Upper-Level 7 - College of Law

797: Blockchain for Lawyers

This course provides a basic understanding of blockchain technology. It is intended to be a technical foundation for studying the current and emerging laws applicable to blockchain systems. Students will learn how essential blockchain systems work, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, altcoins, smart contracts and NFTs, decentralized autonomous organizations, and decentralized finance systems. We will relate technical issues to legal issues to ensure students are familiar with the key areas of law that govern blockchain systems and virtual assets. Those areas will include securities and commodities, asset tokenization, privacy, and intellectual property. This is a pass/fail course.

Sequence and Prerequisites: A basic understanding of Bitcoin functionality is recommended, but not required.

Evaluation: This is a pass/fail course. Students are expected to attend classes and engage in class participation. Students are assigned reading materials and required to prepare a short paper.

792: Health Law & Bioethics

This seminar will examine modern debates over biomedical ethics and the law, ranging from evolving understandings of the duty to provide informed consent in the context of medical treatment and human subjects research to how to encourage more organ donation, what duties nonprofit hospitals should have as a result of being nonprofit, and the limits of state power in containing infectious diseases or other epidemics, among other questions. The basic architecture of the course is drawn from Health Law and Bioethics: Cases in Context (Aspen, 2008, with Joan Krause, Sandra Johnson, and Richard Saver, eds.), which will supplemented with discussion of emerging policy challenges in medicine, like efforts to respond to the risks posed by Ebola.

Prerequisites: There are no prerequisites for this seminar, although some familiarity with health law will benefit students.

Evaluation: 90% of the grade in this course will come from a three-hour final exam and 10% from class participation.

798: Seminar on Advanced Topics in Criminal Law Theory

This is a seminar offered jointly by the University of Illinois and the University of Pennsylvania. It will be co-taught by Leo Katz (Penn) and Michael Moore (Illinois). Students from both universities will be enrolled in the seminar. It is also expected that auditing students/post-docs/faculty from other schools will also be auditing the seminar in whole or in part.

The subject matter of the seminar will be contemporary criminal law theory. The seminar will together read and discuss 14 articles/book chapters/book excerpts by leading criminal law theorists in America, the UK, Germany, and elsewhere. Because the authors of these readings will often be invited in from remote locations to join the seminar discussion, and because this is a joint seminar involving students from at least three different universities, each of the sessions will be conducted on Zoom. There will be no in person classroom component.

Each student at the University of Illinois will be expected to team up (by Zoom) with at least one student from one or other of the other two universities to prepare questions and comments for the authors on one of the papers to be read and discussed in one of the fourteen sessions of the seminar. In addition, Illinois students will be expected to prepare a 5-10 page paper exploring in greater depth one of the topics discussed during the semester. There will no exam or other formal requirements other than regular attendance.

Sequence and Prerequisites: Criminal Law is a prerequisite.

Evaluation: Each student at the University of Illinois will be expected to team up (by Zoom) with at least one student from one or other of the other two universities to prepare questions and comments for the authors on one of the papers to be read and discussed in one of the fourteen sessions of the seminar. In addition, Illinois students will be expected to prepare a 5-10 page paper exploring in greater depth one of the topics discussed during the semester. There will no exam or other formal requirements other than regular attendance.

693: First Amendment Clinic

Students in the First Amendment Clinic will represent clients, under the supervision of an experienced attorney, across the political spectrum as part of its mission to advance the freedoms of speech, press and assembly for both groups and individuals.

Students will be responsible for all aspects of the legal representation of their clients, including client interviewing, case evaluation and research, motion practice and brief writing, drafting pleadings and discovery requests, taking and defending depositions, participating in discovery and settlement conferences, negotiating with opposing parties, identifying and coordinating with experts, and oral advocacy during court appearances.

Students will learn the substantive and procedural areas of First Amendment Law and civil practice.

This is a five credit, graded course, that includes both a clinic and a simultaneous seminar. Students will be expected to complete a minimum of 225 hours in the course of the semester. Client obligations must be met on a case by case basis; students should have flexibility in their schedules to meet the demands of their cases.

Sequence and Prerequisites: Since 1AC students appear in court, they must be eligible for a “Law Student” license to practice law under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 711. This rule requires completion of one half of your required credits to graduate. Alternatively, students must be licensed to practice law in a foreign country. Completion of, or concurrent enrollment in, Law 692: Evidence and Law 798: First Amendment is strongly recommended, although not required.

Evaluation: This is a five credit, graded course that includes both a clinic and simultaneous seminar. Students will be expected to complete a minimum of 225 hours in the course of the semester. Grades will be based on completion of tasks and performance in the course.

Course Classification: Experiential

795: Cybercrime

This course will explore legal and practical issues that relate to the rapidly evolving world of cybercrime. The goals for the course are to gain an understanding of (1) how new technology has made certain crimes easier to commit and more difficult to investigate and prosecute, and (2) how new technology has created challenges courts in adapting existing legal doctrines to the virtual world.

