Advanced Legal Research Seminar (2) The objective of this seminar is to give students an in-depth knowledge of general research tools and a good working knowledge of advanced tools available in specific subject areas. Both online and hard copy resources are examined. |
Advanced Mediation Seminar (2) Addresses a variety of current issues in the practice of mediation. Topics include ethnicity, gender and power in mediation, the scope of confidentiality, the establishment and enforcement of ethical standards, mediation in the community, the role and practice of lawyers in mediation, the use of apology in mediation, the different settings in which mediation can take place, techniques of effective mediation, and mediation and justice. Additional topics are selected during the seminar. Students are expected to conduct independent research on selected topics, report to the seminar, and write a paper on their research. With permission of the instructor, students may conduct empirical research, or may participate in mediation and use their experience, together with other research, as a basis for analysis. |
Animal Rights Seminar (2) Focuses on four areas. First, the course surveys philosophical and historical materials concerning the status of nonhuman animals. Second, it considers the legal status of animals as property. Third, the differences between the concepts of animal rights and animal welfare are addressed. Fourth, the relationship between the animal rights movement and other social justice movements is discussed. Students are required to do a paper on a topic of their choice (in consultation with the instructors). |
Banking Law Seminar (2) Provides an overview of federal regulation of commercial banking institutions, including such topics as the definition of a bank, geographical product restrictions, mergers of banking institutions, and bank holding company regulations. The first half of the course consists of readings and lectures intended to introduce students to banking regulation. During the second half, students are expected to prepare and give presentations on specific issues of current interest. Prerequisite: Business Associations. |
Bankruptcy Policy Seminar (2) An examination of the policies that underlie the 1978 Bankruptcy Code and modern bankruptcy practice in both the individual and business contexts. Substantial research paper required. |
Children and the Law Seminar (2) Examines the constitutional and public framework for allocating power and responsibility among children, parents, and the state. Explores selected legal topics relevant to this central theme, including child custody and child support; child abuse, neglect, and inadequate parenting; medical and psychiatric treatment; and educational rights. Considers the changing nature of childhood and the family and emphasizes sociological and psychological issues raised by the current legal structure. |
Church-State Relations Seminar (2) Explores in depth the constitutional framework affecting the relationship between religious and secular institutions. Topics include government sponsorship of religious activity, religious expression in public life, and civil resolution of intrachurch disputes. |
Civil Disobedience Seminar (2) The United States was founded on the authority of the Declaration of Independence, which declares the right of revolution. Most of the constitutional rights that we venerate today came to be legally recognized only after their proponents engaged in campaigns of civil disobedience and resistance to official law. Examples include fugitive slave rescues, street proselytizing by Jehovah's Witnesses, civil rights sit-ins, and underground abortion clinics. Today, civil -- and not-so-civil -- disobedience is employed by activists advocating fetal rights, animal rights, labor rights, gay rights, "common-law courts," and a host of other causes. This seminar examines the moral and legal justifications for civil disobedience, resistance and revolution. It also considers the role of lawyers and courts in addressing the principled defiance of law. Much of the seminar is taken up with case studies, with the choice of cases depending on student interest. |
Comparative Corporate Governance Seminar (2) Investigates and compares standards of performance applied to corporations and to their governing bodies and executives. The point of departure will be the U.S. system. The United Kingdom and France are used to represent, respectively, the Anglo-Saxon and Continental perspectives, without forgetting the impact of the European Union. To gain a fuller understanding, the social, historical, and cultural contexts that may help explain differences and similarities are also explored. Depending on the particular experience and language skills of seminar participants, other national perspectives may be considered. |
Corporate Governance Seminar (2) Replicates the general counsel's office of a major corporation and acquaints students with a large transaction and its attendant legal and practical problems. It also replicates the day-to-day activities of such an office. The emphasis is on a transaction and other events which pose issues of corporate law and governance. Seminar members are expected to work individually and in teams, to present materials both orally and in writing, and to play active roles in the issues under consideration. |
