Course Catalog

This course introduces the student to certain fundamental cases in Constitutional law, to the questions they raise, and to the modes of thought and criticism appropriate to this field. There is necessarily a large historical component to the work, for the Constitution has acquired its meaning over time. Major questions include: What is the justification for judicial review? What are appropriate occasions and standards for the exercise of this power? How has the power actually been used throughout our history? These questions are considered in the context of doctrinal fields chosen for variety of issues and to allow consideration of historical development over the full life of the Constitution. These fields include: the scope of federal powers; preemption; state regulation of interstate commerce (in some sections); powers of the President; relations between branches of the federal government; basic principles of racial equal protection; Congressional enforcement power under the Reconstruction Amendments; and justiciability.

• Type: First Year Required

Introduction to the Income Taxation of Business Enterprise
This course provides an overview of the income taxation of the various legal forms of business activity. Thus, the course will review the income tax treatment of corporations, S corporations, partnerships, LLC’s and sole proprietorships. The breadth of the material will dictate a survey approach, in contrast with the more intensive coverage provided in such courses as Corporate or Partnership Taxation.

• Type: Upper Class

Though often maligned and misunderstood, Islamic law is one of the world?s longest enduring and most widely subscribed systems of law. This seminar will give students a firm grounding in the sources, principles, concepts, and terminology of Islamic law, as well as an in-depth review of its history and role in the contemporary era. Students will gain practical insights into the sources and constructs of this religious-based legal system, including the substantive difference between the Shari?a and Islamic jurisprudence, as well as an in-depth analysis of the Qur?an, the Tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the various legal constructs devised by jurists and eminent scholars, the Islamic schools of law, differences between Shi?i and Sunni Islamic law. The seminar will delve into Islamic law?s historical demise and modern resurgence. Finally, students will gain an in-depth understanding of selected aspects of Islamic constitutionalism, Islamic criminal law, and how classical and contemporary Islamic law comports with international human rights law and other current issues.

• Type: Seminar

This simulation course will help students develop the skills to be excellent — and fulfilled — judicial law clerks. Assignments will reflect the work that clerks do every day: writing bench memos and opinions, working collaboratively with the judge, critically evaluating the legal analysis of parties and other chambers, and working with record documents. Students will do substantial writing and get significant feedback. The course will also address some of the “big picture” aspects of clerking, like how to navigate unequal power dynamics, what aspects of the job are the most rewarding and challenging, and the ways in which elements of the clerkship experience will inform the rest of your career. Several sessions will include guest judges and clerks. While this course is for the clerkship-interested, students need not have a clerkship in place nor be pursuing one.

• Type: Practice Simulation

In the Juvenile Justice Clinic, students will represent minors charged with violations of the criminal law and status offenses in Michigan’s family courts. While primarily a litigation clinic, students may from time-to-time handle appellate matters and may be involved in public policy issues such as analyzing proposed legislation.
In the course of clinic, students will develop litigation skills including case investigation, trial preparation, and presenting evidence and argument in the courtroom. Casework, which is supervised by a clinical professor, may involve client interviewing and counseling, legal research and motion drafting, negotiation with prosecuting authorities, and courtroom presentation of the case. In addition to trial advocacy and casework, classroom sessions will also focus on legal ethics, the basics of child development and other topics. The Juvenile Justice Clinic meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. JJC is a 7 credit course of which all credits are graded.
The Clinic seminar fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.

• Type: Clinic

In the Juvenile Justice Clinic, students will represent minors charged with violations of the criminal law and status offenses in Michigan’s family courts. While primarily a litigation clinic, students may from time-to-time handle appellate matters and may be involved in public policy issues such as analyzing proposed legislation.
In the course of clinic, students will develop litigation skills including case investigation, trial preparation, and presenting evidence and argument in the courtroom. Casework, which is supervised by a clinical professor, may involve client interviewing and counseling, legal research and motion drafting, negotiation with prosecuting authorities, and courtroom presentation of the case. In addition to trial advocacy and casework, classroom sessions will also focus on legal ethics, the basics of child development and other topics. The Juvenile Justice Clinic meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. JJC is a 7 credit course of which all credits are graded.
The Clinic seminar fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.

• Type: Clinic

All seminar participants will attend the Law and Economics Workshop, a series of afternoon presentations by leading scholars from around the country who are engaged in research at the intersection of law and economics. The Workshop is also attended by faculty members from the Law School, the Business School, and the Economics Department. In advance of each session, students will read the paper to be presented and prepare a two- or three-page critique. No background in Economics or in Law and Economics is required.

