Study

A study of the basic rules of criminal procedure, beginning with the institution of formal proceedings. Subjects to be covered include prosecutorial discretion, the preliminary hearing, the grand jury, criminal discovery, guilty pleas and plea bargaining, jury selection, pretrial publicity, double jeopardy, the right to counsel, and professional ethics in criminal cases.

This course examines in detail the "law of lawyering" relating to such issues as the formation of the attorney-client relationship, confidentiality, communications with clients, conflicts of interest, regulation and discipline of attorneys, and numerous other areas relating to the lawyer's role in American society. In addressing these issues, we will consider the extent to which the law governing lawyers derives from the concept of a learned profession, as well as the degree to which the ethics of lawyering may differ from personal ethics and morality. While particular attention will be paid to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the class will also examine other sources of relevant law, including the Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers, court decisions and rules, statutes, and administrative regulations.  Grading is based on a final examination, written work relating to casebook problems and reflections on current issues in legal ethics, and class participation.

 

This course will examine the practices and powers of American appellate courts, with a particular emphasis on the federal courts of appeals.  Our discussion will focus on the goals of these institutions and the extent to which individual components of the appellate decision-making process—including oral argument and opinion-writing—further those goals.

We will begin with an overview of the function of appellate courts—why they were created and what we expect of them today.  We will then move to the specific components of appellate adjudication, including mediation, briefing, oral argument, and judgment, as well as the personnel who contribute to the adjudication process.  Finally, we will consider the ways in which the appellate courts have been affected by an increasing caseload, and proposals for alleviating the strain on the courts.

Ultimately, the goal of the course is to expose you to how appellate courts operate and the purported goals of these institutions.  Over the course of the semester, you should also be evaluating what you think are the fundamental objectives of appellate review and whether the current structure of the courts allows them to meet those goals.

Evaluation in the course will be based on a final research paper, which may be used to satisfy the SRWP.

Criminal Justice Ethics (2 Credit Seminar) focuses on the professional and ethical laws governing attorneys in the criminal justice system. The course focuses on issues affecting both prosecutors and defense attorneys and the applicable rules of professional conduct. The course will work to deepen students’ understanding of the role and responsibilities of criminal justice attorneys in society. This is a specialized ethics course with a focus on lawyers working in the criminal justice system, as such our focus will not cover the Rules of Professional Conduct in their entirety. The class is discussion-based. The primary methods of assessment will be three (3), two-page reflection papers throughout the semester and a final 15-page research and/or analytical paper.

This survey course examines the legal and policy issues governing water quality and resource allocation in the United States. Students will be introduced to both the Prior Appropriation systems of the western United States and the Reasonable Use systems dominating the eastern states. We will study key laws that affect water quality and quantity, including the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and others.  Students will also explore emerging issues in water policy, including the regulation of "forever chemicals," protection of wetlands, and mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, among other policy issues.  Throughout the course, students will study how environmental justice relates to water resource management.

This course will examine a number of topics related to the law of animals, including various issues that arise under the laws of property, contracts, torts, and trusts and estates. It will also examine various criminal law issues and constitutional law questions. The class will consider such issues as the definition of "animal" as applicable to anti-cruelty statutes, the collection of damages for harm to animals, establishing standing for animal suits, first amendment protections, and the nuances of various federal laws.

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.

This course is intended as an introduction to experimental research, legal theory, and caselaw on jury decision making.  Although the topic overlaps considerably with areas of basic decision making--e.g., the heuristics and biases literature--the focus will be mostly on applied research looking at the decisions of real (or simulated) jurors.

Lawyers, scholars, business executives, and ordinary people have consistently asked a fundamental question: what is the role of the corporation in society? One way of answering this question is to look to corporate law and consider corporate purpose and its accompanying debates. Yet another way of answering this question involves debates around corporate personhood, especially as they arise in the context of corporate constitutional rights. At bottom, we are continually confronted with the same questions: What rights does the corporation have? How should government regulate the corporation and the power it wields? What is the role of the corporation in American democracy specifically? What does it mean for corporations to engage in social and political activism? Should they do so at all? This course will explore these questions from both a public law and private law perspective, including the ways in which corporate governance can respond to some of these questions. In doing so, this course will bridge a gap between constitutional law and corporate law by focusing on where the doctrines intersect. Students will analyze case law, scholarly literature, and selected popular and practitioner-focused readings in this space.

