the Court's opinions; consider representative opinions of the Court and of other State Supreme Courts and the United States Supreme Court in order to understand the interactions between those other Courts and the New Jersey Supreme Court; and, examine the relationships between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government in New Jersey through a review of decisions that directly address those relationships as well as decisions that invalidate acts of the other branches.
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New York Practice
This course examines New York civil practice law: organization and jurisdiction of the courts; civil actions, process; joinder of parties, claims, and remedies; venue; discovery; pretrial motions, including summary judgment; pretrial conference; consolidation; trial motions; verdicts, finding, and judgments; post-trial motions; executions; Article 78 proceedings; contempt; attachment and capias; injunctions and special proceedings; appeals: final, interlocutory, and discretionary; scope of review; mandate and judgment.
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Oil and Gas Development and the Environment
The course will introduce key aspects of the common law, contracts, and statutory framework used to explore for and produce oil and gas in the United States and internationally. It will cover the Rule of Capture, the typical oil and gas lease on private lands; state oil and gas conservation regulation; leasing practices on U.S. public lands; an overview of U.S. environmental regulation of oil and gas, especially hydraulic fracturing issues; and the basic principles of rate regulation and public utilities governing natural gas. The course will then look at the acquisition of host government oil and gas development contracts from foreign governments and the treatment of best practices, sustainable development, and social issues, including human rights, when operating abroad. This is a unique opportunity to take a law course which cuts across several core law school subjects and from the perspective of a particular business--oil and gas, a business that deals with the most widely traded and strategically important commodity.
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Origins of Modern Financial Regulation
This course examines the history of modern financial regulation, with special emphasis on the U.S. federal securities laws passed between 1933 and 1940, as well as the birth and early development of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The course begins with a discussion of the passage of the Securities Act of 1933, enacted as part of FDR's First Hundred Days, and will then cover passage of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which created the SEC and established the regulation of stockbrokers. We will study the enactment of three other laws, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, the Investment Company Act, and the Investment Advisers Act. Broadly speaking, the readings will present rival views of financial legislation and government regulation, an investor protection view, holding that the laws were passed to protect investors from fraud, and an interest group view, stating that the laws were enacted in response to pressure by firms seeking protection from competition.
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Partnership and Limited Liabiity Company Tax
This course studies the federal income tax treatment of partnerships and limited liability companies (LLC). It begins with the choice of entity for a new business venture, and then addresses the issues that arise in the formation of a partnership or LLC and in its operation. The topics to be covered include: partnership accounting, receipt of a partnership interest for services, contributions of encumbered property, special allocation of partnership items of income or deduction, distributions to partners, and sale of a partnership interest. We will focus on reading the relevant provisions of the Internal Revenue Code and Treasury Regulations and on applying the provisions to assigned problems.
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Patent-Centered Health Law
This course surveys complex patient-centered legal issues created by the intersection of health law and ethics. Basic tenants of core legal concepts surrounding the interaction between patients and health care providers, from the perspective of the legal professionals advising client-stakeholders, will be introduced during the semester. Students will have the opportunity to learn and comprehend the legal concepts and navigate certain health law issues through practical, scenario-based exercises. Topics covered during the course may include the following: autonomy; informed consent; privacy and confidentiality; provider ethics and liability; guardianship; mental capacity; end-of-life decision making; and organ, tissue, and other anatomic gifting.
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Patent Law
A study of the patent law statutes and case law. The course covers the requisites of patentability, including eligible subject matter, utility, novelty, nonobviousness, and disclosure. It then turns to patent enforcement issues, including claim interpretation, the doctrine of equivalents, and remedies. The course also addresses the policy underpinnings of the patent system and the international context in which patents operate. The course is designed for a broad range of students, including those who may encounter patent issues as part of a general litigation, corporate or regulatory practice.
No scientific, technical, or patent background is required.
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Patent Litigation and Enforcement
This course builds on the basics of patent law covered in Patent Law I (e.g., legal requirements for patentability, written description, enablement, novelty, nonobviousness, utility, and statutory subject matter), which is a prerequisite. It examines litigation aspects of patent practice, including the practical strategy issues driving litigation tactics. Litigation is considered from the precomplaint stage through discovery, claim construction, and trial. The textbook will be Moore, Holbrook, & Murphy's Patent Litigation and Strategy, 4th ed. In addition to a final examination, there will be occasional practice-oriented writing and speaking assignments.
Prerequisite: Patent Law I.
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Payment Systems
This course begins by examining the law that governs promissory notes and checks in the United States as well as the legal regulation of the bank collection of checks. These issues arise daily in life and in law practice. If someone steals your checkbook and cashes your check, when are you liable to the bank? If you buy a defective widget and then stop payment, can the seller sue you on the check? If you guarantee your friend's car loan, when can the creditor sue you? By the way, when you win that million dollar verdict, who should the check be written to, you or your client? Every lawyer should know the answers to these questions. The course then explores the law governing credit cards and electronic funds transfer. There will be a field trip to one of the local check processing centers.
