Study

A study of how law regulates intimate adult relationships and relationships between parents and children. We will discuss constitutional and statutory rights and restrictions on marriage, adult relationships, adoption, parentage, child custody, dissolution of adult relationships, and financial support for children. We will explore the evolution of family law in relation to racial and gender equality and consider issues of socioeconomic inequality and access to justice.  Grading is based on a final examination and class participation. 

This course will explore the relationship between the law and children’s status, rights, and well-being from a child-centered perspective. The course will introduce students to some of the foundational legal doctrines which govern the relationships among children, their parents, and the state. Through lecture, class discussion, and group presentations, this course will apply those foundational principles in specific contexts, including at school, home, healthcare, and community settings, with a focus on emerging and current issues in children’s law. This course will grapple with the ways in which current legal frameworks do or do not promote children’s rights and health, with a focus on the experiences of vulnerable groups, including LGBTQ+ children, children living in poverty, children of color, children involved in the child welfare and delinquency systems, and children with disabilities. This class will require collaboration in small groups as students work towards a final presentation.

A study of the rules governing federal taxation of gratuitous wealth transfers. The course will examine the trio of related federal taxes: the estate tax, the gift tax, and the generation-skipping transfer tax, as well as the policies, history, and concepts involved in the taxation of wealth transfers.

Pre-req: Federal Income Taxation or other experience working with statutory language and regulations is recommended

This course will explore the relationship between gender and the law, understanding gender in its broadest sense including sex, sexuality, gender identity, and gender queerness. It will focus on sex discrimination doctrines under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution as well as under federal and state statutory frameworks such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, and cognate state statutes. It will also address the shifting scope of substantive due process doctrine, particularly given the recent Supreme Court Dobbs opinion. Other statutes such as the Americans with Disabilities Act will also be explored. Constitutional Law is highly recommended as a prerequisite.

The course will center around legal case studies to evaluate the relationship between law and justice in many areas that affect gender minority lives, including: employment, schools, health care, prison, public accommodations, family, youth and aging, and beyond. The emphasis will be on social justice lawyering strategies and the possibilities and limits that litigation, legislation, and policy developments present for work in these areas. Some film is used in class. Evaluation is by an end-of-term, untimed, open book examination, as well as 3 reaction papers assigned throughout the class. Other individual or group projects may also be required. Engaged student discussion and open-mindedness to new, different, and challenging ideas is invited and valued.

This course is designed to provide students with a working knowledge of the major areas of interface between psychiatry and law. Basic concepts of clinical psychiatry and psychopathology will be highlighted throughout the course. The attorney and the psychiatrist roles in the commitment process, right to treatment and right to refuse treatment, competency to stand trial, and criminal responsibility will be explored using a number of methods. Discussion of assigned readings, short lectures, interviews and observation of patients involved in legal proceedings, films, guest speakers, and field trips will form the basis of the course. The students will periodically be asked to use the information from the course together with independent and group research to complete short projects and class exercises.

Critical race theory (CRT), a scholarly movement that began in the 1980s, challenges both the substance and style of conventional legal scholarship.  Substantively, critical race scholars (“race crits”) reject formal equality, individual rights, and color-blind approaches to solving legal problems.  Stylistically, race crits often employ new methodologies for legal scholarship, including storytelling and narrative.  This course introduces CRT’s core principles and explores its possibilities and limitations.  With a heavy focus on writings that shaped the movement, the course will examine the following concepts and theories: storytelling, interest convergence theory, the social construction of race, the black-white paradigm, the myth of the model minority, intersectionality, essentialism, working identity, covering, whiteness and white privilege, colorblindness, microaggressions, and implicit bias.  Students will apply these theories and frameworks to cases and topics dealing with, among other things, first amendment freedoms, affirmative action, employment discrimination, and criminal disparities and inequities.  The course affords students an opportunity to think about the ways in which racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism are inextricably interwoven as well as an opportunity to challenge critically our most basic assumptions about race, law, and justice.

