Stanford University Bulletin

Code	Name	Description
LAW1001	Antitrust	Antitrust law sets the ground rules for competition. This class provides an introduction to federal antitrust law. We will examine cartels and competitor collaborations, monopolization, vertical restraints and horizontal mergers. The class prepares y...
LAW1002	Advanced Antitrust: Hot Topics	There is more focus today on antitrust enforcement and competition policy than at any point in recent memory. This two-credit advanced antitrust seminar, taught by Obama's Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust (2013-16), examines topics that have...
LAW1003	Bankruptcy	This course is an introduction to federal bankruptcy law with an emphasis on corporate reorganization. The course examines various aspects of the bankruptcy process including the automatic stay, the avoidance and recovery of certain pre-bankruptcy t...
LAW1004	Comparative Corporate Law and Governance	From the United States to China, and from Brazil to the EU, corporate capitalism has triumphed globally as the dominant form of economic organization. Yet despite the common attributes of the corporation familiar to every U.S. law student, corporatio...
LAW1005	Comparative Venture Capital - China	(Formerly Law 736) This course is taught in conjunction with Law 1006. Students may enroll for this course alone or for both this course and Law 1006. Law 1005 is intended to introduce students to the legal and financial principles underlying vent...
LAW1006	Comparative Venture Capital - China: Field Study	(Formerly Law 736A) This is the Stanford Center at Peking University in Beijing component of Comparative Venture Capital - China (Law 1005). For details, see course description for Law 1006. During spring break 2017, the course will be held at the...
LAW1007	Contracts: American Law	This course will provide advanced-degree students with coverage of Contracts law comparable to the fall course offered for first-year JD students. The course will identify the scope and purpose of the legal protection accorded to interests created by...
LAW1008	Contract Design: Principles and Practice	Contract Design: Principles and Practice (1008): (Formerly Law 434) Transaction lawyers spend much time drafting contracts and related documents, and they can contribute very significant value by designing transactions. While transactions should be t...
LAW1009	Corporate Finance I	The course discusses the major financial decisions made by corporate managers and investors. Topics include criteria for making investment decisions, valuation of financial assets and liabilities, relationship between risk and return, capital structu...
LAW1010	Corporate Income Taxation	This course will cover the basic principles and rules regarding the taxation of domestic corporations. Prerequisite: LAW 1029 Taxation 1. Students must contact the instructor if they wish to have the prerequisite substituted or waived. Elements u...
LAW1011	Advanced Corporate Finance	Lawyers often need an advanced understanding of corporate financial decisions, instruments, and transactions, including equity financing and initial public offerings, the determination of a firm's cost of capital, valuation, payout policy, recapitali...
LAW1012	Corporate Reorganization	This course examines the reorganization of a financially distressed company under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. We will examine reorganization through several stages of a business turnaround and restructuring (such as an out-of-court workout, a...
LAW1013	Corporations	This course is an introduction to the basic legal rules and principles governing the relations between managers, investors, and (to a lesser extent) creditors in the corporation. The course is the foundation for advanced business law courses. We focu...
LAW1013	Corporations	This course is an introduction to the basic legal rules and principles governing the relations between managers, investors, and creditors in the business enterprise. The course is the foundation for advanced business law courses. We focus on problems...
LAW1013	Corporations	This course is an introduction to the basic legal rules and principles governing the relations among managers, investors, and (to a lesser extent) creditors in the business enterprise. The course is the foundation for advanced business courses. We fo...
LAW1014	Current Issues in Tax Practice	This course will introduce students to major issues in tax practice. Each class will be co-taught by one or more leading practitioners in the tax bar, with other members of the bar attending. Subjects include international tax, intellectual proper...
LAW1015	Corporate Social Responsibility	Although corporate social responsibility ("CSR") initiatives have been pursued by a range of companies as voluntary measures for decades, recent developments have rendered the exercise by companies of designing and implementing environmental, social...
LAW1016	Deals I	This course applies economic concepts to the practice of structuring business transactions. The course extends over two quarters. In the Fall quarter it will meet four hours per week. In the Winter quarter, it will meet ONLY FOR FIVE WEEKS for four h...
LAW1017	Deals II	This course is the continuation of Deals I. In order to register for this course you must have taken Deals I; and if you took Deals I, you must register for Deals II. Deals I and II are in effect a single course that extends over two quarters. The co...
LAW1018	Derivatives	The course will examine the legal, regulatory, trading and risk management aspects of the $600 trillion notional over-the-counter and cleared derivatives markets. Derivatives have historically not been well-understood by regulators or the public and...
