Curriculum & Course Descriptions

Second/Third Year Students

The Topics In Law (TIL) designation enables the offering of new courses covering emerging legal and practice trends and areas of special interest to students and faculty, as well as permitting development of courses with potential for integration into the ongoing curriculum. TIL courses offered over the last several years include the following:

TIL: Gender, Psychology and Law
2 cr. - Professor J. Goldscheid (CUNY Law) and Maureen O'Connor (CUNY Graduate Center/John Jay)
This interdisciplinary course will explore the relationship between gender, psychology and law through a hands-on study of selected legal issues relating to gender. Virtually every law that is passed and every regulation that is promulgated rests on assumptions about how people behave, or how people will behave, once a law is enacted. Those assumptions may or may not be supported by what psychologists know about human behavior. Lawyers and advocates harness psychological research and social science data to surface and, in many cases, challenge those assumptions. In this course, law students and graduate students will gain a working fluency in one another's discipline and will examine the role of psychology and social science data in the shaping of legal policies that bear on gender, such as gender discrimination and identity, gender based violence, family law and access to justice. Students will work in interdisciplinary teams to draw on psychological research to prepare direct and cross-examinations of an expert witness. The course will culminate in a final project of drafting an amicus brief in an area of individual interest that will demonstrate interdisciplinary competence.

Topics in Law: Applied Legal Analysis (3L's only)
1 cr. - Professor F. Kerner and A. Robbins
This course, which focuses on essay-writing techniques and strategies for tackling the Multistate Bar Examination, is designed to give students the skills they need to achieve a passing score on the bar exam of any state. The course builds on the substantive doctrine covered in Mastery & Application of Core Doctrine, and enrollment in Mastery & Application of Core Doctrine is a co-requisite for the course. To pass the course, students must attend all lectures, write six essays and rewrite them, if necessary, to achieve a passing score, complete a series of practice multiple-choice questions outside of class, and participate in an individual bar study planning session before the end of classes for the semester. Bar-type essays, based on actual New York State essays, are distributed via TWEN. The essays are graded by bar standards and returned to students with a feedback sheet. Credit will be given for completion of assigned multiple-choice questions without respect to the number of questions a student answers correctly.

TIL: Current Issues in Public Health Policy and Law
2 cr. - Professor J. Calvo
There are headlines everyday about Public Health policy and law topics: "The Health Board Approves Bloomberg's Soda Ban"--"The Avian Influenza H5N1 Threat <pdf>"--"Corporations Threaten Public Health." This course is designed to give students an overview of approaches to public health policy and the developing field of public health law. Students will be allowed choice in addressing some of the emerging public health policy and law issues. The general topics that will be covered include social justice and the health of vulnerable populations, infectious disease control, public and corporate responsibility for chronic disease, e.g. conditions flowing from obesity and smoking, and the government role in promoting public health. The final selection of course topics will involve students' input on their particular areas of interest. Each student will be required to prepare a case study and present the study in class. The study will identify the public health issue, describe the population affected, review the public health literature, describe and critique the law that impacts on the public health issue.

The course will provide grounding in basic public health law and develop capacity to analyze the factual and legal underpinning of public health policy issues. It will use case studies of selected public health issues including legislative, regulatory and litigation-based approaches. The course differs from health law and will not duplicate the topics covered in the health law course or concentration as public health law involves conceptual topics such as government authority to compel individuals and businesses to behave in a way that promotes public health and the limitations on state power as well as the public health system and agencies. It integrates concepts of constitutional law, statutory and administrative law. It also involves tort law concepts in assessing corporate responsibility for adverse public health outcomes.

(The texts will be Lawrence Gostin, Public Health Law, Power Duty and Restraint and Lawrence Gostin, Public Health Law and Ethics, A Reader.) (Students wishing to review examples of approaches to public health policy and law are invited to review Corporations and Health at http://corporationsandhealth.org; Current Public Health Law Issues at www2.cdc.gov/phlp/cphln.asp; Calvo, The Consequences of Restricted Health Care Access for Immigrants: Lessons From Medicaid and SCHIP, 17 Annals of Health Law 175 A Conversation on Health and Law, With Nicholas Freudenberg, 12 New York City Law Review 63.)

Topics in Law: Latina/Latinos & the Law: Struggles for Equality
2 cr. - Professor J. Rivera
This course explores substantive legal issues which have been the focus of the Latino Community's legal rights movements in the United States. Students will discuss the constitutional and statutory protections based on national origin, ethnicity, language, race, gender, sexuality, socio/political, economic and immigrant status, and the histories of national origin subgroups. Substantive issues include criminal justice, education, employment, health and voting rights. Students will critique the legal approaches taken in struggles for equality and access to justice, and the role of Latinas and Latinos in shaping United States jurisprudence. Course materials include cases, legal critiques, and interdisciplinary materials on issues impacting Latinas and Latinos. Grading is based on a final paper, class presentation of the final paper and two short papers critiquing specific reading assignments.