This seminar will examine how legal advocacy shapes law and public policy at the federal level, with an evolutionary focus on the strategic use of litigation and regulation opportunities to develop various legal doctrines. It will draw upon case histories of public interest litigation, administrative law advocacy, legislative development, and popular opinion strategies. Each weekly seminar will focus on one or two legal concepts that resonate beyond health law alone but have been developed and adapted by the various tools of health care advocacy. It will trace progression from an initial foundational case to more contemporary echoes in litigation and regulation. Topics will include the commerce power and federal mandates, standing, severability, statutory interpretation, federalism, antitrust application to health care professions, judicial review of administrative practices and policies, waivers and administrative discretion, public health mandates, ERISA, information transparency, religious freedom, and the power of the purse. Our class will examine how attorneys and their allies can play either offense or defense, or even switch roles, as the stages of policy debates shift. It will include an introduction to a host of contemporary issues in health law and policy that carry broader lessons for other advocacy efforts. The seminar will provide a balanced representation of competing viewpoints while showing how respective sides can engage in various regulatory and litigation activities to advance, negate, or alter the status quo. Study of the diverse and often-shifting legal problems encountered by a single industry, particularly one as important and complex as health care, may appeal to students generally interested in public policy and in law and economics, not just health care, as well as those interested in sharpening their skills in legal advocacy through involvement in litigation and administrative rulemaking. Relatively early selection of potential paper topics is advised.

The course will examine the regulation of NCAA athletics and the enforcement of NCAA rules. It will examine in detail several high profile NCAA cases including those involving Penn State, Miami and UNC-Chapel Hill.

Issues in the legal regulation of sexuality and gender identity are among the most contested in US law today. Issues which either have been litigated in US courts in recent years or are currently being litigated include the ability of same-sex couples to marry, people’s access to contraception or abortion, as well as the ability of LGBTQ persons to access health care, public accommodations, employment, and education without discrimination. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the investigation of the legal regulation of human sexuality and gender identity. It examines the historical and jurisprudential foundations of these legal constructs with insights developed through feminist and queer theory. These disciplines will be deployed to better understand the scope of the rights to sexual and gender equality, liberty, and autonomy available to people not only in theory, but in fact, and not only at the national level, but at the state and local levels.

This seminar will focus on the role of the legislative and administrative process in family creation. We will examine situations in which a child born in one family becomes part of another through mechanisms such as adoption, foster care, or surrogacy. Particular attention will be given to intercountry adoption and surrogacy, which raise complex issues of law and policy, including those relating to the definition of family, state sovereignty, immigration and citizenship, human rights, and ethics and transparency. Not all countries participating in intercountry adoption and surrogacy are subject to relevant international treaties, and even where treaties are in effect, implementation has been characterized by conflict and delay. At the local level, regulation through oversight of private agencies, adoptive families, and third party intermediaries has been uneven. Throughout our examination of these issues, we will focus attention on the ways in which race and class have shaped policy, often in ways that harm families and children.

This seminar aims to give students the opportunity to understand the policymaking process by closely examining what has transpired in the field of family creation in the last 15-20 years, and considering what the future may hold, both within the U.S. and abroad. Students will be expected to explore and understand the intersection between policy, treaty, and national law, as well as the interrelationship between the legislative and administrative processes. Because the seminar will examine not only the law within the U.S. but that in other countries, students will be able to explore the differences in culture and policy that exist nation to nation and consider how those differences affect these inherently international issues relating to family creation.

Readings will draw from the United States and international sources and will include existing and proposed legislation, existing and proposed administrative regulations, treaty provisions, court decisions interpreting these sources, academic and journalistic writings, and audiovisual materials.

Today, thanks to the internet, everyone is a publisher. This class will examine the regulation of communications media, including newspapers, broadcast media, social media, and internet content generally. It will survey the First Amendment principles underpinning protection for speech and address current events and ongoing debates about the media, including “fake news,” blockbuster defamation cases, and social media content moderation. This class will also cover topics specific to the practice of media lawyers, such as pre-publication review, prior restraints on speech, defending subpoenas, reporters’ privilege, and access to information. Students will be assessed on their completion of three written projects.

This writing and experiential course will provide students with the opportunity to practice several different types of persuasive writing used in federal litigation. The students will work on a hypothetical case involving an employment discrimination matter. The students will follow the case from the administrative agency level, to the filing of a complaint in federal court, through the discovery process, and culminating in the filing and arguing of a motion for summary judgment. In addition to writing, the students will have the opportunity to interview a client and a witness and to practice their oral advocacy skills in a mock meeting with a partner and a mock hearing. This course will be useful for anyone interested in practicing in federal court and/or pursuing a federal clerkship at the trial court level.