LAW1019	Current Topics in Sports Law	Current Topics in Sports Law is a one-unit seminar for up to 15 students with San Francisco 49ers General Counsel and SLS alumna Hannah Gordon. The class is made up of six 90-minute sessions and brief reflection papers. Attendance is mandatory at a...
LAW1020	Entertainment Law	Entertainment law is not, in and of itself, a separate legal discipline. Instead, the practice of entertainment law lies at the intersection of various traditional legal disciplines, such as contract, tort, copyright, trademark, antitrust, secured tr...
LAW1021	Estate Planning	This class will cover the basics of the gift and estate tax system and estate planning principles. With these fundamentals, the course will then examine basic and advanced estate planning and wealth transfer techniques, including wills, various types...
LAW1022	International Tax	This course examines the United States federal income taxation of international operations and transactions, including international joint ventures and M&A transactions. Traditional issues such as income source, foreign tax credits, Subpart F, and in...
LAW1023	International Securities Offerings	This course will focus on the application of United States securities laws and regulations to non-US issuers. We will examine how that regulatory framework differs for Foreign Private Issuers, as compared to other issuers in the United States. Ini...
LAW1024	Private Equity Investing	(Formerly Law 522) This course will focus on the central issues involved in private equity investing. Topics will include: pricing, structuring and valuation of private equity and venture capital investments; buyouts and other transactions involving...
LAW1026	Securities Litigation	(Formerly Law 300) Executives of American public companies control one of the largest accumulations of wealth in history, amounting to trillions of dollars in market capitalization. Tens of billions of dollars of securities in these companies are t...
LAW1027	Securities Regulation	This course provides an overview of the regulation of securities offerings and trading under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The course explores the elaborate disclosure obligations that this country imposes on the...
LAW1028	Tax Policy	This course will explore various tax policy issues. In past years, the issues we've explored have included the carbon tax, health care, social security, consumption tax, tax compliance, tax shelters and school financing. Special Instructions: Grades...
LAW1029	Taxation I	This course provides an overview of the federal income tax from learning to read the charming prose of the Internal Revenue Code to the principles and policies underlying the income tax, which is - by far - the largest source of revenue for the feder...
LAW1029	Taxation I	This course provides an overview of the federal income tax. Elements used in grading: Class participation and final exam.
LAW1030	Partnership Tax	(Formerly Law 377) This course will cover the basic rules that govern the tax treatment of partnerships and partners, with a focus on agreements and issues that are relevant to venture capital and private equity investment partnerships. The course w...
LAW1031	Current Issues in Business Law	This course will focus on issues in law and business that are both important to practitioners and the subject of academic or policy debates. We will cover a range of legal and economic issues, including the following topics: nonbank lending, gatekeep...
LAW1032	Banking Law	(Formerly 378) This course will examine the legal and regulatory system governing financial institutions, with an emphasis on banks. It will do so by exploring the underlying economics of banking, and the ongoing effort to reform financial regulatio...
LAW1033	Trusts and Estates	This course will cover the following topics: intestacy; will execution and revocation; will provisions and interpretations; restrictions on the right to devise; probate; creation, amendment and termination of trusts; revocable and irrevocable trusts;...
LAW1034	Real Estate Transactions	Real Estate Transactions and Commercial Development examines the structuring, negotiation and documentation of commercial real estate transactions. Working both individually and in groups, students will learn the requisite skills for drafting and neg...
LAW1035	Mergers and Acquisitions in the Technology Sector and Beyond	This course is a comprehensive introduction to the law and practice of mergers and acquisitions with a special focus on technology mergers and acquisitions. The technology sector continues to be one of the most active areas for the practice of merge...
LAW1036	Introduction to Finance	This course is a basic introduction to the principles of finance. It will prepare you for the 3-credit version (Corporate Finance 1009) and introduce you to principles of valuation that are useful in everything from family law to settlement negotiat...
LAW1037	The Evolution of Finance	(Formerly Law 487) This course provides a framework to understand how uncertainty and technology affect the evolution of finance (and businesses generally), with heavy emphasis on recent developments and future trends. In recent years Myron Scholes...
LAW1038	The Future of Finance	This 2-credit course will examine vast changes driven by innovation both from within traditional finance and from new ecosystems in fintech among others. Breathtaking advances in financial theory, big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence,...