Prerequisite: One previous course in Commercial Law (either Introduction to the UCC; Introduction to the UCC: Comparative Sales; Sales; or Secured Transactions).
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Persuasion in Legal Writing
This course delves into the persuasion theories that underlie effective legal advocacy. Students learn and apply the why behind legal writing strategies. Among the topics studied are the classical and modern rhetoric foundations of legal persuasion and credibility (ethos/logos/pathos/kairos); the organization of different types of legal arguments by invention rather than by arrangement and formulas; the role of stock stories and visual imagery in legal and factual analysis; the use of literary/cultural allusions as part of legal reasoning; storytelling and narrative coherence in communications; and visual design and technologies used in attorney communications. Throughout the semester students will analyze the persuasion used in attorneys' communications--briefs, judicial opinions, emails, letters, contracts, public relations materials, and other documents. While there are several small projects assigned during the semester, the major project involves the substantial revision of a document previously written by the student, along with explanatory analytical annotations. Students should have this previously written document selected by the second week of the course.
Prerequisites: LAWR 1 and 2.
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Pharmaceutical Patent Law
Compared with other types of companies, pharmaceutical/life science companies face unique challenges in bringing their new products (drugs) to market, and protecting them once they reach the market, due in large part to the convergence of patent, FDA, and antitrust laws. This course will study the various statutory and regulatory regimes in play, focusing on real-world problems confronting the industry. Topics include patent litigation between innovators and generics; settlements and antitrust scrutiny; generic biologics; patent prosecution and transactional issues; the branded and generic drug approval processes; and Orange Book listing requirements and strategies.
Pre- and corequisites: This course is open to students who either: (a) have completed Patent Law; (b) have completed Copyright and Trademark or Business Torts and Intellectual Property and are simultaneously enrolled in Patent Law; or (c) have taken the Patent Bar or are former Patent Examiners.
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Political and Corporate Corruption Law
Law is the primary public tool to meet the challenges posed by political and corporate corruption. Bribery, bid-rigging, undisclosed conflicts of interest, omission of material information from corporate disclosures, legal restraints on political activity by government workers, and the use of campaign contributions to gain political influence are all within the range of laws designed to limit and restrain public and private corruption. This course will examine leading corruption cases including the Watergate and Iran contra scandals; the Enron, Arthur Anderson, Worldcom fraud cases; the Abscam congressional payoff prosecutions; corporate fiduciary duty as seen in the Miliken and Martha Stewart cases; the Clinton-era Whitewater and impeachment investigations; the ethics inquiries of Senator Robert Torricelli and Representative Tom DeLay. An important feature of the course will be an extended legal analysis of corruption issues arising out of New Jersey's political and governmental system. The full range of legal and ethical tools concerning governmental and business corruption will be explored, including the federal Hobbs Act; civil and criminal RICO applied to corporate and political corruption cases; New Jersey's antibribery act; legislative disclosure rules; Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance; the status of pay-to-play donations under antibribery laws; obstruction of justice; and destruction of corporate records. Constitutional questions as to state/federal enforcement power in political and corporate cases will also be examined.
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Poverty Law
After introduction to the some of the basic currents of American antipoverty policy, the course will examine federal and state constitutional protections for the poor with regard to housing, access to the courts, access to the political process, and education, among other areas. It will then examine federal social welfare law and programs (both the procedural protections relevant to the award and termination of benefits and some salient substantive provisions). It will then proceed to an examination of the intersection of poverty and race and the application of civil rights law to address issues of particular concern to low-income communities and individuals of color. Finally, in whatever time remains, it may address other issues such as the legal implications of particular interdisciplinary or multifaceted problems such as homelessness or the application of international human rights law regimes on issues of world hunger and global poverty.
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Pretrial Criminal Practice
This course will examine the events that happen in the life of a criminal case before that case is finally tried in court. Specifically, we will examine, inter alia, initial court appearances and arraignments, bail applications, discovery and inspection in criminal cases, criminal pretrial motions, and plea proceedings. While much of the course will look at criminal cases from the perspective of a criminal defendant, certain vital parts of the prosecutor's role will also be examined, including the filing of criminal complaints, the securing of arrest warrants, Grand Jury procedures, the procurement of search warrants, and the employment of other investigative tools. The aim is that at the end of the course students will have a good idea of how criminal matters are initiated and how they ultimately make their way to a trial by jury.
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Products Liability
This course examines and analyzes the origins and current role of products liability law in American society and discusses current trends in products liability law in Congress and the courts. Additionally, it focuses on the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability and the many interesting and complex issues addressed therein from the perspectives of consumers, manufacturers, and plaintiffs' lawyers. These issues include potential causes of action against manufacturers or distributors of products including: liability for defective products, including standards for determining whether a product is defective (such as strict liability and risk-utility tests); liability for failure to warn of a product's dangers; and liability for failure to recall a defective product. Also considers manufacturers' and distributors' affirmative defenses to such causes of action, including: statutes of limitation and repose; compliance with the current state of the art; assumption of risk; failure to prove proximate cause; and preemption.