Throughout this course, there are two overarching questions that we will consider: (1) What should corporate decisionmakers be mindful of when it comes to corporate social and political activity, including the assertion of corporate constitutional rights? and (2) What does the assertion of corporate constitutional rights mean for American democracy and its survival?

The course will be taught as a two-hour weekly seminar, focused on class discussion of assigned readings. Students will complete five three-page response papers and one final fifteen page paper. For an additional credit, students may also fulfill their SRWP requirement with this seminar with my permission and receive an additional credit that counts as an independent study on a credit/no-credit basis.

Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly is used to make important decisions that affect individuals and society. A particularly pressing area of concern has been in criminal cases, in which a person’s life, liberty, and public safety can be at stake. In the United States and globally, despite concerns that technology may deepen pre-existing racial disparities and overreliance on incarceration, black box AI has proliferated in areas such as: DNA mixture interpretation; facial recognition; recidivism risk assessments; and predictive policing.

This two-credit seminar will include academic work regarding several of those types of uses of AI in criminal justice, as well as some of the early judicial opinions ruling on such evidence. We will read leading work on the rules of evidence implicated by AI, what constitutional criminal procedure rules are at stake, and we will engage with how these technologies work and are evolving. We will also attend, and comment on, a portion of a timely judicial conference on expert evidence on Friday, Jan. 26, and a longer set of discussions with EU experts on AI on Saturday, January 27.

There are no prerequisites, but a course in evidence or in criminal procedure would be helpful. Students will write a 3-5 page response paper to the portion of the conference that they attend and a 20- page research and policy paper, with presentations in class on each student’s work at the end of the semester.

This course identifies and explores aspects of the American legal system that have effects – both negative and positive – on the ability of people and society to prevent the onset of financial anxiety and economic insecurity.   Set in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic but with analogues in laws that were enacted and implemented in other contexts,  the class will explore the meaning of financial anxiety and economic insecurity and discuss why they matter.  The class will then explore various laws. and their implementation by federal and state agencies, as relevant to financial anxiety and economic insecurity.   Subjects that bear upon financial anxiety that will be explored through the prism of law include housing finance, student loan finance, personal information security and climate security. The legislative response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular the CARES Act, will be analyzed in relation to how laws regarding financial anxiety and economic insecurity have been crafted by Congress in the last decade as a response to crises such as the financial and foreclosure crisis of 2008,   With these comparative laws and financial contexts, the class will engage in discussions about the extent to which the American legal system is equipped to handle the challenges of dealing with financial anxiety in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.  We will discuss financial anxiety in the larger context of consumer debt, agency and regulatory action, and legislative responsiveness as well as differential impacts related to debt, race and gender. The readings will come from law and non-law sources. The class will discuss issues relevant to the legal system and the study of business law and finance generally, including the use of data to illuminate legal problems, the role of lawyers and business actors, and the nature of modern policymaking.

Due to substantive overlap in material, students may not concurrently enroll in Law 288: Consumer Bankruptcy & Debt and Law 586: Current Debates in Bankruptcy Law. However, if you've taken one of the courses in a previous semester and wish to take the other, that will be permitted. Students may not enroll in both Law 288: Consumer Bankruptcy & Debt and Law 555: Law and Financial Anxiety without instructor permission. 