LAW1039	Deal Litigation Seminar	This seminar is designed as an introduction to mergers and acquisitions litigation. The course provides both a practical and doctrinal perspective on M&A-related litigation and relies heavily on readings and issues derived from practice in the Delawa...
LAW1040	Venture Capital	This course examines the venture capital (VC) ecosystem from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. The course traces the start-up process from initial formation of a new venture through angel investments and institutional venture capital fi...
LAW1041	Venture Capital II: Starting and Running a Venture-Backed Company	(Formerly Law 401) This class will focus on the legal and non-legal tactical details of entrepreneurial endeavors. The legal specifics of corporate formation, tax, and contracts are well covered by a variety of other courses at the Law School and wi...
LAW1042	New Venture Finance	This is a practice-oriented business law seminar designed to provide students with an understanding of the legal, business, financial and practical issues that arise in advising venture capital-backed and emerging growth companies through the typical...
LAW1043	Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies: Law, Economics, Business and Policy	Blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies have spawned an extensive and rapidly growing set of businesses along with a corresponding rapidly expanding need for lawyers and regulators with the required expertise. This course provides core background...
LAW1045	Prediction and Complexity in Corporate and Securities Litigation	Success as an attorney and businessperson depends on the ability to predict outcomes in complex situations. Law school courses generally do not develop this skill set. The traditional "case method" asks us to understand how and why cases have been de...
LAW1046	Deals in Hong Kong: Field Study	This is a travel course that is integrated into Deals I and Deals II. Students who take this course will have taken Deals I and Deals II in the same year. The course will have two elements. First, there will be two deals assigned to two groups of...
LAW1047	Business, Social Responsibility, and Human Rights	Large corporations now routinely spend millions of dollars to protect human rights and the environment. Shell Nigeria builds hospitals and schools in the Niger Delta. Nike employs hundreds of inspectors to improve conditions for the factory workers w...
LAW1048	Introduction to Commercial Law	Although definitions of commercial law vary, it generally concerns a business enterprise's contracts with its customers and suppliers (usually not with its investors or employees, and not relating to real property). This course surveys legal issues i...
LAW1049	Corporate Governance	This seminar will focus on key topics in corporate governance. We will cover a range of legal and economic issues, including the following topics: hedge fund activism, gatekeeper liability, executive compensation, proxy advisory services, environment...
LAW1050	Law, Business, and Policy Strategy in the Startup Economy	This seminar explores the intersection of legal, business, and policy strategy in the startup economy. The class operates along two concurrent paths: First, under faculty supervision, students will act as if they were outside counsel to a Stanford-...
LAW1051	Payment Systems: Cryptocurrencies	This seminar is designed to afford students the opportunity to study the regulation of new, cutting edge payment systems that employ blockchain technology. To do so, students will familiarize themselves with the current state of the law of payment sy...
LAW1052	Venture Capital and the Dual Fiduciary	This course introduces students to the business and legal/governance issues in venture capital. We will begin with the role of venture capital in the broader US economy, who the players are in the ecosystem and how venture capital funds are raised an...
LAW1053	International Securities Regulation	This course will focus on the application of United States securities laws and regulations to non-US issuers. We will examine how that regulatory framework differs for non-US issuers, as compared to issuers domiciled in the United States. Initial pub...
LAW1054	Economics of Contracts	This course will combine contract theory, a field of economics for which several Nobel prizes have been awarded, with a study of the practice of business transactions. Our discussion will explore how well economic theory illuminates actual contractin...
LAW1055	Law of Nonprofits	This course provides an overview of laws and policies affecting the nonprofit sector. The course will focus both on state laws governing nonprofit corporations and charitable trusts as well as federal tax laws applicable to section 501(c) entities. T...
LAW1056	Regulatory Economics	Law 1056 examines public policies for dealing with problems arising in markets in which competitive forces are weak. The focus is on monopolies, oligopolies, cartels, and other environments where market mechanisms are unlikely to produce outcomes tha...
LAW1057	The Role of the General Counsel	Many of today's lawyers look to the role of the corporate general counsel as a dynamic career at the intersection of law and business. This course will explore how in-house lawyers add value as a strategic advisor on business strategy and execution,...
LAW1059	Race, Class and Tax	This one unit course is only an option for students who are concurrently enrolled Taxation I (LAW 1029) or who have previously taken Taxation 1. The course is an extension of Taxation I with a greater focus on race and class. Goals of the class inc...