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Professional Responsibility
The number of suits against lawyers is growing, as is the law of malpractice and the involvement of other lawyers representing plaintiffs or defendants. This course considers such issues as the applicable causes of action, suits by nonclients, the role of experts and professional rules, defenses, and the prevention of malpractice.
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Public Interest Legal Research and Writing
This is a hybrid clinical and writing course. Students undertake real legal research assignments from practicing lawyers who represent nonprofits or government agencies. The course culminates in submitting a written product to the outside lawyer and students' oral presentation of their research results to the outside lawyer. The course prepares students for collaborative law practice. Students are responsible both for producing their own work product and for providing peer feedback to other students on every stage of the research, writing, and oral presentation process. There is peer review of the research plan, outline, draft, revised draft, and practice oral presentations. Because students are cast both as the authoring attorney for their own work product and simulate the role of a supervising attorney for other students' work product, there is substantial peer review of written work product in addition to work required for weekly class preparation. To facilitate collaboration, all assignments each semester are for a single outside entity (e.g., Philadelphia Commission for Human Relations, Philadelphia Law Department Civil Rights and Appeals Units). Every week, students will make progress on their own research and writing projects and provide peer review to fellow students. While class time will be devoted to learning research, writing, and oral presentation skills, as well as collaborative meetings among students working on similar projects, most peer review and student work on their own writing projects, which is extensive, takes place outside of class.
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Punishment and Sentencing
Punishment and sentencing serve many different functions in society. This course explores connections between specific sentencing rules and the purposes, politics, and practicalities of criminal justice. In this course, we will consider the role of the U.S. Constitution in limiting legislative initiatives and judicial discretion. We will examine federal and state sentencing guidelines; sentencing factors that determine the choice of a penalty for an individual offender; the role of race, class, and gender in administration of criminal sentences; death penalty jurisprudence; treatment of sex offenders and other important issues of distribution of criminal punishment today.
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Race, Civil Rights, and Equality
This class will examine the arc of civil rights law and changing conceptions of race and racial equality. A principal goal of the course is to enhance students' understanding of equal protection doctrine as it applies to race and to develop a critical analysis of that doctrine. Among the topics that will be discussed: how law structures social conceptions of equality and the role that courts can and should play in promoting equality. The course will examine these topics principally through the lens of Supreme Court cases, but will also take an interdisciplinary approach by drawing on social science, historical materials, and social commentary on race. The class will also explore the practical aspects of modern civil rights litigation as both a defensive and affirmative tool, with a focus on the civil rights cases from the Supreme Court's most recent term.
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Race, Class, and Metropolitan Equity
This class examines the role of law and other disciplines in the creation and amelioration of structural inequality. Structural inequality is viewed primarily through the lens of place-based opportunities. That is, we examine the institutional resources available to households, neighborhoods, and municipalities where they're located. We analyze the rules and policies that enhance those resources as well as the barriers that limit them. Among the topics we explore in detail are concentrated wealth and poverty; local land-use regulation; public finance; educational equity; racial and economic segregation; state and federal housing policy; public health; infrastructure and transportation. We explore solutions to the disparities affecting different parts of our regions by utilizing the interdisciplinary perspective of metropolitan equity--the range of legal and policy reforms at the regional level that may provide greater social balance, political efficiency, and economic opportunity for a changing society. Students are primarily graded on research papers. (This class is associated with the Rutgers Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity and is often cross-listed with other Rutgers University-Newark graduate departments.)
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Real Estate Development
This course will explore the role of the attorney in all aspects of the real estate development process, including where the attorney is a participant in the project. Topics include project selection and planning, feasibility analysis, entity formation, acquisition, required approvals, permitting, financing, leasing, and sale. Coordination with other professionals--real estate agents, marketing experts, bankers, appraisers, and planners will be discussed. Conflicts of interest and other ethical issues will be covered.
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Real Estate Transactions
A survey course encompassing typical residential and commercial transactions, title assurances, and financing techniques.
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Refugee Law
This course will examine concepts underlying refugee and humanitarian protection afforded to various classes of immigrants, with an emphasis on U.S. law and policy. The majority of the course will focus on the law of asylum, a form of relief available to those refugees who have been persecuted in the past or fear future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. A portion of the course will be devoted to other types of humanitarian relief, such as relief under the Convention of Torture; Temporary Protected Status for those who cannot be returned to their home country due to armed conflict or environmental disaster; and protection for victims of human trafficking, battered immigrants, victims of certain crimes, and abandoned or abused children. The course will also address practical aspects of refugee representation, including the impact of psychological trauma and cross-cultural communication. Students will engage in experiential learning, for example by observing asylum hearings or visiting a local detention center, and will take an exam at the end of the semester. There is no prerequisite for this class, and no prior knowledge of immigration law is presumed.