This course will address the past, present and future of space law – from its origins five decades ago, to the current era of explosive growth in spacefaring, to potential future human settlements on Mars and other planets. How well does current space law govern this expanding arena, and what kinds of new governance regimes are needed? The Outer Space Treaty (OST) was signed in 1967 when space exploration was just beginning and focused on the Cold War rivalry between the US and USSR. Today, 114 states are parties to the OST (with smaller numbers having signed its related accords on registration, liability, and other topics), and space activities are booming. Missions to the Moon have now been undertaken by the US, Russia, EU, China, India, and Israel, and missions to Mars by the US, EU, China, and the UAE. The US and Japan have each excavated materials from asteroids and brought samples back to Earth. In 2022, the US and EU launched DART, the first ever asteroid deflection test. Thousands of satellites are now orbiting the Earth, with many more to be added soon – for scientific, navigation, weather, military, intelligence, communications and commercial uses – including many operated by private actors such as SpaceX/Starlink and Amazon/Blue Origin. Non-state actors are developing their own terms for space rules. New space law is being developed, such as the Artemis Accords (2020; signed by 29 countries as of 2023), and the US statute on space resource ownership (2015). States and private actors are mulling plans to settle human communities on the Moon and Mars. Is the OST still adequate? What new approaches are needed?

We will investigate what current laws say about these efforts, and what will or should be the legal rules and norms for future missions and settlements off the Earth. Among the challenges for space law today are: reducing dangerous space debris in Earth orbit, and environmental impacts of launches; defining property rights to space resources, and liability for harm, thus motivating investment while avoiding resource depletion and ensuring equitable access; managing international space relations, space-based energy systems, climate engineering, and avoiding war in space; defending against large asteroid collisions and space weather; protecting against harmful contamination of the Earth and of other planets; considering whether to terraform other planets; and charting the legal rules for potential human settlements on the Moon, Mars, or other off-Earth locations (including laws for accidents, crimes, health, environment, marriage, divorce, citizenship, etc.). Envisioning and debating future space law off-Earth may also offer a useful lens for reforming laws on Earth today. And we will discuss who should decide these laws – e.g., each government that sends settlers, or each private company, or an international agreement, or the settlers themselves in their new home.

Students will write short and medium length papers (no exam). Grad/prof students outside the Law School may enroll if ‘space’ allows. No prerequisites.

This two-credit seminar will feature presentations (eight in total) of works-in-progress on a wide range of tax policy topics, by leading tax academics from law schools around the country. Although this is a two-credit seminar, it is scheduled for three hours per week on the weeks in which it meets. The first meeting will be February 6. Students will write reaction papers (of approximately three double-spaced pages) for seven of the eight works-in-progress. (Each student can choose which week not to write a reaction paper.) Grades will be based on the reaction papers and on contributions to the seminar discussions.

In this seminar, we will read social science research to examine the empirical assumptions of rules, systems, and practices of criminal law and procedure. We will cover a series of empirical questions, which may include: (1) Does stop and frisk policing reduce crime? (2) Can body cameras change police behavior? (3) Does the death penalty deter? (4) Are there alternatives to incarceration that can keep us safe? (5) Is there racial disparity in sentencing, and if there is, what can we do about it? (6) What is the right age of majority to separate the juvenile and adult justice systems?

While some background in social science and statistics may be helpful, it is not a requirement for the course. Students will be evaluated based on class participation and a series of reaction papers. Students will also be asked to lead discussion of some of the readings.

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.

National security cases present unique challenges to prosecutors and defense attorneys. From the outset of an investigation, and before charges are brought, prosecutors and investigators must take into account a number of considerations, including coordination with the intelligence community and potential conflicts that may arise between law enforcement and intelligence gathering. After a case is charged, such cases frequently present other challenges, such as complying with discovery obligations while protecting classified information and obtaining testimony from foreign witnesses who may be beyond the reach of the U.S. government. This course will provide an in-depth examination of the unique issues that lawyers face in national security prosecutions and the substantive and procedural tools used to navigate those issues.  We will also examine the advantages and limitations of civilian prosecutions and consider the effectiveness of current procedures and criminal statutes in addressing modern national security threats.  An emphasis will be placed on case-specific examples and hypotheticals, drawing in part on the instructor’s experience and pending public cases.  The course will culminate in a simulation in which students are presented with a rapidly unfolding national security incident in which they are asked to address various hypotheticals at different stages of the case.

Students will be expected to complete a final paper of 10-15 pages in length on a topic approved by the instructor. JD or LLM students who wish to use the paper to satisfy the substantial writing requirement of their degree should enroll in a 1 credit independent study with Professor Stansbury and will be expected to write a final paper of 25-30 pages in length. The Independent Study will be graded on a credit/no-credit basis.

