Course Catalog

Inquire at the Center for International and Comparative Law for more information.

• Type: Study Abroad

Student writes a research paper related to previously approved international external studies program under faculty supervision. Inquire at the Center for International and Comparative Law for more information.

• Type: Study Abroad

In the Senior Judge Seminar students work closely with Legal Practice professors in connection with various aspects of the first-year Legal Practice course. Each Legal Practice professor interviews, chooses and supervises the Senior Judge Seminar students for the Legal Practice section taught by that professor.

• Type: Upper Class

The Senior Judge Seminar II is a graded course intended to allow selected students who have excelled in the Senior Judge I seminar to work in greater depth with a Legal Practice professor in connection with the Legal Practice course. Each Legal Practice professor interviews, chooses and supervises the Senior Judge Seminar II students for the Legal Practice section taught by the professor.

• Type: Upper Class

Theory and practice are engaged in an inquiry into the relationship between sex inequality in society and sex equality under law. Context provided draws on social science, history, international and comparative law. The dominant approach to legal equality is examined on its own terms and through an alternative. Concrete issues-employment discrimination, family, rape, sexual harassment, lesbian and gay rights, abortion, prostitution, pornography-focus discussion through cases. Racism, class, and transgender status are considered throughout. The course investigates, criticizes, and expands the law toward civil equality between the sexes and on the basis of gender.

• Type: Upper Class

This seminar will examine sexual orientation and gender identity in the U.S. legal system. We will explore the ways in which different views of sexual orientation and gender identity have influenced the constitutional and statutory rights of gays, lesbians, and transgender people. Topics will include: anti-sodomy laws; associational rights (relating to both associations among LGBT persons and those who seek to exclude such persons from public and private spaces and activities); anti-gay ballot initiatives; military service; efforts to expand and limit family and parental rights, including second-parent adoption and marriage rights; equality rights in educational contexts; equal employment opportunity; and religious freedom restoration acts. Throughout, we’ll consider the interactions among lawyers and legal advocacy; LGBT movements; legislative politics; and doctrinal development in state and federal courts, as well as in administrative agencies such as the EEOC and the federal Department of Education.

• Type: Seminar

South Africa Externship Seminar
This contemporaneous, one-credit seminar is held every Winter as a required companion to the South Africa Externship (Law 938). For more information, please visit the course description for Law 938.

• Type: Externship

This seminar will teach students about appellate practice in state supreme courts. Students will alternate roles throughout the term, experiencing the week’s cases sometimes from the perspective of a lawyer and sometimes from that of a justice. Students will analyze, advocate, hear oral arguments and draft opinions. In most classes, students will spend half of the classes in the role of state supreme court justices, will argue one case before the court as an advocate, and will actively participate in the discussion following each class session’s “case call.” The goal is to analyze what makes an argument effective (both in the briefing and during oral argument), and how the lawyering affects the outcome.

• Type: Seminar

This course explores problems, successes, and reforms associated with litigation by public stockholders against corporate fiduciaries and other participants in corporate transactions. Corporate law doctrine is enforced almost exclusively by minority stockholders. At its best, stockholder litigation may redress and deter corporate misconduct. Yet, the mechanisms of stockholder litigation are open to systemic abuse. We will examine forms of stockholder litigation, and means by which courts and commentators have sought to restrict or shape it. We will also examine unique issues affecting public unitholder litigation for limited partnerships and limited liability companies. We will look almost exclusively to the law of the State of Delaware, given its national prominence in corporate law. Prerequisite: Enterprise Organization or Corporate Lawyer: Law & Ethics.

• Type: Upper Class

The professor of this practice simulation will submit cutting-edge problems which he has faced in practice. The students will resolve those problems by structuring transactions to accomplish the client’s business goals within the framework of non-tax legal requirements, without incurring unnecessary tax liabilities and in a manner that otherwise optimizes the client’s tax posture. Typically, the students will be assigned to work in teams. With each problem, the students submit their solutions in writing, and one team will present its solution to the class orally. The professor will discuss and evaluate the teams’ solutions in light of the one that was employed in practice. Prior to the students preparing and submitting their solutions, there will be lectures and discussion of the tax issues involved in each problem.
The goal of the practice simulation course is to immerse the students in the process of approaching problems from a transactional perspective. The students will be given a set of facts and objectives, and will be required to determine what steps should be taken to achieve those objectives. An additional goal is to provide the students with exposure to the manner in which experienced lawyers utilize their skills to solve complex problems. The principal issues on which the problems will focus are corporate tax issues, but other areas will likely be covered. For example, partnership tax issues and issues involving the taxation of financial instruments have played a significant role in certain case studies. In recent semesters, problems have involved, among other matters, complex tax-free corporate mergers, corporate divisions (spin-offs), acquisitions of controlling interests in non-U.S. corporations, and transactions designed to illustrate the difference between legitimate tax planning and abusive corporate tax shelters.