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Regulation of Financial Institutions
Capital markets comprise banks, insurance companies, securities firms, and investment companies. These markets have integrated rapidly since financial deregulation began in the 1980's. The firms themselves have reorganized and consolidated, enabled in no small part by technological advances in information processing. We will examine these firms and the agencies charged with their oversight. Particular emphasis will be laid upon the shared structural features of market participants, the implications of recent market failures, and the consequences of uncoordinated allocation of regulatory responsibilities across several federal and state agencies.
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Remedies
Most law school classes focus on legal liability--when has Jane breached a contract, John committed a tort, or Jerry violated the constitutional rights of Joy? This class is different. In this course, we will assume that a defendant's conduct is (or will be) wrongful and ask what a court can do for those who have been wronged or anticipate being wronged and do to those who have or will wrong others. Topics will include damages measurement, injunctive and preliminary relief, specific performance, declaratory judgments, restitution, criminal and civil contempt, punitive remedies, and complex equitable remedies in institutional and civil rights litigation. Some of these topics will offer a review of things learned elsewhere in the curriculum; other topics will be less familiar.
Questions about remedies dominate the lawyer-client relationship. Clients are less interested in proving liability than in asking what they can get through litigation. From that perspective, this course is eminently practical. It is also deeply theoretical. It offers an opportunity to integrate insights, and observe regularities and differences, from disparate parts of the curriculum.
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Retirement and Welfare Benefit Plans
This course will cover the federal law governing qualified employer-sponsored retirement plans and, to a lesser extent, other types of employee benefits, such as health care plans, group-term life insurance, and dependent care assistance. It will explore issues from the perspective of large and small businesses sponsoring plans and from the perspective of employees participating in these plans. We will cover a variety of topics: various types of retirement plans (including defined benefit plans and 401(k) plans) and welfare benefit plans (such as flexible spending accounts); rules for vesting and nondiscrimination and limits on benefits; disclosure requirements and fiduciary responsibilities under the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) for sponsors of retirement or welfare plans; income tax implications for participants; rollovers of retirement benefits to individual retirement accounts (traditional and Roth IRAs) on termination of employment; required minimum distributions for retired individuals; the impact of bankruptcy and divorce; and plan terminations and mergers. While studying current rules, we will also discuss criticisms of these rules and recent reform proposals designed to increase effectiveness, reduce complexity, and limit revenue losses.
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Roman Law
During the reign of the Emperor Justinian in the early sixth century, a team of experienced scholars roamed throughout Italy to collect the legal texts and treatises of the classical Roman jurists, texts written several centuries earlier. The scholars selected about 5 percent of those texts to include in the Digest and then (tragically) discarded the rest. The Digest was soon lost, then rediscovered around 1000 in Bologna, at which point it became the foundation for the civil law, the legal system that prevails in most countries that do not have English as an official language. Roman law is studied at virtually all civilian law schools as the historical foundation of their codifications.
That is not how we read the Digest. That is because the classical Roman jurists were common lawyers, some of the best who have ever worked in the law. Our goal is to read the Digest in a way that allows us to benefit from the extraordinary insight these great lawyers provide as to the workings of a common law system. For that purpose, we will follow the guidance of Ulpian (170-223), perhaps the greatest jurist who ever lived. We will read and discuss his sentences, at the rate of a couple of sentences per class period, and, with some effort and even greater pleasure, we will learn to make sense of his hypotheticals. As we do, we will get to know and like Ulpian, and, even more importantly, learn to think like him. His thought is so seductive that, most likely, you will never stop thinking in this way. This is the most beautiful course I have ever been associated with, either as an instructor or as a student.
Most of our work is done in class discussion, since, surprisingly, there are no secondary sources to help with our particular project. Students will write three short papers during the course of the semester. As far as prerequisites are concerned, all that is needed is a spirit of adventure. Since this is a course about common law, there is no need for a reading knowledge of Latin, or an overview of Roman history, or even an acquaintance with or interest in Antiquity.
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Sales
Course builds on the study of sales law in Contracts and Commercial Law: An Introduction to the UCC; provides an in-depth examination of Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code (Sales), including formation, warranties, risk of loss, breach, and remedies. Examines fundamental aspects of the documentary transaction--the means by which merchants buy and sell goods around the world. May also consider the Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG), the law increasingly governing international sales transactions. Students are given practical training in methods of statutory interpretation--how to read statutory language and how to use statutes in planning and litigation contexts.
Prerequisite: Contracts.