Topics in Law: Law and Policy in Public Education
2 cr. - Professor J. Farago
Education Law provides one of the most richly complex windows into the intersection of policy and law, values and rules. We will spend half of the semester exploring this complex dance through a detailed study of special education law and regulation (Federal and NY State) with particular attention paid, on the one hand, to the impact that the law has had on teaching, pedagogy, and teacher licensure and training, and, on the other hand, on the way in which public finance, public power, rights-based advocacy, and evolving community attitudes have shaped changes in the law. The second half of the semester will focus on a series of three short units, each exploring an emerging area of law/policy in public education (specific topics may change based on student interest and developing issues in the area schools): Charter schools; zero tolerance school safety laws and student suspensions; teacher tenure, seniority, and evaluation. Evaluation will be by a midterm on special education and a paper on a topic of the student's choice; an option to elect a longer paper on a special education topic in lieu of the midterm will be available to any student who wishes it. The course will meet for extended sessions over a series of Saturdays, and will involve significant participation by area school law experts and attorneys.

Topics in Law: Law, Media, and Public Discourse
2 cr. - Professor N. Gomez-Velez
"In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions." Abraham Lincoln, 1858.

A critical understanding of the role of communications media and public discourse in shaping law is essential to effective social justice lawyering (and indeed all law practice). This course will explore the interplay among law, media, and public discourse, noting key examples of the importance of "molding of public sentiment" in election campaigns, the enactment of legislation and public policy, the selection of judges, and judicial decision making. Because this is a vast topic, this is a survey course. Key coverage areas will include an introductory discussion of the role of public relations, persuasion and marketing in engineering consent in both the private and public spheres, the impact of Citizens United on the "marketing" of candidates for office, the role of the press and public discourse in policymaking, legislation, and judicial selection; the tension between free press and fair trial rights (noting key First Amendment cases), and the impact on (or insulation from) public opinion in high-profile cases. The course will include examples from recent and/or current trials, policy efforts, and social movements.

TIL: Transactional Legal Drafting
2 cr. - Professor S. Zorn
Not everything that lawyers do involves going to court. In fact, the great majority of lawyers' work focuses on transactions -contracts, wills, business formation, etc. - and not on lawsuits. And even lawsuits often require agreements for settlement. This course will teach and refine the basic skills needed for effective transactional drafting: (1) understanding the audience; (2) finding the facts; (3) knowing or finding the relevant law; (4) outlining and organizing; (5) turning the outline into a document; (6) testing for consequences; and (7) editing and redrafting until it's done right.

Those enrolled will draft a variety of transactional documents, including a limited liability company operating agreement, a supply contract, and a settlement agreement in a divorce case. Ample opportunity will be provided for rewriting.

TIL: Native American Law
2 credits - Professor Jean Zorn
Although supposedly sovereign nations, Native Americans are subject to the laws of several different legal systems - only two of which can be called their own. Congress, through its plenary power, has enacted many statutes that apply specifically to Indian tribes and individuals. In addition, some of the many treaties between the U.S. Government and Indian tribes are still in effect. While treaties are supposed to be products of mutual agreement, the conditions under which many of the treaties were signed suggests they are far from that ideal. Further, the states in which reservations are located still assert their rights to tax Native American economic activity, to regulate Indian businesses and other activities, and to try Indians in state courts. As for their own legal systems, most Indian tribes now have indigenous governments, including their own elected chairmen and legislative councils, as well as tribal courts that decide both civil and criminal cases. Finally, but often forgotten by outsiders, indigenous American societies have always had their own traditional legal norms and dispute settlement processes, some of which have now been institutionalized into customary or peacemaker courts. This plethora of laws and legal systems may mean more law governing Indians, but it does not necessarily mean that the law, especially federal and treaty law, is applied effectively or fairly. And there is much confusion and overlapping - for example, in criminal law, where federal law and federal courts are supposed to have sole jurisdiction over "major crimes," leaving the rest to tribal laws and tribal courts. In this seminar, we'll first look briefly at traditional, indigenous Indian law and legal processes, in order to understand how it worked and the ways in which it differed from the legal system imposed by the colonizing power. We'll then undertake a historical overview of the ever-changing treaties, court cases, federal statutes, policies and programs that have defined the varying relations of Indian tribes and the citizens and governments of the United States over time. It is not a pleasant or uplifting study. Informed by that background, we'll focus on some contemporary issues, possibly including criminal law and process, tribal courts, religion, economic development, land rights, and family law. Grading will be based on two short exams and on a presentation (to be given in class and then turned into a short paper).