LAW1060	Global Business Law and Policy: Europe	This seminar prepares students for the field study portion of the Global Quarter and is only open to students participating in the Global Quarter. Through a mix of guest lectures and class discussions, the seminar will explore subjects to be addresse...
LAW1061	Global Business Law - Europe: Field Study	This course is the field study portion of the Global Quarter. The field study is comprised of a three-week itinerary of office visits, simulated negotiations and counseling sessions, and seminars in Geneva, London, Oxford, Berlin and Frankfurt. Parti...
LAW1061B	Global Business Law - Asia: Legal Practice	This course is the field study portion of the Global Quarter. The field study is comprised of a three-week itinerary of office visits, simulated negotiations and counseling sessions, and seminars in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Singapore, and Tokyo...
LAW1062	Global Capital Markets	This course will cover a mix of issues that lie at the intersection of the financial regulation of capital markets and corporate finance. The course will include an examination of US regulation of capital flows into and out the United States (inclu...
LAW1063	Global Business Law and Public Policy	This seminar explores selected topics at the intersection of the practice of transnational business law and public policy. This quarter, we will examine three topics of great interest to corporate executives, their legal advisors, and policy makers:...
LAW1064	Selected Topics in Antitrust Law (Reading Group)	Antitrust law has in the last couple of years become a controversial topic and the subject of intense academic debate, proposed legislation, and international discussion. The seminar will provide a forum in which the students could better understand...
LAW1065	Partnership Tax (Reading Group)	This course will acquaint you with the basic rules and structure of partnership tax. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation. Class will meet five Thursdays, 4:15PM to 6:15PM. Precise meeting dates TBA by instructor. This class...
LAW1066	Global Business Law and Public Policy - Asia Field Study	This field study is open to students enrolled in the seminar LAW 1063 Global Business Law and Public Policy (GBLPP). Health and safety conditions permitting, students will travel to Singapore with the instructors over spring break for a series of mee...
LAW1067	FinTech Innovation and the Transformation of Financial Services	This course will focus on the so-called "FinTech Revolution" which is transforming traditional banking and financial services. FinTech generally refers to disruptive financial sector innovations involving technology-enabled (online and mobile device...
LAW1068	Corporate Purpose: Beyond Shareholder Value	The neoliberal orthodoxy that corporate managers' sole duty is to maximize shareholders' financial value has never been entirely adhered to in practice and has been increasingly challenged in recent decades. While acknowledging the importance of shar...
LAW1070	Social Responsibility, Race, Gender, and the Corporation	The course explores a series of controversial social challenges facing publicly traded corporations. Among other topics, the course will likely analyze: (1) The constitutionality and effectiveness of recent California legislation mandating boardroom...
LAW1071	Exemptions from the Securities Act	This course examines in detail the operation of the exemptions from the Securities Act of 1933, with particular emphasis on the operation of these exemptions in the context of venture capital practice. Thus, the focus is on the private placement exem...
LAW1072	Advanced Contracts: Commercial Transactions	Although definitions of commercial transactions vary, they generally concern a business enterprise's relationships with its customers, suppliers and creditors (typically, not with its investors or employees, and not relating to real property). This c...
LAW1073	Land and Real Property Taxation	This course examines legal, economic, and policy aspects of land and real property taxation. These taxation methods are a principal source for local government finance in many countries and have substantial economic impact. We will examine real prope...
LAW1074	State and Local Taxation	This class will provide a foundation to working with state and local tax systems. We will begin with a discussion of the primary rules, mostly derived from the federal constitution, that govern state and local taxation. We will then discuss the sta...
LAW1075	Blockchain Tax	This course examines United States federal income taxation as applied to blockchain technology. The course covers the tax treatment of cryptocurrency transactions, including airdrops, loans, mining, staking, hard forks, microservices transactions, a...
LAW1076	Blockchain Engineering: Techniques and Legal Implications	Blockchain technology is an increasingly important financial tool with unique legal implications--however, a theoretical understanding is often insufficient to fully grasp its current and, more importantly, future capabilities. This course, designed...
LAW1077	Global Corporate Governance	This seminar explores major contemporary topics and global trends in corporate law and capital market regulation from a comparative perspective, focusing on the United States, the United Kingdom, continental Europe (particularly Germany) and East Asi...
LAW1078	Blockchain Governance	This course offers an overview of blockchain governance and DAOs, including the governance of layer-1 blockchains, DAO tooling, on-chain and off-chain voting, delegation and constitutional design, identity, and privacy. We will cover these topics bot...