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Same Sex Marriage: Continuing Issues
The United States Supreme Court in its landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in June 2015 recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. This course will spend some time exploring the legal, moral, and religious debates that led to that result. But it will also focus on the host of important questions that remain in the wake of Obergefell, including (1) how to work out the details of the legal rules and principles governing same-sex marriage, including rights of parentage; (2) whether or under what circumstances to accommodate the claims of religious or conscientious objectors to same-sex marriage; (3) to what extent, if any, a constitutional right to same-sex marriage implicates the continuing constitutional debate over polygamy and similar issues; and, most broadly (4) whether and how Obergefell, along with other developments in law and culture, have transformed "traditional" legal and cultural conceptions of marriage or, ironically, actually reinforced them. The course will also look at background materials on the history of marriage and consider various ancillary topics. And the course will use the debate over same-sex marriage as a prism through which to discuss important questions regarding sexuality and the law, gender and family, constitutional liberty and equality, the judicial role, federalism, and the interaction of religious and secular categories and ideas. Final examination.
Optional writing credit (W) or intensive writing credit (WI) by arrangement with the instructor.
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Secured Transactions
Explores Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code and its impact on personal property financing in the United States. Also considers relevant parts of Articles 3, 7, and 8, as well as parts of the Bankruptcy Act. Emphasizes the role of the lawyer in the planning and drafting of transactions and the reading of statutes.
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Securities Litigation
Securities fraud litigation has seen significant legal developments in recent years, including a number of high-profile cases. This course provides an introduction to the law of securities litigation. Issues covered include securities fraud litigation under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5; Securities Act claims under Sections 11 and 12(a)(2); tender of offer fraud; and proxy fraud. Procedural issues that arise in the class action context will also be included in this analysis. In addition, we will study the enforcement role of the Securities and Exchange Commission and certain issues that arise in criminal law cases. Recent statutory developments, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, will also be covered. The course involves analysis of securities litigation with an emphasis on the practitioner's role.
Prerequisite: Business Associations.
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Securities Regulation
Surveys federal regulation of securities offerings (including initial public offerings) and securities trading in secondary markets under the two main statutes, the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, both as amended. The course highlights the role of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in implementing and enforcing the federal securities laws. Examination of what is a security; the roles and regulation of securities intermediaries, such as broker-dealers, investment advisers, and mutual funds; and enforcement by private plaintiffs as well as the SEC.
Pre- or corequisite: Business Organizations or permission of instructor.
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Sex Crimes
This course explores the areas of criminal and civil law devoted to sex crimes and their consequences, in particular rape and sexual assault. These laws raise significant issues with regard to their definitions and interpretations, their justifications, and their practical impact on the criminal justice system and the communities they affect. Topics analyzed may include how rape and sexual assault are defined and theorized; questions and problems posed by inchoate offenses (such as internet solicitation) and risk-based crimes (such as HIV-exposure); internet-based offenses; prostitution and sex trafficking; and the civil commitment of those legally deemed "sexually violent predators."
Prerequisite: Criminal Law.
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Sex Discrimination
Provides an overview of feminist legal theory and explores various legal doctrines that affect and reflect women's status in society. Topics covered include constitutional law, employment, reproduction and sexuality, the family, and violence against women.
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Sexuality, Gender Identity, and Law
This course explores the intersection of the law with sexuality and gender identity. Approximately one-half of the course will focus on government regulation of, recognition of, and discrimination on the basis of sexuality and gender identity. This portion of the course will focus on advanced federal and state constitutional law topics including Equal Protection, Substantive Due Process, and First Amendment claims, as they pertain to diverse areas such as same-sex marriage recognition, anti-sodomy laws, and the exclusion of Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender (LGBT) individuals from the military. The remainder of the course will focus on other (nonconstitutional) areas in which members of the LGBT community have attempted to secure legal rights, including employment, child custody, and public accommodations. Although this is primarily a doctrinal class, we will also focus significantly on exploring the strategic and normative questions that arise in the context of a social movement's effort to harness litigation as a tool for achieving equality.
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Small Business Counseling
Focuses on representing the small business client, especially the new business. Has a clinical component and a simulation component. Under the supervision of the instructor, students advise clients of various organizations in the area including Rutgers Small Business Center, local business incubators, and pro bono programs. The advising includes an initial interview, research as necessary, drafting, and counseling. A team of two students interviews each client, consult with the instructor, counsels the client, and drafts appropriate documents. Students also engage in simulations typical of the attorney for the small business, such as evaluating and implementing the form of organization, participating in the development of a business plan, and drafting agreements. Both components provide opportunities for reflection on business lawyering, including issues of legal, business, and personal ethics; the social function of the business lawyer; and lawyer-client relations.
In addition to the clinical work, the course involves extensive simulation of activities typical in the representation of the small business client. Simulations guarantee a base of experience and support the clinical work by providing a laboratory for improving skills and for problem solving. Issues covered in the simulations include the selection of an organizational form; formalities necessary for the creation of the form selected; partnership and shareholder agreements; basic tax issues; commercial leases; director and officer liability; intellectual property issues; insurance; status of employees; attorney conflicts of interest; and formalizing the attorney-client relationship. Other issue--such as franchise agreements, commercial financing, and government contracting--may be addressed, depending on the scope of the clinical experience. Skills covered include interviewing, fact gathering, use of experts, counseling on legal and business issues, problem solving, planning, and drafting.
