The goal of this course is to synthesize the students’ existing knowledge of pretrial procedure, evidence, advocacy skills and ethics in the context of training students in pretrial litigation including, but not limited to: litigation planning, fact investigation, legal strategy, case evaluation, drafting pleadings, discovery, and motion practice. This primarily will be a simulation/skills course in which students will read materials on the substantive law and related skills, observe demonstrations and engage in exercises both in and out of the classroom.
Sequence and Prerequisites: Prior or concurrent enrollment in Evidence (Law 682). Professional Responsibility (Law 680) is preferred.
Evaluation: Students will be graded on exercises, class participation, reflection essays, written products and an end of the term project.
Course Classification: Experiential
Family Law deals with the creation and dissolution of legal relationships within the family. The course covers the law of marriage, divorce, annulment, separation, illegitimacy, adoption and, rights of child custody, parental authority, support, property, and inheritance and related rights. Specific emphasis is given to the regulation of marital property (ownership during marriage, division on divorce, inheritance on death), and financial responsibilities during marriage and on divorce, alimony, and child support. The legal relationship between parents and children, support enforcement, termination of parental rights are covered as is the legal relationship between children born to unmarried parents and their parents. Throughout the course, legal rules are placed into their social settings. The family lawyer, perhaps more than any other, must “sell” his or her legal advice with concern for and understanding of broader social consequences. The suitability in family litigation of the adversary system as well as legal ethics as practiced in family law are discussed. Considerable emphasis is given to current developments in family law reform.
Sequence and Prerequisites: None
Evaluation: Final administered exam
This course addresses the legal implications of Americans as they grow older, including Social Security, pension plan distributions, Medicare and Medicaid coverage, long-term care and nursing home admission, powers-of-attorney for health care and financial/legal matters, guardianship, and ethical considerations in advising older clients. The focus is on understanding statutory provisions that affect the care, comfort, and financial security of older people to facilitate informed advising and culturally sensitive planning. Policy implications of these statutory regimes are considered throughout the course as well.
Sequence and Prerequisites: None
Evaluation: Administered final examination
The course is an overview of family law, including dissolution, legal separation, paternity, child support enforcement, orders of protection and abuse and neglect cases, with the students participating in the simulated trial of a family law case in a courtroom setting before a family law judge. The course will also deal with specific evidentiary, ethics and other issues unique to family law cases. The course also features guest lectures by experienced local family law lawyers. Finally, the course will address alternative dispute resolution issues and the various pre-trial and discovery aspects of a family law case.
Sequence and Prerequisites: none
Evaluation: Class participation, participation in courtroom observations, and a final take-home examination.
Health Law is an essential introductory course for students who are interested in the healthcare field. This course will explore a broad range of topics at the intersection of law, policy, ethics, and healthcare. Topics include the patient-physician relationship, decision-making and autonomy, liability concepts, the impact of artificial intelligence and digital health, data privacy, health insurance, organ donation, stem cell research, reproduction and reproductive technology, contraception, sterilization, abortion, and more.
Sequence and Prerequisites: None
Course Evaluation: Final examination
This course, taught by Professors Lawless and Robbennolt, is designed to introduce students to one of the fastest growing areas of legal scholarship and practice—the use of empirical techniques. The emphasis in the course will be on equipping practitioners to be sophisticated and critical consumers of empirical material that may be used in legal cases, in the formation of legislation, and in public policy debates. The course will introduce students to the process of empirical research from start to finish, including how to design a project; how to conduct surveys, design experiments, and work with archival data; how to comply with ethical rules, sample appropriately, and code data; how to conduct a broad range of statistical analyses; and how to communicate effectively about numbers, statistics, and scientific research.
Sequence and Prerequisites: None
Evaluation: Students will fulfill the course requirements by designing an empirical research project and collecting relevant data in teams, writing an individual paper, presenting the research to the class, participating in class discussions, and completing homework exercises. Students will be taught to use statistical software, which will be available for purchase at a heavily discounted price from the UI Webstore. The course assumes no prior familiarity with statistics or empirical techniques.
