Jurisprudence and Perspective
LAWS 6103 (2-3). Legal Ethics and Professionalism. Examines the legal profession as an institution, its history and traditions, and the ethics of the bar with particular emphasis on the professional responsibilities of the lawyer. Discusses the Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
LAWS 6108-3. Conflict of Laws. Examines the rules and principles governing the resolution of multi-jurisdictional conflicts of laws in the United States and abroad. Considers various theoretical bases for choice of law principles, as well as the principal constitutional limitations on choice of law. Considers the extent to which different choice-of-law theories or approaches serve four traditional choice-of-law goals–uniformity; avoidance of forum shopping; predictability; and ease of administration.
LAWS 6308-2. Law and Biology of Human Nature. Investigates whether humans have an instinct for fairness and justice, the nature of good and evil, and why people behave the way they do. Studies why groups of people pass laws to express how they expect group members to behave. Examines questions about the foundations of law, first by surveying traditional philosophical and economic approaches to human behavior, and then by examining recent developments in genetics, human evolution and the emerging law, economics and biology synthesis.
LAWS 6318-3. Economic Analysis of Law. Introduces the basic elements of economic theory and emphasizes demand and utility, cost, and optimality.
LAWS 6503-3. Law and Social Sciences. Explores disparities in criminal sentencing and death penalty cases; quality and effectiveness of legal representation for indigent criminal defendants; relationship between modifications in traditional steps in legal process; connection between alternative tort doctrines and volume of litigation, trial rates, plaintiff success rates and award size; impact of congressional statutes and US Supreme Court decisions on handling and outcomes of habeas corpus petitions.
LAWS 6528-3. Capital Punishment in America. Surveys the history and current status of capital punishment in the United States, with a critical examination of arguments both for and against the death penalty.
LAWS 7085-2. Law and Religion. Uses judicial decisions as well as historical and theoretical materials to explore significant aspects of the relationship between law and religion. The religion clauses of the First Amendment are a central but not exclusive subject of study. Offered in alternate years.
LAWS 7128 (2-4). Jurisprudence. Addresses a number of fundamental questions, such as: What is law? What should it be? How is it created? Our readings consist of cutting-edge articles from leading modernist/postmodernist schools of thought including legal formalism, legal realism, interpretive theory, law and economics, feminist jurisprudence, critical legal studies, and law and literature.
LAWS 8318-2. Seminar: Law and Economics. Introduces the uses and limitations of microeconomic theory for understanding and resolving legal problems. Emphasizes concepts prominent in the law and economics literature such as cost, transaction costs, utility, and rational self interest.
LAWS 8538-2. Seminar: Modern Legal Theory Core Ideas. Explores key ideas that have shaped American law and legal thought, such as Holmes’ bad man, the Coase Theorem, the “hunch” theory of law, and others. Focuses on researching and writing many short papers.
LAWS 8548-2. Seminar: Theory of Punishment. Explores the various justifications that philosophers have developed to explain why we have the right to punish. Examines the historical evolution of our punishment system and focuses on the death penalty as a critical contemporary issue in the debate about the proper role of punishment in our society.
LAWS 8608-2. Seminar: Power, Ethics, and Professionalism. Examines critically the possibility and character of ethical reasoning within the legal profession in light of its institutional structures. Explores descriptive/normative accounts of the profession’s structure, “professionalism,” and individual conscience. Put simply, the seminar explores whether it is possible to be a good lawyer and ethical person.