LAW2001	Criminal Procedure: Adjudication	The Law School offers two survey courses dealing with constitutional criminal procedure. "Criminal Investigation" will consider questions that arise under the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments regarding investigations, interrogations, and charging...
LAW2002	Criminal Procedure: Investigation	The law school offers two survey courses dealing with constitutional criminal procedure. "Criminal Adjudication" covers the formal pretrial and trial processes, including the right of counsel, prosecutorial charging criteria, grand juries, bail, spee...
LAW2006	Race, Class, and Punishment	Since the early 1970s, the criminal justice system in the United States has expanded dramatically. America has adopted an array of increasingly tough approaches to crime, including aggressive street-level policing, longer sentences, and a range of c...
LAW2008	Three Strikes Project: Criminal Justice Reform & Individual Representation	This seminar offers an opportunity to study mass incarceration and criminal law reform in real time while getting hands-on experience in active litigation on behalf of Three Strikes Project clients serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes. In thi...
LAW2009	White Collar Crime	This course explores the law of economic and political crimes associated with the rubric "white collar crime." The class is divided thematically between mens rea issues and substantive issues. Among the substantive areas which are covered are: obstru...
LAW201	Civil Procedure I	This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. 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...
LAW2010	Sentencing, Corrections, and Criminal Justice Policy	(Formerly Law 621) This introductory course will familiarize students with the history, structure, and performance of America's sentencing and corrections system for adult offenders. Sentencing is the process by which criminal sanctions are imposed i...
LAW2013	United States v. Milken: A Case Study	The most recent financial crisis that began in 2008 has resulted in a call, mostly ignored, for significant jail time for those allegedly responsible, without any explanation of the crimes that may have been committed. The aggressive use of the crimi...
LAW2015	Advanced Criminal Law	The intensity of the current debates over criminal law and criminal justice policy is at an unusually high level, with strong and conflicting positions being staked out in the areas of race and crime, policing, incarceration and sentencing, drug poli...
LAW2016	Violence and the Law	This seminar will explore how the law thinks about violence. Across various legal domains---e.g., criminal law, criminal procedure, juvenile justice, immigration, domestic violence, family law, civil rights, free speech, firearms regulation---we wil...
LAW2018	Wrongful Convictions: Causes, Preventions and Remedies	Over the course of the past two decades there has been increasing recognition that, despite its commitment to the concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, our criminal justice system yields a steady stream of wrongful convictions. This Seminar wil...
LAW2019	Criminal Procedure: Theoretical Foundations	This course examines the theoretical foundations of criminal procedure---political, historical, and, above all, philosophical. What are the ideas at work in the American system of criminal procedure? How, historically, did the system develop, and why...
LAW2020	History of Criminal Justice	This seminar will deal with the history of criminal justice in the United States, since the colonial period. The emphasis will not be on doctrines of criminal law, or (for the most part) on reported case law; but rather on the relationship between t...
LAW2023	Law, Order & Algorithms	Human decision making is increasingly being displaced by predictive algorithms. Judges sentence defendants based on statistical risk scores; regulators take enforcement actions based on predicted violations; advertisers target materials based on demo...
LAW2024	Search Warrants in the Digital Era	This will be a 2-hour advanced criminal procedure class, designed to acquaint students with the challenges confronting judges as they apply the Fourth Amendment to the bewildering array of search and surveillance techniques available to law enforcem...
LAW2025	Search and Seizure Issues for Criminal Lawyers	This seminar on selected issues in search and seizure for criminal lawyers will enhance your future clinic experience. Students will explore thorny issues raised in suppression motions using fact patterns and investigative materials from actual, prio...
LAW2026	American Criminal Justice and Its Discontents	In this course students will participate in direct dialogs with major national experts and institutional leaders from a variety of perspectives on the country's criminal law system. We will hear from experts and leaders from law enforcement, prosecut...
LAW2027	Prosecutorial Discretion and Ethical Duties in the Enforcement of Federal Criminal Law	Prosecutors wield enormous power over life, liberty and reputation and are subject to ethical standards higher than those that apply to other attorneys. As former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sutherland recognized in the context of federal prosecutors,...
LAW2028	Criminal Justice and the Crisis of American Democracy	How is the crisis of American criminal justice connected with the crisis in American democracy? How can policing, prosecution, and punishment best be reformed in an era of polarization? What does the rise of exclusionary forms of populism mean for...