Faced with myriad health, safety, environmental, security and financial risks, how should societies respond?  This course studies the regulation of a wide array of risks, such as disease, food, drugs, medical care, biotechnology, chemicals, automobiles, air travel, drinking water, air pollution, energy, climate change, finance, violence, terrorism, emerging technologies, and extreme catastrophic risks. (Students may propose to research other risks as well.)

Across these diverse contexts, the course focuses on how regulatory institutions deal with the challenges of risk assessment (technical expertise), risk perceptions (public concerns and values), priority-setting (which risks should be regulated most), risk management (including the debates over "precaution" versus benefit-cost analysis, and risk-risk tradeoffs such as countervailing harms and co-benefits), and ongoing evaluation and updating.  It examines the rules and institutions for risk regulation, including the roles of legislative, executive/administrative, and judicial functions; the challenge of fragmentation and integration; the roles of oversight bodies (such as judicial review by courts, and executive review by US OMB/OIRA and the EU RSB); and the potential for international regulatory cooperation.

The course examines these issues through a comparative approach to risk regulation in the United States, Europe, and beyond (especially those countries of interest to the students in the course each year).  It examines the divergence, convergence, and exchange of ideas across regulatory systems; the causes of these patterns; the consequences of regulatory choices; and how regulatory systems can learn to do better.

This is a research seminar, in which students discuss and debate in class, while developing their own research.  We may also have some guest speakers.  Students' responsibilities in this course include active participation in class discussions, and writing a substantial research paper.  Students’ papers may take several approaches, such as analyzing a specific risk regulation; comparing regulation across countries; analyzing proposals to improve the regulatory system; or other related topics.

This course is Law 590, cross-listed as Environ 733.01 and PubPol 891.01.  Graduate and professional students from outside the Law School should enroll via those Environ and PubPol course numbers, and may contact the Nicholas School registrar, Erika Lovelace, e.love@duke.edu, or the Sanford School registrar, Anita Lyon, anita.lyon@duke.edu, with any questions about enrollment.  (The Law School does not use “permission numbers.”)

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.

Recent constitutional reconstructions in various parts of the world have called new attention to the problems of institutional design of political systems. In this course we will examine the design and implementation of national constitutions. In particular, we will address the following questions. What are the basic elements of constitutions? How do these elements differ across time, across region, and across regime type? What is the process by which states draft and implement constitutions? What models, theories, and writings have influenced the framers of constitutions?

In the first half of the course, we will review the historical roots of constitutions and investigate their provisions and formal characteristics. We will also discuss the circumstances surrounding the drafting of several exemplary or noteworthy constitutions, from various regions of the world. We will then examine particular features of institutional design in depth. These will include judicial review, presidentialism vs. parliamentarism, federalism, and the relationship of the national legal system to international law.

Social choice theory is the systematic study of how to combine individual preferences, or some other indicator of individual well-being, into a collective ranking. Although scholars have worried about this problem for centuries, most intellectual progress in social choice theory has occurred in the last century, with Arrow's stunning "impossibility theorem," and the development of the notion of the "social welfare function." This latter construct serves as the foundation for many disciplines within economics (such as optimal tax theory or the economics of climate change). It also provides a rigorous and comprehensive framework for thinking about cost-benefit analysis--currently the dominant policy tool in the U.S. government.

This course will provide an introduction to social choice theory, with a particular focus on the social welfare function and on cost-benefit analysis. In the course of addressing these topics, we will also spend substantial time discussing the philosophical literatures on well-being and on inequality. What is the connection between someone's well-being and her preferences, her happiness, or her realization of various "objective goods"? And--on any conception of well-being--how should we structure policy choice to take account of the distribution of individual welfare? Addressing these questions is essential for thinking clearly about collective choice and, in particular, social welfare functions and cost-benefit analysis.

The book Measuring Social Welfare: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019) will serve as the main text for the course, with additional readings from philosophy, economics, and law.  The course does not require advanced mathematics. However, students should not be "math phobic". The readings and our discussion will use some mathematical notation to communicate key ideas--as does, of course, any economics text on cost-benefit analysis--and students should not be afraid of seeing this notation. Students should also be prepared to engage in philosophical discussion.