Both the clinical work and the simulations provide starting points for discussions of broader lawyering issues. At the beginning of the semester, a set of such issues is defined for the class, and discussion returns to them at appropriate points. As the course description indicates, issues include legal, business, and personal ethics; the social function of the business lawyer; and lawyer-client relations. The instructor provides readings as background material for the discussions. Attorneys and experts from other fields (e.g., business school faculty, insurance agents, accountants) participate in the class at appropriate points.
Prerequisite: Business Organizations.
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Social Welfare Law and Policy
An exploration of the means by which and degree to which American social welfare, employment, and labor law secure the economic and social human rights recognized in Articles 22-26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All members of the class will be required to write a substantial research paper comparing U.S. institutions and performance with respect to one of the rights studied with the comparable institutions and performance of another developed market society of their choosing. The course will conclude with a daylong public workshop at which all members of the class will present their research papers. Research paper in lieu of final examination at discretion of the instructor.
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South African Constitutional Law
Introduces students to the Constitution of South Africa, which is one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. The classroom portion of the course will begin with an introduction to the history of South Africa as it relates to the development of the country's constitution. The rest of our class meetings prior to the trip will be devoted to a study of health, human rights, and the jurisprudence of the country's Constitutional Court with a focus on the role the court has played and is continuing to play in shaping the country's political, economic, and social development. During this portion of the course, members of the class will be required to prepare short papers addressing various issues that arise in the course of our studies. Satisfactory completion of these written assignments will be required to receive credit for the course. Over spring break, we travel to Johannesburg and Cape Town where we will get to see how the promises of the South African Constitution are or are not being met.
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Sports Law
This course will provide an overview of the key legal concepts and topics and their intersection in the world of sports. Topics such as antitrust, agency, contract law, regulation, governance, labor law and collective bargaining, media, intellectual property, etc., will be examined in relation to their influence on the management, operation, and regulation of sports. Students will be exposed to a variety of contemporary issues in the field of sports law and provided insight into opportunities in the field.
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Sports Law Drafting and Negotiation
This course focuses on the drafting and negotiation of certain sports law transaction documents. Examples of documents to be discussed in the course are representation contracts (including merchandising/endorsement income, rights to publicity, conflicts of interest, and suitability, trial period, escape and morals clauses); suite license agreements; sponsorship agreements; naming rights agreements; sports team acquisition agreements; and media rights agreements. This course is intended to be hands-on with all students having the opportunity to experience being a "sports law attorney" at a law firm or corporate/sports team legal setting. There will be three independent writing assignments, which will require the students to draft transaction documents based on forms from sports transactions. Students will become familiar with sports negotiation terminology, how to prepare for and conduct negotiations, and understand what to do if a negotiation fails. The final assignment will be a group assignment consisting of negotiating and finalizing a sports transaction document. There will also be periodic negotiation sessions to foster establishing relationships of trust, identifying mutually agreeable and beneficial solutions to some of the intractable contract points, knowing when to make concessions, and negotiating for the long-term. Grading shall be based upon class participation (quality not quantity), attendance, written drafting assignments, and the final negotiation/drafting assignment. Text/Casebook: Professor Peter A. Carfana, former chief legal officer at IMG/Visiting Professor at Harvard Law since 2006, Negotiating and Drafting Sports Venue Agreements.
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State and Local Taxation
This course focuses on one of the most rapidly growing areas in taxation, examining the major types of taxation imposed and collected by state and local governments. The course will begin with a discussion of the constitutional constraints upon a state's ability to tax out-of-state corporations based on the corporations' "minimum contacts" with their state. It will then focus on particular types of taxation, beginning with corporate income, franchise, and gross receipts taxes. In studying such taxes, students will examine how states determine the appropriate proportion of such income taxable by a particular state, and the constraints upon such state determinations. The course will explore sales/use taxes, which have become a much greater percentage of corporations' overall tax liability. Two major issues raised by such taxes are, first, identifying which receipts are taxable, and, second, determining the proper sourcing of receipts. Property taxes, including the different methods of valuing property and questions regarding which items are included in the tax base, will also be covered. Course will conclude with a brief overview of some issues related to payroll taxes. A basic familiarity with state and local taxation is important for anyone currently working in or interested in pursuing a career in taxation, and may well be helpful to students pursuing a corporate transactional practice.
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State Constitutional Law
Interpretations of state constitutions, as well as their relationship to the federal constitution, with emphasis on the increased importance of state bills of rights as providing guarantees in addition to, and different from, federal guarantees of individual rights. Separation of power issues, and the exclusive powers of each branch. Survey of areas of state constitutional law, such as state and local tax and exemptions, local government, public education, debt limits and limits on expenditure of public funds, and eminent domain. The process and techniques of amending and revising state constitutions.
