1st Year Curriculum

Civil Procedure

This course is a study of the process of civil litigation from the commencement of a lawsuit through final judgment under modern statutes and rules of court, with emphasis on the federal rules of civil procedure. (Autumn)

Constitutional Law I

This course examines American constitutional law in historical and modern context; the allocation of decision-making authority among government institutions; and guarantees of individual rights stemming from the due process, equal protection, and other clauses in the Bill of Rights and post Civil War amendments. (Winter)

Contracts

This course provides exposure to basic contract law. The course will identify the scope and purpose of the legal protection accorded to interests predicated on contract and will focus on problems of contract formation, interpretation, performance, and remedies for breach. (Autumn)

Criminal Law

This course examines the traditional general issues in the substantive criminal law, including the purposes of punishment, the requirements of act and mental state, complicity, causation, justification, and excuse. It stresses the difficulty of converting moral judgments of blameworthiness and psychological questions about deterrence into coherent positive law, the relationship between statutory criminal law, and its common law and normative bases. (Autumn)

Federal Litigation

This is an introductory course in the litigation process, and is required for all first year students in the JD program. Students will represent plaintiff or defendant in a simulated public interest case set in a federal district court that raises complex issues of federal civil procedure, privacy, and first amendment law. Students will plan litigation strategy, draft pleadings, conduct discovery, write short briefs, and orally argue major motions for dismissal, class action certification, and preliminary injunctive relief. While developing students' written and oral advocacy skills, the course also focuses on substantive issues of civil procedure and constitutional law. (Winter/Spring)

Legal Research and Writing

In this year-long course, students work under the close supervision of a legal research and writing instructor, learning the techniques of legal library research, writing legal memoranda, drafting documents, preparing an appellate brief, and arguing orally before a moot court. (Autumn)

• Legal Research and Writing Program

Property

This course deals with possession and ownership of land and with the incidents thereof, including private and public restrictions on its use and development, nuisance, trespass, concurrent interests, landlord and tenant, and eminent domain. (Winter)

Torts

This course considers issues involved in determining whether the law should require a person to compensate for harm intentionally or unintentionally caused. These problems arise in situations as diverse as automobile collisions, operations of nuclear facilities, and consumption of defective food products. Among other considerations, the course explores various resolutions in terms of their social, economic, and political implications. (Autumn)