LAW2029	Law and Disorder: Advanced Criminal Law	This seminar is essentially an advanced criminal law class in which we will be studying selected criminal law/procedure issues. The only prerequisite is having taken Criminal Law. Each week you will be asked to watch a particular episode of the long...
LAW203	Constitutional Law	This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. This course offers an introduction to American constitutional law. In addition to examining questions of interpretive method, the course focuses on the powers of the federal government...
LAW205	Contracts	This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It 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...
LAW207	Criminal Law	This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It examines the traditional general issues in the substantive criminal law, including the purposes of punishment and the appropriate limits on the use of the criminal sanction. It focuses...
LAW217	Property	This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It 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 interes...
LAW219	Legal Research and Writing	Legal Research and Writing is a two-unit course taught as a simulation. Students work on a legal problem starting with an initial interview, and they conduct fact investigation and legal research related to that problem. Students receive rigorous tr...
LAW223	Torts	This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It 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 d...
LAW224A	Federal Litigation in a Global Context: Coursework	This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It is an introductory course in the litigation process. Students represent the plaintiff or defendant in a simulated global torts case set in a federal district court that raises complex i...
LAW224B	Federal Litigation in a Global Context: Methods and Practice	This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It is an introductory course in the litigation process. Students represent the plaintiff or defendant in a simulated global torts case set in a federal district court that raises complex i...
LAW2401	Advanced Civil Procedure	This course will address significant areas of procedural law and design that go beyond the first-year civil procedure course, with special attention to the relevance of procedural choices to civil rights and public law litigation. Contemporary litiga...
LAW2401	Advanced Civil Procedure	This course will address significant areas of procedural law and design that go beyond the first- year civil procedure course, with special attention to aggregate and multiparty litigation (e.g., class actions and Multidistrict Litigation (MDL)). Con...
LAW2402	Evidence	This course examines the law of proof, with special attention to the Federal Rules of Evidence, constitutional restrictions on proving facts in criminal cases, and selected provisions of the California Evidence Code that diverge significantly from fe...
LAW2402	Evidence	Evidence rules constrain proof at criminal and civil trials. We will study the Federal Rules of Evidence, related caselaw, and those constitutional concepts that limit proof at criminal trials. Topics include relevance, unfair prejudice, character ev...
LAW2403	Federal Courts	This course addresses the role of the federal courts in the American system of federalism and separation of powers, as well as their role in the development of substantive federal law and constitutional rights. A central premise of the course is that...
LAW2403	Federal Courts	This course addresses the role of the federal courts in the American system of federalism and separation of powers, as well as their role in the development of substantive federal law and constitutional rights. These roles are defined by both constit...
LAW2404	Global Litigation	German owned VW admits that it included a "defeat device" in the software for its diesel cars so they could fraudulently pass US environmental tests, and is sued by thousands of US consumers in state and federal courts in the US. Very quickly, the ca...
LAW2406	Conflict of Laws	(Formerly Law 251) Instances are common in law where more than one legal authority potentially governs a particular event, occurrence or transaction. When the outcome required by these authorities differs, which law governs? Beginning with the class...
LAW2407	Arbitration: Law, Practice & Politics	Arbitration, once narrowly defined as a party-selected method for resolving contract-based disputes arising out of commercial transactions, is now ubiquitous. In the U.S. in addition to resolving run-of the-mill commercial disputes, arbitration may b...
LAW2408	Advanced Federal Courts	This advanced course in structural constitutional law builds on concepts, doctrines, and themes developed in Federal Courts. Modern doctrines attempting to reconcile federalism, the supremacy of federal law, separation of powers, and the specific ju...
LAW2409	Anatomy of the Opioid Litigation: A Case Study in Complex Litigation	Although easy to lose sight of in the midst of the Coronvirus epidemic, the United States is in the midst of an opioid addiction epidemic. More than 10 million Americans 12 years and older are estimated to have misused opioids in 2018, most of which...
LAW240A	Discussion (1L): Asian Americans and the Law	This discussion seminar will consider the legal treatment of Asian Americans. We will read materials about the history of citizenship, exclusion, and internment, and discuss contemporary issues affecting the individuals of Asian descent in the Americ...
LAW240B	Discussion (1L): Comparative Approaches to Law and Inequality	In this discussion seminar, we will examine how various countries across Europe and Latin American, as well as the United States, seek to deploy law to promote equality for subordinated groups---including especially racial minorities and women. We wi...
LAW240C	Discussion (1L): Corporate Social Responsibility	How can a company's managers safeguard the firm's financial value for its shareholders while, at the same time, operating ethically and purposively benefiting other stakeholders, including its employees and the communities in which the firm operates?...