During the course, we will first examine the elements of several substantive computer crimes, to include computer-related fraud schemes, misuse statutes, child pornography and enticement offenses, cyberterrorism, and others. We will also study sentencing issues. Next, we will consider how cybercrime has caused courts to reconsider traditional approaches and doctrines that were originally designed for conduct committed in the physical world. There will be significant focus on the Fourth Amendment’s application to communications and other data stored on the internet and on digital devices. We will also study the legal and practical limitations that encryption and the dark web pose. Finally, we will review the law of electronic surveillance.

The course will touch on several themes, to include the rules applicable to, and ethical responsibility of corporations in preserving and disclosing data to law enforcement, the balance between security and privacy, jurisdictional and practical limitations of international cybercrime, and the interplay between the First Amendment and certain internet crimes.

Sequence and Prerequisites: None

Evaluation: Take-home final exam

794: Derivatives Regulation

This new course being offered at the College of Law will be taught by Professor Ronald Filler, who has taught this course for over 40 years at four different U.S. law schools and is a recognized legal expert in this field. This course will cover all applicable laws and regulations as well as the customs and practices facing the derivatives industry and will prepare the student for a career in this field highlighted by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, major brokerage firms, such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, and other industry professionals. The course will cover the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC Regulations, the role played by the National Futures Association (“NFA”), the industry self-regulatory organization, and exchange regulations. Topics will include the structure of the derivatives industry; the various industry regulators; how each type of industry firm and persons are regulated; the roles played by the exchanges and clearing houses; how customer assets are protected; litigation matters, including civil and criminal cases, and CFTC and Exchange enforcement actions; how different financial products, such as futures, options and swaps, are traded and regulated; and several other related issues. There will be no final exam but each student will be required to submit a final paper on a subject/topic agreed upon.

Sequence and Prerequisites: None

Evaluation: There will be no final exam but each student will be required to submit a final paper on a subject/topic agreed upon.

794: Organizational Compliance and Ethics

Compliance and ethics programs are an integral part of organizational effectiveness, and legal expertise in this area is in high demand. With increasing frequency, lawyers are tasked with drafting, implementing, and managing compliance and ethics programs in and for organizations of all kinds and sizes. This class will explore the reasons for as well as the structure, design, implementation, and evaluation of such programs. We will focus on the roles in-house and law firm lawyers play in compliance and ethics risk assessment as well as in designing, implementing, and evaluating effective global ethics and compliance programs that align with Chapter 8 of the United Stated Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Corporations, Department of Justice guidance, and the legal and regulatory expectations of many countries as well. We’ll also look at how the U.S. Department of Justice evaluates these programs in the context of criminal investigations. Topics vary, though typically cover issue-raising (a/k/a whistleblowing), global anti-bribery and corruption, privacy, conflicts of interest, and human rights/modern slavery.

Students will examine and discuss a variety of readings and related materials, including news reports of current compliance challenges and failures. The class will include live and video lectures by academics, corporate counsel, senior ethics and compliance officers, and business executives to provide students with a better understanding of the challenges of developing and implementing an effective global compliance program.

Course Materials: Course materials will consist of topical books and white papers/reports, relevant statutes and regulations, scholarly articles, cases, government enforcement guidance, corporate codes of conduct and related materials, and news articles covering timely compliance, ethics, and professional responsibility topics.

Sequence and Prerequisites: None

Evaluation: Short responsive papers and written assignments; class presence, participation, and presentation; and a final project that challenges students to design a comprehensive organizational ethics and compliance program. There will not be a final examination

794: Doing Business in Latin America

For Latin America to grow, capital and investment are essential. In the last decades, US lawyers have played critical roles in bringing some of the largest Latin American companies to market, issuing and, at times, restructuring billions of dollars of debt in the region, financing massive infrastructure projects, advising on mergers and acquisitions and influencing corporate law and governance.

The goal of this survey class is to familiarize students with issues arising in a cross-border business practice. We will look at transaction documents in depth and consider select topics in light of the effect on capital raising and investment. We will touch on issues such as sovereign debt and restructuring, ESG financings and greenwashing, problems of corruption in the region and US sanctions in relation to Cuba and Venezuela.

Guest practitioners from the region may join us for some of the discussions. Students are expected to read the materials and come with questions.

Some of the topics are complex but are accessible and understandable based on the readings and class lectures. I encourage students who have an interest in the material but who might not have a background in finance or business to ask questions in class or during daily office hours.

Sequences and Prerequisites: None. Students need not have any prior familiarity with Latin America or language skills. An interest in the region, the subject matter, comparative law or cross border legal work suffices. Prior or simultaneous courses in securities regulation or corporations may be helpful but not required.

Evaluation: In class exam (80%) and class attendance and participation (20%).

792: Legal and Policy Changes in College Athletics

This course will survey the several intersecting measures that have given rise to the current state of disruption in college athletics. Focusing on the legal regimes that led to student-athlete name, image and likeness reform and changing conference affiliations, this course will teach students how antitrust restrictions, labor interests, intellectual property debates, and other legal concerns work alongside NCAA rules, business interests, and American political dynamics to craft the opportunity space in which athletic departments establish their competitive positions to further an increasingly diverse set of university missions. Students will develop their unique philosophies regarding the appropriate construction of intercollegiate athletics policy in order to place themselves within this ongoing discussion. This course is pass/fail.

Sequence and Prerequisite: None

Evaluation: Final Exam