This seminar will explore the social and intellectual history of American law in the colonial period. While we will pay some attention to the development of legal rules and institutions, we will concentrate on legal culture – on that configuration of values and habits of mind that shaped the operation of the legal system and informed how colonists understood the law’s purposes and meanings. In so doing, the course will stress the multiple roles of law: as a way of resolving disputes, distributing resources, channeling politics and social development, shaping personal identities, and creating authoritative categories of knowledge. The seminar is organized into five main parts. The first section examines the legal foundations and justifications of English colonization in North America. The second charts how colonization produced divergent regional legal cultures in the seventeenth century Chesapeake and in Puritan New England. The third looks at the regulation of slavery and of gender relations. The fourth returns to the problem of seventeenth-century legal culture, exploring not regional variation, but the important and distinctive characteristics of that legal culture evident throughout the American colonies, characteristics that lent it a flavor or style. Finally, the fifth section asks how and why the legal culture of the eighteenth century displaced that of the seventeenth. Stronger imperial oversight, the growing importance of trained lawyers, and the expansion of population and commerce are all considered as causes of this transformation. The seminar ends by looking briefly at the Spanish empire, asking how comparison to another New World imperial legal system helps us identify what is distinctive in British America.
Sequence and Prerequisites: None
Evaluation: Two, essay-based, closed book exams during the semester using the exam software.
“Jurisprudence” is a word with many meanings. As used in this course, “jurisprudence” refers to the philosophical study of the nature of law—the study of the sort of thing that law is and how it operates, regardless of jurisdiction or time period. Jurisprudence aims, among other things, to understand what law is, how law relates to morality or politics, the extent to which law is determinate or objective, how different sources of law—customs, precedents, statutes, etc.—make law, and how law enters into legal reasoning and the adjudication of legal disputes. Students in this course gain an appreciation for enduring puzzles about law that have perplexed legal thinkers for centuries and analyze various solutions to those puzzles. Readings include works by Thomas Aquinas, John Austin, H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, and other writers. No prior experience with philosophy is required.
Sequence and Prerequisites: None
Evaluation: Exam
The IP Clinic provides students with real-world trademark and patent prosecution experience and is intended as a capstone class for those entering the practice of trademark or patent law. The IP Clinic includes a Patent Track and a Trademark Track.
In the Trademark Track, student companies desiring trademark assistance are also referred to the IP Clinic by the TEC. Each Clinic Participant is assigned five companies and meets with the companies to advise them on the selection of trademarkable matter, performs trademark searching with regard to the selected trademarks and prepares trademark applications. Completed trademark applications are provided to the companies for filing with the PTO. Participation in the Trademark Track does not have a prerequisite, but LAW 643 Trademark Law is recommended.
Sequence and Prerequisites: There is no prerequisite, but LAW 643: Trademark Law is recommended. Cannot be taken with any Law 693, Clinic course during the same semester.
Evaluation: Clinical projects
Course Classification: Experiential
This course centers on the Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Topics include governmental regulation of obscenity, commercial speech, and speech implicating national security concerns; restrictions on the time, place and manner of expression; fighting words and offensive speech; punishment of false factual statements and defamation; regulation of student speech (on and off campus) and rights of protest; governmental efforts to compel private expression; public subsidies for speech the government seeks to promote; First Amendment issues in electoral processes and campaigning; symbolic speech; associational rights; and conflicts between free expression and other democratic values. Consideration of the historical origins and theoretical underpinnings of the First Amendment will help inform doctrinal rules. Some attention will also be given in the course to First Amendment issues of press, assembly, and petition.
Sequence and Prerequisites: Constitutional Law (Law 606) is a prerequisite or may be taken concurrently.
Evaluation: Final Exam