• Type: Seminar

The Law, Philosophy and Social Theory Colloquium is jointly presented by the University of Michigan Philosophy Department and the School of Law. Accordingly, the class is composed of a mix of philosophy graduate students and law students. Additionally, the public session will welcome faculty members from the philosophy department, the law school, the history department, the Ross School of Business and the African-American Studies department, among others.
The Colloquium convenes each week on Wednesday afternoons. In one week, students and the conveners will meet for close discussion of a work in progress by leading or emerging voices in the fields of legal theorist, moral or political philosophy. The follow week, the authors will join the Colloquium in the public session to present the paper to the group, which consists of students, faculty from the Law School and other departments of University of Michigan and faculty from other universities. The choice of subject is left to the paper’s author, within the general boundaries of the Colloquium’s subjects, and the discussions are therefore not connected by any structured theme for the term as a whole, though in past years certain central topics were canvassed in several weeks’ discussion. The Colloquium aims, not to pursue any particular subject, but to explore new work in considerable depth and so allow students to develop their own skill in theoretical analysis. The Colloquium is also ideal for students considering future academic work or careers.

• Type: Seminar

Law, Social Movements, and Justice: Views from Latin America
This six-week interdisciplinary seminar offers students an introduction to recent social movements and constitutional transformations in Latin America. Readings and discussions across the first four weeks will prepare the students to attend the 2024 UM Law Transnational Law Workshop (October 18 and 19). The Workshop will bring to campus a dozen participants — legal scholars, activists, and historians — from Chile, Brazil, and Cuba. Our seminar will begin by looking at the massive social upheaval (“estallido social”) that shook Chile in 2019, and the subsequent channeling of much of that energy into a lengthy attempt to draft a new national constitution. We will then examine strategies followed in other countries in the region to address some of the same core issues — democratic participation, gender perspectives and reproductive rights, social services and access to care (including dependent care and end-of-life care), housing rights and land reparations, as well as environmental justice.

• Type: Seminar

This will for the most part be a traditional course in legal ethics and professional responsibility. We will focus on the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, along with other sources of law governing lawyers. Our primary aim will be to identify and analyze ethical issues that arise in the practice of law, including: confidentiality, competence, conflicts of interest, lawyer advertising, multi-jurisdictional practice, litigation ethics, negotiation ethics, and issues arising in the representation of entities. In the process, we will also consider broader questions about what sort of lawyers we want to be and how that might fit into our lives. Those broader questions, valuable for their own sake, will also help us think more clearly about the pragmatic principles and rules we need to know as we prepare to practice law.

• Type: Upper Class

Legal Practice Skills I concludes the second half of the first semester of Legal Practice by building on the skills to which students were introduced in Legal Practice: Writing & Analysis. The course gives students the chance to further develop their core analytical and writing abilities while expanding their legal repertoires to include other essential lawyering skills. Throughout LP Skills I, students are placed in the role of a lawyer representing a client in assorted factual circumstances, and are then taught how and why lawyers might bring to bear various skills in those situations. For example, students might have the opportunity to learn how to conduct client interviews to help determine whether a client has a viable potential claim. (In some sections, this could culminate in interviews of real clients.) Students might also receive their first opportunity to act as a counselor, helping clients choose between possible ways to try to resolve a legal problem. Students may also be exposed to fact investigation and assessment, via taking depositions or other discovery and forensic techniques. Further, students may be exposed to additional types of customary legal work product, such as client letters and professional emails. Students will also continue to expand their knowledge of legal research sources and strategies, learning how to find the law they need to adequately advise and represent their clients. Professors provide frequent feedback to students as part of all of these assignments, which may include the chance to re-write particular written projects. Students are also expected to self-assess what they’re learning and where they might need to continue developing particular skills.

• Type: First Year Required

Legal Practice: Fundamentals of Legal Writing and Analysis is the first component of a yearlong set of courses taken by all first-year students, in which students begin to develop the skills that are necessary to practicing law. This course, comprising the first half of the first semester, introduces students to the fundamental analytical and writing skills that they’ll continue developing over the rest of the Legal Practice course sequence. The timing and range of specific skills covered in LP Writing & Analysis differs from professor to professor, but students will be expected to prepare at least one extensive written assignment, learning to present objective written analysis of a legal problem to a client or a fellow attorney, and to persuade their reader that their analysis is complete and accurate. In doing so, students come to appreciate how a commitment to scrupulously thorough writing promotes analytic rigor. Via intensive critiques from their professors, students learn how constantly revising their work product makes their analysis more precise.