• Type: Practice Simulation

This seminar will examine many of the most important tax questions confronting policymakers. The likely topics will include, among others, whether income is the right tax base; the future of the corporate income tax and taxes on capital more broadly; whether tax should be the exclusive legal tool for redistributing income; and how the tax system should treat marriage. Seminar readings will focus on legal and empirical tax scholarship, including behavioral economics. Students will write a research paper on a topic of their choice (with the instructor’s approval).

• Type: Seminar

This is the basic course in federal income taxation. It is a statutory course, and the principal source of law will be the Internal Revenue Code. The topics covered will include the definition of gross income and the determination of permissible deductions from gross income. The class will also analyze numerous Code provisions and doctrines that raise issues of tax timing (that is, in what year should a given item of income or a given deduction be taken into account) and income attribution (that is, to whom should a given item of income or a given deduction be attributed). The bulk of the course will be devoted to learning basic statutory analysis. In addition, however, the class will spend some time studying the policy rationales underlying the structure of the current federal income tax laws and will consider the pros and cons of alternative systems. This course is a prerequisite to a number of other courses, including Corporate Taxation, Partnership Tax, Business and Estate Planning, and International Tax.

• Type: Upper Class

In this practice simulation course, students will begin to develop the skills needed to represent clients in business transactions. Among other things, the course covers translation of client business objectives into legal concepts and enforceable contract language that is clear, consistent, and concise. Students will learn how to analyze a contract from the client’s perspective, with an eye to advancing the client’s interests and protecting the client as much as possible from risk. The practice simulation course also identifies how attorneys can use drafting techniques and the negotiation process to resolve issues and improve outcomes for clients. Students will engage in simulations and exercises in class and undertake drafting assignments outside of class, including communications with clients and opposing counsel about contract terms, risks, and potential resolutions.

• Type: Practice Simulation

First of two courses dealing with donative disposition of property. Involves the study of (a) the law of intestate succession and marital property rights as a limitation on the power to devise; (b) the law of wills, with emphasis on execution and revocation, and including problems arising from changes after execution, as well as problems involving the use of will substitutes; and (c) the law of trusts, in both its functional and technical aspects, including the essential ingredients of a trust, its creation and termination, formal requirements, the nature of a beneficiary’s interest, the special features of charitable trusts, and some significant problems of trust administration.

• Type: Upper Class

Learn to litigate while serving those who have served our country in the Veterans Legal Clinic. VLC students first chair their cases, engaging in all aspects of litigation, including:
* interviewing clients
* drafting pleadings
* writing and arguing motions
* negotiating with opposing attorneys
* handling evidentiary hearings and trials.
The VLC is a general civil litigation clinic in which students regularly get into court to represent veterans in all kinds of civil litigation matters, including:
* contract disputes
* family law
* landlord-tenant cases
* consumer actions
* civil rights cases.
Students are taught by seasoned litigators who meet frequently with students to discuss strategy and who give detailed feedback on written work and all other aspects of representation. Yet students are given significant autonomy and empowered to make strategic decisions in their cases. At the end of the semester, students will be prepared to handle any kind of litigation case and will understand how to successfully manage a case from intake to resolution.
Students also participate in the VLC seminar, which teaches students the skills they need to provide top-notch representation to their veteran clients. Seminar sessions focus on skills like interviewing, negotiation, discovery, motion practice, evidence, and trial skills. Students also act as the attorneys in an in-class mock trial of a current or past VLC case. Students participate in case rounds, during which they work with each other to solve problems in their cases, and throughout the semester students in the VLC seminar are asked to reflect on their and their classmates’ work, the role they play as attorneys in their clients’ lives and society generally, and their ethical and moral obligations. Students will leave the VLC seminar as competent, confident, and reflective legal advocates.