LAW240D	Discussion (1L): Criminal Legal Histories	This seminar will trace the roots of four critical aspects of the American criminal justice system: jury independence and the power of jurors to render verdicts according to conscience; plea bargaining and the marginalization of juries; penitentiarie...
LAW240E	Discussion (1L): Dress Codes: Race, Identity and Personal Appearance	Dress Codes may seem a bit old fashioned, but in fact we are constantly told who should wear what and when. Rules---written and implied---divide formal from casual attire and children's clothing from that of adults. There are rules for what to wear i...
LAW240F	Discussion (1L): Feminist Jurisprudence	This discussion seminar will consider some of the major theoretical writings of the past 40 years in feminist legal theory, and explore the application of different theoretical approaches to contemporary issues in the law. Likely readings include Cat...
LAW240G	Discussion (1L): Innovation and Inequality	Throughout history, innovation has been a leading driver of economic growth and has helped lift communities out of poverty, and the importance of knowledge goods to the global economy has only increased with the rise of computing and information tech...
LAW240H	Discussion (1L): Measuring Access to Justice and Access to Information in Marginalized Communities	In this discussion seminar, we will explore the intersection of access to information and access to justice. Our current social and technological moment promises increased access to basic legal information without economic or geographic boundaries....
LAW240I	Discussion (1L): Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys as Agents of Change	What opportunities do prosecutors and defense attorneys have to help reform the criminal justice system and the wider society? And how can they best take advantage of those opportunities? We will explore these questions by reading and discussing th...
LAW240J	Discussion (1L): Religion, Identity and Law	This seminar will focus on the dynamic interplay between religious identity, community, and worldview, and the study, practice, and profession of law. As a defining force for so many across the globe, and in the norms through which human beings recog...
LAW240K	Discussion (1L): Representations of Criminal Lawyers in Popular Culture Through the Lens of Bias	This seminar will explore the portrayal of criminal lawyers in popular films and will engage in critical analysis of how misconceptions about the criminal justice system and biases against women, people of color and the poor are amplified on the big...
LAW240L	Discussion (1L): Robot Ethics	We will consider the developing legal and ethical problems of robots and artificial intelligence (AI), particularly self-directed and learning AIs. How do self-driving cars (or autonomous weapons systems) value human lives? How do we trade off accura...
LAW240M	Discussion (1L): The Central Park Five Case	This discussion seminar will focus on racial factors in the criminal justice system, using the Central Park 5 case and the Netflix series "When They See Us" as the jumping off point for the discussion. Following each episode of the series, the semina...
LAW240N	Discussion (1L): Theories and Critiques of Legal Education	Much of the basic structure of twenty-first-century American legal education was put in place by late nineteenth-century Harvard Law School Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell. This seminar will begin by examining the impetus for and nature of Langdel...
LAW240O	Discussion (1L): Whose Justice? Which Rationality?	Reasonable people sometimes disagree. How can reflective individuals hope to evaluate those disagreements? Fundamental notions of justice and rationality seem to dominate particular traditions in different places and different times. How can a twenty...
LAW240P	Discussion (1L): Election 2020	The discussion group will examine key factors in the 2020 election. In the first three classes, we will consider (among other topics) how and why people vote; vote suppression; the demographics of the electorate and how to increase the participation...
LAW240Q	Discussion (1L): Human Reproduction in the 21st Century: Legal and Ethical Issues	This seminar will discuss issues around human reproduction in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will talk about abortion "including the Dobbs case," and the problems of when life or rights begin, eugenics, embryo selection, and embryo editing (also kno...
LAW240R	Discussion (1L): Litigating the 2020 Election	This discussion seminar will explore legal issues in the 2020 election. We will read the cases or litigation materials as they are filed. The discussion group will also consider the various logistical, administrative, and civil rights issues that ju...
LAW240S	Discussion (1L): Monuments, Counter-Monuments, and the Law and Politics of Memory	In this reading group we will examine the intimate connection between the nation's retreat from Reconstruction in the 1870s, the constrained interpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments adopted by the Supreme Court, and the development of national...
LAW240T	Discussion (1L): Race and Technology	People often tend to think of technology as value neutral, as essentially objective tools that can be used for good or evil, particularly when questions of race and racial justice are involved. But the technologies we develop and deploy are frequentl...