• Type: First Year Required

Corporations face a complex myriad of laws and regulations. Legal risk management is vital to any organization’s success. This course studies risk management and generally the elements of the enterprise risk management (ERM) process. Students will be introduced to the concept of risk and ERM; the history of ERM; identifying risk; various risk management techniques; conceptualizing, monitoring and analyzing risk management; and the governance and oversight of risk management. Among other tools, the class will utilize case study to expose students to the role of the corporation and management in crisis due to the failure of risk management. Learnings will touch upon the expectations of self-regulating organizations (SRO’s) and shareholders in corporate ERM. Study will include the role of corporate compliance as an element of risk, and the role of ERM in corporate strategy. Students will leave the class understanding how legal risk management is a part of corporate strategy and governance, and the lawyer’s role as gatekeeper and counselor.

• Type: Seminar

We live in an age of statutes, regulations, and administrative rules.
This seminar explores the distinctive legal and political problems and principles involved in the shift from common law to statutes as the source of law governing much modern American social and economic life.
While covering some basic issues like the legislative process and statutory interpretation, the seminar also intends to delve deeply into some of the interdisciplinary perspectives from history, political theory, and political economy that have recently done so much to shape and enliven this field of inquiry. Topics to be discussed include: the historical origins of parliamentarism, the rise of legislative regulation, the implementation of statutes in the administrative state, the problem of representation, and the significance of the legislature in modern democratic theory.

• Type: Seminar

In the modern regulatory state, the rules that most profoundly shape private conduct come not from the common law but, instead, from legislatures and agencies. This class will explore the lawmaking function of these institutions and the virtues and vices of administrative governance. Among other things, the class will cover: the nature of the legislative process; statutory interpretation; the justifications for regulatory intervention; regulatory tools and strategies; the allocation of authority between legislatures and agencies; the varied forms of agency decision-making; and judicial review of agency decisions. In offering a survey of public law, the course will introduce students to the essentials of both statutory interpretation and administrative law.

• Type: Upper Class

Technology has fundamentally transformed how litigation is conducted, and the pace of change is accelerating. This course will teach students what they must know to succeed in the new world of technology enabled litigation. We will cover how lawyers deploy sophisticated technology and services to: manage big data and harvest key information; handle specialty matters involving white collar crime, civil liability investigations, cyber incident responses, and federal challenges to mergers and acquisitions; and meet professional obligations and avoid sanctions from courts and regulators. Recent enforcement guidance and initiatives from the DOJ, SEC and FTC have raised the stakes of missteps substantially for counsel and clients in these areas. We will have technical and operational experts conduct simulation exercises in key areas, in which students will participate, to provide real-world, practical knowledge that can be applied when students enter litigation practice.

• Type: Upper Class

Students in the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC) represent individuals with federal and state tax controversies through administrative advocacy and litigation in the United States Tax Court. Students can expect to gain exposure to a broad range of tax problems, both substantive and procedural, that will be valuable when working with clients of any income level in the future. Students also work with community organizations to provide information about tax issues and taxpayer rights and responsibilities to individuals who speak English as a second language.
The LITC is a 7 credit course and meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. Students must enroll in the 4 credit clinic and the 3 credit seminar, taken concurrently. The 4 credit clinic and 3 credit seminar are mandatory graded and ineligible for letter grade conversion to pass (“P”) election.
The Clinic fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.
The Clinic fulfills the Statutory or Regulatory Course Distribution Requirement for graduation applicable to JD students who matriculated in May 2016 and thereafter.

• Type: Clinic

Students in the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC) represent individuals with federal and state tax controversies through administrative advocacy and litigation in the United States Tax Court. Students can expect to gain exposure to a broad range of tax problems, both substantive and procedural, that will be valuable when working with clients of any income level in the future. Students also work with community organizations to provide information about tax issues and taxpayer rights and responsibilities to individuals who speak English as a second language.
The LITC is a 7 credit course and meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. Students must enroll in the 4 credit clinic and the 3 credit seminar, taken concurrently. The 4 credit clinic and 3 credit seminar are mandatory graded and ineligible for letter grade conversion to pass (“P”) election.
The Clinic fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement.
The Clinic fulfills the Statutory or Regulatory Course Distribution Requirement for graduation applicable to JD students who matriculated in May 2016 and thereafter.

• Type: Clinic