• Type: Clinic

Learn to litigate while serving those who have served our country in the Veterans Legal Clinic. VLC students first chair their cases, engaging in all aspects of litigation, including:
* interviewing clients
* drafting pleadings
* writing and arguing motions
* negotiating with opposing attorneys
* handling evidentiary hearings and trials.
The VLC is a general civil litigation clinic in which students regularly get into court to represent veterans in all kinds of civil litigation matters, including:
* contract disputes
* family law
* landlord-tenant cases
* consumer actions
* civil rights cases.
Students are taught by seasoned litigators who meet frequently with students to discuss strategy and who give detailed feedback on written work and all other aspects of representation. Yet students are given significant autonomy and empowered to make strategic decisions in their cases. At the end of the semester, students will be prepared to handle any kind of litigation case and will understand how to successfully manage a case from intake to resolution.
Students also participate in the VLC seminar, which teaches students the skills they need to provide top-notch representation to their veteran clients. Seminar sessions focus on skills like interviewing, negotiation, discovery, motion practice, evidence, and trial skills. Students also act as the attorneys in an in-class mock trial of a current or past VLC case. Students participate in case rounds, during which they work with each other to solve problems in their cases, and throughout the semester students in the VLC seminar are asked to reflect on their and their classmates’ work, the role they play as attorneys in their clients’ lives and society generally, and their ethical and moral obligations. Students will leave the VLC seminar as competent, confident, and reflective legal advocates.

• Type: Clinic

This seminar will examine the United Nations Security Council’s Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in the context of contemporary forms of conflict and insecurity. It will explain the evolution of the agenda and provide a detailed examination of the agenda’s legal foundations in international law: International Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Law and International Human Rights Law, especially the Human Rights of Women. It will also focus on the so-called four pillars of Women Peace and Security: women’s participation in the prevention, management and resolution of conflict, protection against sexual violence in conflict, prevention of sexual violence in conflict, and relief and recovery. It will offer a critical perspective on these issues, including on the role of national implementation through National Action Plans.

• Type: Seminar

Each year, hundreds of workers are unfairly denied their statutory right to state unemployment insurance benefits. This clinic offers a unique opportunity for second semester, first-year law students to fight on their behalf.
Under faculty supervision, WRC I students represent recently unemployed workers in their unemployment benefits claims. In this role, they will have significant opportunities to interview and counsel clients, conduct fact investigations, write and file appeals, and handle hearings.
Students will quickly develop key lawyering skills in this 2-3 credit clinic. Each student team will have multiple cases to work on throughout the term, depending on case complexity and procedural status, and typically get to first-chair at least one administrative hearing via telephone during the semester. These proceedings allow students to perform direct and cross examination of live witnesses, make objections, handle exhibits, and deliver opening and closing statements, all before an administrative law judge. Because worker claims for unemployment are typically contested by the former employer through counsel, these hearings provide an excellent introduction to real-world lawyering.
Students have weekly faculty supervision sessions in which they review and plan strategy for their assigned cases and learn how to organize and manage a docket. Class meets regularly for the first four weeks of term. Additional class sessions may be scheduled on an as-needed basis.
This clinic is a prerequisite to taking WRC Litigation in your second or third year. Students earn two to three ungraded credits for their work. (Note — this course is offered as a 2-credit add-on elective to 1L schedules or for 3 credits if WRC Research is added, in which case it fulfills the 1L mandatory elective requirement. Both are ungraded.)

• Type: Clinic

Research to earn credit for additional work in the Workers’ Rights Clinic I.

• Type: Clinic

The Zell Entrepreneurship Clinic (ZEC) supports the University’s burgeoning entrepreneurial ecosystem by representing student-led entrepreneurial ventures as well as local startups and small businesses. Student attorneys in the ZEC encounter real-world transactional lawyering experiences with a focus on developing a business-oriented, client-centered mindset.
The ZEC offers transactional and counseling legal services to startups and established small companies in the following areas:
* Selecting and forming a legal entity and structuring ownership and capital
* Counseling on and prosecuting intellectual property matters (e.g., copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secret)
* Drafting and negotiating contracts
* Advising on employment matters
* Assisting on corporate fundraising and finance issues
Students in the ZEC typically represent multiple clients and assume primary responsibility for all client matters under the close supervision of ZEC faculty. Student attorneys plan client matters; interview and counsel clients; draft various legal agreements, documents, correspondence and memos; prosecute patent and trademark applications; and identify and research legal issues to help their clients implement their decisions. Student attorneys also take turns offering community office hours where they provide legal information to local entrepreneurs. Furthermore, student attorneys are exposed to the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem through attendance of local events as a class. During the weekly seminar sessions, students discuss lawyering skills and values, ethical issues, client issues and some substantive law. Student attorneys review and reflect on their work and receive detailed feedback from ZEC faculty during weekly supervision meetings.
There are no prerequisites for taking the ZEC. Because much of the client work will be in corporate, tax, intellectual property, employment, and other business areas, students will likely find prior course work in those areas helpful.

• Type: Clinic