Corporate Reorganization Seminar (2) 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 tradeoffs 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 nonbankruptcy law to the reorganization process, and the use of Chapter 11 as a mechanism of corporate governance. |
Current Supreme Court Term Seminar (2) Follows the final weeks of the current October term of the U.S. Supreme Court. The week-to-week schedule is largely determined by what the Court is actually doing. But from time to time the course will review the docket of pending cases and recapitulate what the Court has done since convening in October; review petitions for certiorari that are pending and identify those cases which we think the Court should take for review; discuss pending, undecided cases, predict the outcome, the voting alignments, and the likely theories of decision; and discuss selected cases from the end of the 1999 term. |
Death and Dying Seminar (2) Treats various legal issues relating to the handling of dying medical patients. These include the definition of death; the scope of competent patients` rights; interests of hunger strikers; assisted suicide; decision-making standards for incompetent patients; advance medical directives; and decisions for never-competent persons such as defective newborns. |
Elder Law Seminar (2) Elder law has been part of the curriculum since 1983-84 when the law school was among only a handful to anticipate the emergence of this new area of law. The legal community now recognizes that elder law, while not yet fully delineated, can be a self-contained area of practice in which attorneys may have to deal with their clients holistically. In addition, firms and solo practitioners recognize they can no longer conduct "business as usual" with their older clients without regard to the complex of federal and state statutory and administrative laws and public and private institutions to which older Americans are beholden for their daily existence. This seminar explores the resources, issues, and substantive law in representation of older Americans in their quest for economic and personal independence. Topics include income maintenance through devices in the public and private sectors; the maintenance of autonomy in the face of increasing vulnerability through use of surrogate decision-making devices; problems of health care and housing; and concerns for dying. |
Election Law and Political Process Seminar (2) A practicum in politics and the electoral process. Examines federal and state constraints on political campaigning, with emphasis on the Federal Election Campaign Act. Among topics to be considered are presidential campaigning and the Electoral College; fund- raising and reporting in federal elections; political activity by business and labor organizations; operation of political-action committees; grass-roots organizing and campaigning; the Federal Voting Rights Act and voter registration; broadcast regulation; election law reform; ballot access; the right to vote; election day operations; counting the votes and challenging the results; and political patronage. |
Federal Criminal Law Seminar (2) Examines current federal issues such as RICO, pretrial detention, preemptory challenges, asset and fee forfeitures, and attorney-client privilege. Classes focus on discussion of selected federal cases and law review articles. |
Financial Institutions Seminar (2) Examines current issues affecting regulations of different institutions providing financial services, specifically focusing on the impact of deregulation on the financial services industry, the existing regulatory structure administered by the SEC, federal and state bank regulators, stock exchanges and securities organizations, and recent proposals for functional regulations of financial products. Prerequisite: Business Associations. |
Free Speech Seminar (2) Examines a wide range of philosophical perspectives concerning the status of free speech in a democratic society. Assignments include at least one full academic book per week. The range of readings include the works of John Stuart Mill, John Milton, Cass Sunstein, Owen Fiss, Harry Kalven, Catherine MacKinnon, Herbert Marcuse, Stanley Fish, Robert Bork, Judith Butler, and others. |
History of American Corporate Governance Seminar (2) Covers the history of corporate governance and regulation from the framing of the Constitution to the adoption of the New Deal era securities acts. Topics may include theories of the corporate form, the development of general incorporation statutes, innovations in corporate organization, political opposition to corporations, corporate corruption and scandals, women and corporations, the creation of a managerial class, the rise of corporate lawyering, the landmark role of New Jersey in state corporate regulation, and the origins of federal regulation of public companies. |
Inmate Advocacy Seminar (2) Explores basic substantive rights that individuals retain while detained and imprisoned by the government. Identifies the constitutional and statutory bases for inmate rights and the hurdles to enforcement of such rights from the 1996 Prisoner Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). Topics include theoretical and practical differences, if any, between rights retained by two categories of inmates: the rights of detainees who are held in municipal or county jails on charges before trial, conviction, and sentencing, and the rights of prisoners confined in county jails or state prisons after conviction and sentencing. Various types of rights and their sources are analyzed, from minimum constitutional standards to rights based on corrections regulations and public health codes. Specifically, topics explored include health care, methods of communication such as mail and visits, the scope of religious freedom, body searches, excessive force, and overcrowding. |
