Fall 2006
-
Contracts (LAW 100)
Credits: 5
Instructor: Russell Korobkin
Registrar’s Description
This is a course about the law governing private agreements. The course analyzes the criteria for determining whether or not a particular promise or voluntary agreement is legally enforceable and surveys the major legal issues affecting enforceable agreements. These issues include the questions of when a contract becomes binding, what persons acquire rights under a contract, the conditions under which performance is required or excused, what constitutes breach of contract, and the remedies available for breach of contract. Attention will be given throughout the course to the general problems of interpreting contract language, the role of contracts in a market society, the conflict between the commercial need for certainty and the demands of individual fairness, and the relationship between contract law and other areas such as torts, property and restitution.
Documents
-
Lawyering Skills [year-long] (LAW 108)
Credits: 5
Instructor: Patrick Goodman
Registrar’s Description
This course is the students’ foundational clinical course and focuses on practice-oriented legal analysis. During this yearlong course students develop skills needed by practicing lawyers and desired by legal employers, including legal analysis, legal writing, research, argumentation, statutory interpretation, fact development, interviewing and client counseling. These skills are taught using the clinical method, with the client’s perspective firmly in mind and with the students learning by acting as lawyers. The fall semester focuses on learning how to analyze case and statutory authority while working with clients’ problems. Students apply these skills in the context of researching for and writing objective legal memoranda. The spring semester focuses on two sets of skills. First, students learn persuasive writing by building on the analytical and writing skills they have learned in the fall semester, as well as developing and practicing new techniques to help them add persuasiveness and conviction to their analysis. Second, in the context of preparing a client’s case, students learn fact development techniques, as well as questioning, interviewing, and counseling skills. In connection with the case, each student presents an oral argument of the client’s motion before a judge. The course ends with student teams preparing for and trying the client’s case before a jury.
My thoughts: This year-long course is still in progress
Documents
- Ungraded predictive memo involving the firefighter’s rule (66 KB, PDF)
- Ungraded predictive memo involving negligent infliction of emotional distress (85 KB, PDF)
- Graded predictive memo involving misappropriation of trade secrets (124 KB, PDF)
- Ungraded brief involving police excessive force (109 KB, PDF)
- Graded brief involving age discrimination in employment (130 KB, PDF)
- The chart which we used in our mock trial (simple, but surprisingly effective) (406 KB, PNG)
-
Criminal Law (LAW 120)
Credits: 4
Instructor: Sharon Dolovich
Registrar’s Description
This course covers selected topics in substantive criminal law: principles underlying the definition of crime such as the requirements of actus reus and mens rea and general doctrines such as ignorance of fact and ignorance of law, causation, attempt, complicity and conspiracy. Principles of justification and excuse are examined with particular attention to the doctrines of necessity, intoxication, insanity, diminished capacity and automatism. The substantive offense of homicide is extensively reviewed, and from time to time other offenses such as theft. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the basic theory of the criminal law and the relationship between doctrines and the various justifications for imposition of punishment.
Documents
-
Property (LAW 130)
Credits: 5
Instructor: Judith Daar
Registrar’s Description
An analysis of property as a social institution and particularly of the dynamics of the system for recognizing and protecting competing claims to resources. Major problem areas to be studied include the historical development of various kinds of interests in property, housing, landlord and tenant, public and private land use, planning and development, and the sale and financing of real estate.
Documents