Current Legal Problems | DEV-College of Law | Illinois

792: Behavioral Economics & the Law

Chris Davies — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:50:36 +0000

The economic analysis of law relies on rational choice theory as a starting point for predicting human behavior. However, social scientists have found that human behavior in the real world systematically deviates from the rational choice model’s predictions. The objective of this course is to consider the ways in which behavioral findings complement or modify the economic analysis of law. Students will be introduced to biases and heuristics that influence human behavior related to the law; critiques of behavioral law and economics; and behavioral insights from psychologists and economists in property, torts, contracts, criminal law, the decision-making of judges and jurors, and litigation.

Sequences and Prerequisites: A basic understanding of property, torts, contracts, criminal law, and civil procedure.

Evaluation: Course evaluation will be based on participation, weekly reading responses, and a final paper.

792: Public Corruption

Chris Davies — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:49:28 +0000

This seminar examines timely issues in the investigation, prosecution, and defense of federal public corruption offenses. The seminar will challenge students to reason through statutory, doctrinal, and policy issues in practical, frequently encountered scenarios from both prosecutorial and defense perspectives, including parallel civil and criminal investigations, grand jury practice and defense investigations, attorney client privilege and joint defense agreements, and plea bargaining and sentencing issues. This is a pass/fail course.

Sequence and Prerequisites: Law 684, Federal Courts is a pre- or co-requisite course. You must have taken or be taking Federal Courts.

Evaluation: Written assignments and participation

792: Law and Emerging Technology

Chris Davies — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:48:27 +0000

This course will explore the implications of several technological advancements for the evolution of the law. Emerging technologies in urban mobility such as autonomous vehicles provide helpful case studies for thinking about the impact of technology change, particularly that of the substitution of artificial intelligence for human decision-making, on the law. We will mostly focus on the legal, ethical, and policy implications of emerging technologies in urban mobility. Algorithms play a key role in many of the technological advancements we will discuss, and we will explore both the regulation of algorithms and regulation by algorithms.

Sequences and Prerequisites: A basic understanding of torts, criminal law, and contracts.

Evaluation: Course evaluation will be based on participation, weekly reading responses, and a final paper

792: History of the African American Lawyer in the United States

Chris Davies — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:46:59 +0000

This course will chronical the unique role, influence and history of the African American lawyer in the United States. For 225 years (1619-1844), there was not one African American lawyer in North America until Macon Bolling Allen was admitted to the bar in the State of Maine on July 3, 1844. Students will learn the personal and professional journeys of several distinguished African American lawyers who not only were masterful legal technicians, but also, were committed to forcing the legal system to live up to its creed: the promise of ‘equal justice under the law.’

This course is designed to introduce students to the importance of knowing, understanding, and critically analyzing the history of the legal profession, in general, but specifically, in the context of the African American experience. Students will be asked to explore the variety of roles African American lawyers have played in the legal community and in the United States not just as legal practitioners, but as advocates (or social engineers) to advance the cause of justice, equality, fairness, and the Rule of Law. Equipped with a broader understanding of the African American experience in the law, each student will be asked to begin (or continue) their own particular exploration of their purpose, place, and perspective as they enter the legal profession.

Sequence and Prerequisites: None

Evaluation: Written assignments and participation

792: Lincoln’s Law Practice

Chris Davies — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:45:55 +0000

This class is about the daily professional life of a nineteenth century circuit-riding attorney named Abraham Lincoln. Obviously, the man who sat in the White House was heavily influenced by the one who sat in a saddle on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, but this class is only concerned with the latter. Because of his presidency, nearly every day of Lincoln’s earlier professional life has been documented; this allows us a unique look into his profession. The digitization of documents from nearly every case he worked on allows us to see how a lawyer of his stature went about daily life – and how he, in particular, practiced law. What was the practice of law in mid-century Illinois like? How did it differ from that in, say, Boston, or New York, or even St. Louis? What was it like to ride the circuit? Study law? Take the bar?

Sequence and Prerequisites: None

Evaluation: This class will be graded on participation and a single, final paper dealing with some aspect of Lincoln’s law practice. Upper Level Writing credit.

792: Presidential Selection and the Constitution

Chris Davies — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:44:50 +0000

This course will focus on the ways in which the U.S. Constitution regulates, or does not regulate, the selection of a President and Vice President every four years. We will delve into, among other things, the origins and explanations of the so-called “Electoral College,” the independence, vel non, of presidential electors, modern reform efforts that could move the nation in the direction of a national-popular-vote system for presidential election, Vice-Presidential selection, presidential succession, the so-called Purcell doctrine, the respective roles of Congress and state governments in regulating presidential elections, the (related) “independent state legislature” theory, and the meaning and scope of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment as regards the office of the President. We will not have a casebook for this course, but instead will use materials from a set of readings (cases, law review articles, online commentary, etc.) that the instructor has put together.