Inner-City Economic Development Seminar (2) Economic Discrimination and Community-wide Planning in the Urban Context: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Problem Solving. Why has the economic plight of inner-city neighborhoods remained so intractable? How can legal approaches work to combat redlining while stimulating growth? This seminar examines the myths, realities, and conventional interventions applicable to the inner-city landscape. Drawing upon multiple areas of the law, including civil rights models, land use, local government and consumer law, students develop and defend workable approaches to planning and legal advocacy. |
International Human Rights Seminar (2) Provides an overview of the international legal and institutional system for the protection of human rights. Material is looked at both from an academic perspective and from the point of view of the human rights practitioner, tackling difficult theoretical issues in the field as well as assessing the practical strengths and weaknesses of human rights law. |
International Labor Law Seminar (2) Current topics in employment relations that fall outside the system of collective bargaining, including regulation of employment termination; arbitration of individual employment complaints; protection of employee speech, whistle-blowing, and political activity; ownership of ideas and information by incumbent and departing employees (covenants not to compete, duties of loyalty, trade secret protection, and invention agreements); privacy rights on the job including hiring questionnaires, disclosure of personal information, searches and seizures, drug testing, electronic monitoring; defamation suits growing out of employment references; negligent hiring; employment relations of independent contractors, home workers, and other individuals that test the definition of employment. Also typically includes an introduction to the law of employment discrimination and the regulation of pensions and benefits. |
International Law and Terrorism Seminar (2) Explores a number of basic questions: What is terrorism? Is the term legally meaningful? What other terminology could be used to denote the same phenomena? How can this type of violence be effectively punished and prevented? What is the role of the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations in this process? What is the role of international law such as treaties, customary international law, general principles? What are the roles of individual states? What limitations does international law place on the means that may be used to respond to such violence? |
Labor Arbitration Seminar (2) Considers practice and procedure in public and private sector labor arbitration, and mandatory arbitration agreements for non-union employees. The purpose of the seminar is to study the practical and legal aspects of the arbitration process and to consider the differences between labor arbitration in a union setting, and mandatory arbitration for nonunion employees. Among the topics discussed are sources of arbitration law, discovery techniques, submission of an issue to arbitration, conduct of the hearing, rules of evidence, burdens of proof, remedies, and the enforcement and vacation of an arbitrator`s award. Each student is required to attend one actual arbitration and to write a posthearing brief. Guest lecturers include a labor arbitrator and a Superior Court judge. |
Labor Negotiation Seminar (2) Presents an overview of the case law in the public and private sectors on negotiations practice and procedure, and a practical application of the law. Students initially participate in a few short mock negotiations. For the remainder of the term, students are broken into teams and negotiate an actual labor contract. The last day of the term students negotiate, as in actual labor negotiations, until a final agreement is reached. Students will each be required to write a memorandum of agreement memorializing the agreement reached. During the term, students are required to solve a few short problems regarding scope of negotiations issues that grow out of term long negotiations. They are required to research a short legal memorandum for each problem. Guest lecturers include a mediator and a union and/or management negotiator. |
New Jersey Supreme Court Seminar (2) Students examine the judicial process in New Jersey`s highest court through examination of specific cases on the court`s current docket selected by Justice Stein. The class observes oral arguments of the court in Trenton, and may hear guest presentations from other retired members of the court about the judicial decision- making process. |
Public Education Law Seminar (2) Deals with the basic legal structure of the public education system and explores a range of current legal and educational policy issues confronting the public schools. These include various aspects of equal educational opportunity such as school finance reform, and racial and socioeconomic diversity; state-local district relations and responsibility for the quality of education provided; student rights; and pupil classification and other means to meet special pupil needs. To a substantial degree, the seminar uses pending cases and legislative developments to illuminate the issues. |