The course will be taught as a 2-hour weekly seminar. Students will be asked to do the reading for each seminar; to write short (1 page) reaction papers each week; and to participate in class discussion. Students will also write a 10-page final analytical (not research) paper.  This final paper can either be (a) a critical discussion of one or more chapters from Measuring Social Welfare, or (b) a critical discussion of some other book or article relevant to the topics of the seminar.

“Access to justice” (sometimes denominated “A2J”) is a multidimensional concept that eludes easy definition. This course will use the term expansively, to capture the ways in which our civil legal system does or does not respond to the legal needs of ordinary people.
This course will examine the structural obstacles that impede access to civil justice as well as contemporary opportunities for reform. Access barriers can have a variety of sources. Barriers can be doctrinal (e.g., the civil right to counsel), practical (e.g., courts’ ability to accommodate non-English-speaking litigants), economic (e.g., the rise of binding arbitration), or political (e.g., limited funding for legal aid offices), and nearly all are multifactorial. Similarly, opportunities for improvement can be found in doctrine, institutional design, community engagement, and technology. Compared to a course on substantive law, our focus will be on the institutional, procedural, and practical dimensions of the access problem.

The course will be divided into roughly three components. In Part I, we will consider theories and doctrines of civil legal access. In Part II, we will consider institutional and procedural features that shape access to our civil legal system, as well as the roles of different actors and constituencies in the civil justice system, including: lawyers and the legal profession; self-represented litigants; community organizations; courts; and non-judicial government institutions. In Part III, we will consider a handful of “pressure points” in access to civil justices—that is, areas of the law where legal needs are especially significant, and where access is especially challenging. Among the areas will consider will be family law, housing law, consumer law and consumer bankruptcy, and immigration law. Solutions and opportunities for change will be discussed throughout all three parts of the course.

Students will be evaluated on the basis of class participation, four response papers and a research proposal.

This course will focus on one of the most important elements in combatting, adapting to and mitigating the impact of climate change, namely the role of finance.  We will review the status of climate change science to gain an understanding of the challenge facing all of us.  Recognition and commitments by governments, including most particularly the United States, China, and Europe, will then be reviewed, before we consider the multiple linkages between finance and climate change, including the adverse impact of cryptocurrency.

Against this introduction the course will then delve into the various dimensions of financial markets and the players involved.  This is important to understand the broad ranging impact and opportunities for addressing climate change.  Once the markets and market participants are understood, the course will review the diverse roles of government agents and regulators, each of whom can have a far-reaching impact in shaping the markets and market behavior.  We will also assess the recognition of the challenge by financial market participants and their actual and potential responses to it.

A particularly thorny area is that of market analytics.  Many market operators claim to be “green,” but at this point the methods for determining the veracity of the claims remain very underdeveloped and often contradictory.  We will consider what has still to be done before we can really evaluate the “green” performance of firms and funds.  We will also face the real challenges that such firms face when trying to adapt.

The course will conclude with an assessment of the overall state of financial markets as one of the most important arenas in the struggle to meet the great challenges posed by climate change.

Originalism has become a major force in constitutional interpretation throughout the federal and state judiciaries.  The theory’s merits and the merits of the outcome it yields are the subject of intense debate in the legal community and across the country.

This two-hour weekly seminar is designed to help acquaint you with the history of Originalism, developments in Originalism over time, criticisms of the theory, current controversies among originalists, and how lawyers and judges engage in originalist analysis. 

Students will be evaluated on papers responding to the course readings and on class participation.

This seminar will focus on the most important and most controversial aspects of evidence law, including new technologies like AI, and electronic/digital evidence. The seminar also explores controversial areas of the evidence rules where change has been called for (sometimes for decades) but has not yet occurred.

This course is intended to appeal to any student who seeks a judicial clerkship or aspires to be a judge, or who simply wants to learn more about how and why judges write judicial opinions. Students will consider the complexities of being on the bench, including judges' relationships with the public, with lawyers, with other judges, and with their clerks. The students will try their hands at formats and styles unique to clerking or judging, including a bench brief, an analytic paper, and an appellate-court opinion.