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Statutory Interpretation and Legislation
Study of legislation as a policymaking instrument in the American legal system, with emphasis on working with statutes as well as examining the process of policy development leading to legislation. Consideration given to state and federal legislative organization and procedure; legislative investigations; the structure and form of statutes; limitations of, and requirements for, the exercise of legislative power; the process of codification; and the various means of making laws effective. Statutory interpretation considered at some length.
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Taxation of Business Entities
This course will focus on the differing federal income tax treatments of the various forms of business and investment activities. Following a review of the main characteristics of subchapter C and S corporations, general partnerships, limited partnerships, and limited liability companies, the course will examine the income tax rules applicable to business entities (i) when being organized; (ii) when operating and receiving profits or incurring losses; (iii) when making distributions of profits, in cash, property, or entity ownership units; (iv) when terminating an ownership interest; and (v) when the entire enterprise terminates.
Prerequisite: Federal Income Tax.
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Taxation of Financial Products
The taxation of financial products has become an important and sometimes controversial topic during the last decade. Seemingly similar products are often taxed in different ways--why? The proper tax treatment of financial products is often determined by reference to fundamental tax principles, such as the doctrine of substance over form, the nature of true "ownership" for tax purposes, and the "open transaction" principle. This course is an effort to provide a bridge between such fundamental tax principles and the taxation of financial products by applying these fundamental tax principles to sophisticated products. By acquiring a firm grasp of these principles, students will be able to cut through the complex details of financial products and become comfortable with a more intuitive understanding of the proper tax treatment. Topics will include monetization transactions, the constructive ownership rules, original issue discount, and the taxation of derivatives (options, swaps, forward contracts). This course only requires the basic tax course as it builds on the theoretical concepts a student accumulated there and applies them to sophisticated financial products. It will benefit students who want a deeper and more applied understanding of the basic fundamental concepts learned in the basic tax course and will also help students gain a general appreciation for the sophistication of products that currently exist in the marketplace.
Prerequisite: Federal Income Tax.
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Tax Policy
In this course, we will explore the policy issues that influence our choice of tax laws. We will not focus in any significant detail on the mechanics of the current tax law. Rather, we will spend our time thinking about what the tax law could or should be. Specific topics will include progressivity; tax compliance and complexity; whether a consumption tax (such as a VAT) is desirable as a replacement for, or an addition to, an income tax; tax expenditures; and reform or repeal of the estate tax. Evaluation will be based on class participation and on a final paper, which may be used to satisfy the writing requirement.
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Tort Theory
A survey of central topics in tort theory. Through contemporary philosophical readings, the course analyzes different theories of tort law including economic, corrective justice, and civil recourse accounts, as well as central concepts in torts, like risk, carelessness, responsibility, duty, and rights, among others.
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Toxic Torts and Toxic Substances Regulations
Toxic substances present some of the most fascinating and difficult problems in tort litigation and environmental and health regulation. The harmful effects of toxic exposures may not appear until years or decades after initial exposures; thousands or millions of people may be exposed before the dangers become known, creating the prospect of multibillion-dollar torts litigation; people are exposed to many chemicals and drugs in their lives, often making it hard to establish causal connections with specific exposures; scientific uncertainty is widespread, forcing the tort law and regulatory systems to deal with serious credibility and reliability issues; hundreds of chemicals and drugs do not receive adequate testing before they are marketed; and when a "foreseeability" test is imposed in toxic torts litigation, this requires very expensive evidentiary proceedings about "who knew what when" over a long period of time. This course provides a comparative introduction to toxic torts and regulation. We will consider how these two imperfect legal institutions deal with characteristic problems of toxic exposures and toxic effects, and we will also evaluate these institutions from legal policy and social policy perspectives.
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Trademark Clearance Opinion Drafting
This skills course will simulate a common trademark practice situation. Clients ask lawyers for advice concerning whether a proposed trademark can function as a trademark, and whether it might be confusingly similar to third-party trademarks. Lawyers evaluate the proposed trademark to determine whether it can function as a trademark, conduct a preliminary online search of registered trademarks, and commission a professionally performed search for possibly relevant third-party registered and common law trademarks. Lawyers then review the professional search results (usually a 25-50 page report) and advise the client whether the proposed trademark can be used as proposed, or possibly with some recommended changes. The process concludes with a full, reasoned opinion of counsel describing the opinion, the factual basis for the opinion, and the reasoning that supports the opinion.
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Trademark Law
This course will introduce students to the basic principles of contemporary trademark and unfair competition law in the United States. Students will learn what constitutes a trademark, how trademark rights are acquired, how trademarks relate to other regimes of intellectual property, how infringement is proven, and what remedies are available for infringement. The course will also examine other contemporary trademark issues such as dilution, false advertising, online trademarks, and rights of publicity.