Students should expect to attain the following learning outcomes from this particular course:

A deep understanding of how presidential elections fit within the framework of the U.S. Constitution
An appreciation for the theory and history behind the creation of the electoral college and the delegation of authority to states in this realm
A sophisticated awareness of the modern areas of constitutional contention as regards presidential elections
The ability to understand and analyze arguments made in judicial opinions and in legal scholarship

This is a pass/fail course.

Sequence and Prerequisites: Law 606, Constitutional Law

Evaluation: To receive course credit, students will be required to take and pass a final examination.

792: Legislation and Regulation

Chris Davies — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:43:37 +0000

This course is an introduction to how Congress and administrative agencies make law and to how courts interpret that law. The first half of the course examines the legislative process and statutory interpretation, including the use of dictionaries, legislative history, statutory purpose, canons of construction, and other interpretive tools to flesh out statutory meaning. The second half of the course turns to agencies’ implementation of statutes through regulations, addressing topics such as presidential control over agencies, notice-and-comment rulemaking, and judicial deference or nondeference to agencies. Lawyers working in virtually every practice area must routinely rely on statutes and regulations; this course aims to give students the understanding and tools they need to persuade courts to interpret statutes and regulations in their clients’ favor.

Prerequisites: There are no prerequisites for this course.

Evaluation: Exam.

792: Law and Society

Chris Davies — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:41:14 +0000

This course discusses major issues and debates in the fields of law and society and socio-legal studies. This course covers the theory and practice of legal and political institutions in performing several major functions at the local, national, and transnational levels, such as: allocating authority, enabling social control, defining relationships, resolving conflict, adapting to social change, and fostering social solidarity. In examining these functions, the course will assess the nature and limits of law, consider alternative perspectives on law, and discuss various ways to structure legal processes. Meets with SOC 596.

Sequence and Prerequisites: None

Evaluation: Paper or Project

792: Law & Literature

Chris Davies — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:39:55 +0000

This upper level course will examine points of intersection between literature and the law. The course takes a broad view of “literature,” incorporating not only novels, but plays, movies, television, podcasts, blogs, and nonfiction works within that term. Students will consider how legal practitioners shape narratives, ways in which literature conveys or frames legal developments and practice, and whether or when literature acts as a leading indicator regarding changes in the law.

Sequence and Prerequisites: None.

Evaluation: Class participation is an important component of this class; working in teams of two or three, students will lead discussion during one in-class conversation. Students will also complete a series of polls, short papers, or creative works, some of which will be published to the entire class, and will write a 6-10 page final paper, which will examine a Supreme Court opinion of their choosing in light of 1-2 roughly contemporary literary works.

792: Civil Rights Complementarity

Chris Davies — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:38:47 +0000

American society has become increasingly fractured. Lawmakers, policymakers, and the public encounter “culture war clashes” framed as zero-sum, either/or propositions. In this winner-takes-all mentality, the rights of some are pitted against the rights of others. Values that we share—such as mutual respect, justice, and dignity—are often lost in the discussion or resulting resolution.

As one example, in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), the United States Supreme Court erased penalties levied by the state of Colorado on the owner of a small cake shop in Colorado who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, citing his religious beliefs about marriage. A rigorous debate ensued about whose “rights” should take precedence: LGBTQ persons or religious wedding vendors. Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy latched onto statements made by one civil rights commissioner to hold that Colorado violated its constitutional duty to craft and administer laws without “hostility to a religion or religious viewpoint.” Masterpiece Cakeshop did not resolve the competing claims, which are now back in front of the Court in the case of a website designer.

This course will explore whether modern clashes over civil rights may be resolved in ways that affirm the interests of all persons. It will explore the relative competence of courts and legislatures to find common ground among affected communities. In particular, we will examine whether civil rights are like puzzle pieces that can be made to fit together by lawmakers who foster meaningful dialogue between affected communities—an approach known as civil rights complementarity. Civil rights complementarity asks whether creative, “both/and” solutions can be found, at least as to some modern culture war clashes.

This course will span a host of culture war clashes: from same-sex marriage to a path to inclusion for transgender athletes to abortion access. With each controversy, the goal will be to articulate the competing interests and analyze whether there is an approach that maximally respects all interests at stake—or reduces points of friction and trade-offs to the smallest number. With many controversies, we will hear from sitting lawmakers about how they resolved clashes in actual enacted or introduced laws, what sticking points they grappled with, how they defused controversy, and instances when competing communities co-joined efforts and arrived at a compromise. Special attention will be paid to the value of dialogue. We will explore the challenges and advantages of having dueling “factions” sitting at the same table and discussing shared values and interests and how that process can reduce corrosive social and political tensions

This course will canvas some of these clashes using readings from Religious Freedom, LGBT Rights, and the Prospects for Common Ground (William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Robin Fretwell Wilson, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2018) (Introduction with William N. Eskridge, Jr.), as well as readings from cases and the media

At the end of this course, you will be able to articulate how to arrive at a blueprint for legal measures reconciling competing interests and grasp the soft skills needed to enhance dialogue and diplomacy between stakeholders

Sequence and Prerequisite: None

Evaluation: Final examination