Public Interest Advocacy Seminar (2) Explores the theory and practice of public interest law and opportunities for students to pursue public interest careers. The first two seminar sessions involve discussion of assigned readings about public interest law. Thereafter, there are guest speakers from various public interest fields such as gay rights, women`s rights, race and the law, international human rights, labor law, rights of inmates, legal services for the poor, and pro bono in private practice. |
Race and Gender Tort Seminar (2) Explores how harms involving race and gender are treated under tort law. Attempts to define the nature of race and gender-based injuries, and evaluate the adequacy of existing tort law to address them. Through an examination of specific topics, such issues as the effect of race and gender on the development of causes of action and standards of conduct, the relationship between tort law and civil rights remedies, and questions involving damages and non-discrimination in jury selection are considered. Problems of essentialism and the intersection of race and gender will be addressed. |
Race Law Theory Seminar (2) Explores the theoretical underpinnings of the treatment of race in American law, with a special emphasis on the accommodation of competing constitutional values, such as the 1st Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause. |
Reproductive Rights Seminar (2) Surveys the constitutional cases that protect and restrict people`s decision making about reproduction. Begins with the cases invalidating state statutes that criminalized the distribution and use of contraception. Follows with the two major Supreme Court decisions that define the federal constitutional right to abortion, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. We then explore the federal and state courts' treatment of several recurrent issues in the law of reproductive rights, including the use of public funds or facilities for abortions for low-income women; teenagers' access to abortion; and restrictions on information about abortion and human sexuality. |
Science and International Law Seminar (2) Explores international and comparative law aspects of scientific advances, with particular focus on biotechnology. Considers issues in the areas of international trade, patent law, international public health, and international environmental law. A science background is not required. |
Venture Capital Seminar (2) Explores the venture capital process from forming the "fundable" business through the full life cycle. Features a number of guest speakers such as venture investors, executives of venture-backed businesses, and subject matter experts on the areas of law most frequently implicated in venture capital transactions. Includes discussion and materials on how to set up the "fundable" business from the perspective of investing intellectual property and creating appropriate structures and employment arrangements to facilitate a venture transaction; the securities law and tax implications of the venture capital process; the capital shopping process, the term sheet process, negotiating and documenting early stage funding; bridge funding and late stage funding; what happens when the investment turns sour; and providing general corporate counsel to the venture-backed business. The seminar also involves simulations including the students and leading practitioners in the field. |
Weapons and Mass Destruction Seminar (2) Examines global legal regimes on nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Biological Weapons Convention. Topics include the state of compliance with nonpossession requirements and with the obligation of good-faith negotiation of nuclear disarmament applicable to the United States and certain other nuclear-armed states; mechanisms for bringing violator states into compliance; the nature and adequacy of verification arrangements; law governing threat or use of weapons of mass or indiscriminate destruction; prevention of terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction; and the status of relevant international legal obligations in U.S. law. Some attention is given to regulation of land mines, cluster bombs, and other weapons often characterized as indiscriminate. |
Women and Work Seminar (2) Focuses on the legal and public policy aspects of gender and work affecting the lives of 21st-century American women. Building on a review and analysis of the historical and cultural backgrounds, the seminar considers the impact of the labor movement and the protectionist laws of the early 20th century, followed by an examination of the effects on women of the equal employment opportunity laws of the latter part of the century, as well as public policy efforts such as the Glass Ceiling Initiative. |
* Seminars listed are those that have been offered in the past few years and are likely to be offered again. Seminar offerings change frequently in response to the research activity of individual faculty members and student interest. Prerequisites for individual seminars may be announced by the instructor at the time of registration.
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