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Transactional Document Drafting
New attorneys are often "thrown into the fire" and given the assignment to negotiate and draft transactional documents that reflect the deal, protect their clients interests, and yet remain acceptable to the other side so that the transaction can be completed. This involves being able to analyze contract language, identify potential risks, develop creative solutions, and effectively communicate both the risks and the solutions to their clients and the opposing counsel. In this course, students develop practical skills they can use in drafting and negotiating effective transactional documents that bridge the gap between the opposing parties' concerns so that the transaction can be completed. The course will focus on a generic business acquisition and the ABA's Model Asset Purchase Agreement. Students will develop effective techniques for identifying and communicating issues both to their clients and to opposing counsel. Students will practice the art of effectively editing documents to gain familiarity with commonly used transactional words, phrases, and sentence structure and their usefulness for clear drafting. Finally, through it all, students will gain a thorough understanding of a merger and acquisition (M&A) transaction and the M&A transaction documents.
Strongly recommended: Business Organizations.
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Transactional Drafting: Intellectual Property
This writing-intensive class will simulate the negotiation of an intellectual property licensing transaction, drafting a term sheet, and drafting a definitive licensing agreement. Prior coursework in intellectual property is not required, although it may be helpful. The class will meet for the first two-three weeks, during which we will discuss the applicable intellectual property law, as well as the law governing license contracts. Students will then be paired (as counsel for licensee and licensor) and each student will be given a set of instructions from their client. Students will first negotiate and draft a term sheet, and then draft a definitive license agreement. Students will submit drafts of the term sheet and the definitive license agreement and meet with the faculty instructor who will provide feedback on the drafts. Grades will be based on the final (nondraft) documents.
Prerequisites: Contract Law required. Some familiarity with Intellectual Property Law is highly recommended.
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Transnational Litigation and Dispute Resolution
Procedural, strategic, and substantive legal issues that are most likely to confront the American lawyer in handling the resolution of disputes that transcend national borders. Topics explored include the gathering of evidence, privileges and immunities, enforcement of judgments and awards, jurisdiction and access to judicial systems, and the extraterritorial application of domestic laws.
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Trial Advocacy
Instruction in trial advocacy skills using demonstrations, lectures, and participation by members of the class in the components of simulated trials. Topics include pretrial matters, openings, examination and cross-examination of witnesses, handling exhibits, objections, impeachment, and closing arguments.
Prerequisite: Evidence I. Open to second-semester, second-year students, and all third-year students, who have completed the prerequisite course in Evidence. Recommended: Evidence II.
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Trusts and Estates
A survey of the law of wills, trusts, and other testamentary documents, with an emphasis on state statutes and the Uniform Probate Code. The course also includes some estate and trust administration, guardianships, and some estate and gift tax implications. The tax coverage is limited and will not prepare the students for estate planning.
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Wealth, Democracy, and the Rule of Law
This course explores the connections and tensions among democracy, the rule of law, and concentrated wealth in the United States. The course begins by looking at contemporary trends in the United States about the growth and distribution of income and wealth, and the intersection of those trends with partisan politics both in general and with respect to particular issues such as tax policy and campaign spending. It also explores the contested heritages of Athenian democracy and the Roman Republic, both as currently understood and as understood by the founders of the United States. Students will focus their individual research and writing on a particular topic or area involving wealth; the democratic process; and the rule of law, such as (but not limited to) legislation and judicial decisions about the regulation of campaign spending, judicial elections, legal representation of the poor, voter identification, and other voting laws; investigation and prosecution, or lack thereof, of alleged illegalities in investments, mortgages, and mortgage foreclosures; civil prosecution and settlement of multimillion and multibillion dollar corporate illegalities; and the role of the media (of numerous sorts) in the political process. Student research may also focus on the course's themes in earlier historical periods, such as the Founding era, the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s, the early 20th century Progressive Era and New Deal, and the decline of the post-war "social contract" in the 1970s. Readings will include political science and political theory, history, journalism, judicial opinions, legislation, and legal scholarship.
Required intensive writing. No final exam.
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White-Collar Crime
This course explores federal white-collar crime and criminal practice. It is divided into two sections: substantive white-collar criminal law and criminal practice. The substantive portion of the course introduces students to statutes, cases, and related materials that commonly are associated with white-collar crimes, including fraud, corruption, graft, inhibiting investigations, and money laundering. The course also will examine issues related to prosecutorial discretion and attorney ethics in the context of criminal practice. The goal of the criminal practice portion of the course is for students to encounter situations that they are likely to see as licensed criminal practitioners. Students will engage in simulation exercises and draft written work product relating to the different stages of a criminal case, including investigations, grand jury practice, charging decisions, bail determinations, plea negotiations, representational issues, and sentencing. Through these exercises, students will develop lawyering skills and values that will serve them in criminal practice and beyond. This course will qualify for skills credits.
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