LAW240U	Discussion (1L): Race, Civil Rights, and Human Rights	In this seminar, we will explore the evolution in the mid-twentieth century of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, at the same time that the international system for legal protection of human rights was also taking shape. Readings will di...
LAW240V	Discussion (1L): Reform, Defund, or Reimagine? The Problem of Policing	The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020, and the nationwide wave of protests that followed, have brought new attention to the nature of policing in the United States and its connection with racial inequality. For man...
LAW240W	Discussion (1L): Reimagining Capitalism	Scholars' and policy makers' thinking about political economy evolves as one understanding of the role of government ceases to reflect people's aspirations and views of social reality and is superseded by another. The laissez faire thinking of the 19...
LAW240X	Discussion (1L): Tort Encounters	Lawsuits for compensation for personal injury often provide lay people with their first -- or even only -- interaction with the civil side of courts. Those interactions are rarely wholly happy, raising fundamental issues for plaintiffs about the defi...
LAW240Y	Discussion (1L): Violence, Resistance, and the Law	This reading group will examine the force of law -- the ways in which law both depends upon and abjures violence, the ways it suppresses and invites resistance, and the identity of subjects against whom legal violence is deployed. A central object o...
LAW240Z	Discussion (1L): We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident? Race and Criminal Law in the 21st Century	There is no responsible person denying that those institutions that form the core of the "criminal justice system," with its explicit commitment to securing "justice," are the very institutions that have been (and continue to be) primary engines of i...
LAW2410	Comparative Evidence Law	Sponsored by Professors George Fisher and David Sklansky, this one-credit, one-month seminar is the creation of its two primary instructors, Professors Joan Picó i Junoy and Juan Antonio Andino López, both of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Professors...
LAW241A	Discussion (1L): Why is the USA Exceptional -- In Crime and Punishment?	It has long been a national controversy, and for many an international embarrassment, that the imprisonment rate in this country stands at the very top among nations -- currently just barely behind those of countries we would never want to be compare...
LAW241B	Discussion (1L): Race and Urban Law in the Bay Area	From the Black Power movement for self-governance that formed East Palo Alto to the battle to preserve the history of the "Little Manila" neighborhood in Stockton, from the anti-gentrification politics of San Francisco's historically Latinx Mission D...
LAW241C	Discussion (1L): Asian Americans Justice Struggles	Over the past eighteen months, coronavirus-related racism and anti-Asian hate violence have renewed perennial conversations about Asian American identity and advocacy in the United States. What does it mean to be Asian American? What is and has bee...
LAW241D	Discussion (1L): Corporate Dilemmas	The principle that corporate managers' sole duty is to maximize shareholders' financial value has never been entirely adhered to in practice and has been increasingly challenged in recent decades. While acknowledging the importance of shareholder val...
LAW241E	Discussion (1L): Crime and Punishment in American History	This discussion seminar will deal with the relationship between criminal justice and American society, at various points in American history. The emphasis will not be on doctrines of criminal law, or case-law in general, but on the living law, and t...
LAW241F	Discussion (1L): Ethical Lawyering: An Oxymoron?	National polls consistently rank lawyers as very low on the ethical/trustworthiness scale. For example, a recent Gallup Poll indicated that only 21% of respondents viewed lawyers as trustworthy, as compared to 77% who viewed physicians that way. In...
LAW241G	Discussion (1L): Reflecting on Red Power: 50 Years After Alcatraz	This seminar will explore the legal, cultural, political, and racial complexities underlying the Red Power movement that resulted in the 19-month occupation of nearby Alcatraz Island 50 years ago from 1969-1971. Readings will include excerpts from th...
LAW241H	Discussion (1L): The Law, Politics and Technology of the 2020 Redistricting Process	This discussion group will examine the law governing the 2021 redistricting process. We will learn about the one person one vote rule, constitutional prohibitions on racial gerrymandering, the Voting Rights Act, and applicable state law. Students e...
LAW241I	Discussion (1L): The Politics of Procedure	When you first encounter civil procedure in the fall quarter, it may seem dry and technical. With so much to learn so fast there isn't always time to talk about the political dimension of the rules. Simply put, the rules determine who gets access t...
LAW241J	Discussion (1L): The State of Democratic Discourse	This group will be devoted to candid discussion about the current state of public discourse both nationally and in universities, focusing especially on misinformation and intimidation. We will use Jonathan Rauch's new book, The Constitution of Knowle...
LAW241K	Discussion (1L): Governing Poverty	Decades of cuts to local government have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Some of these discarded places are rural, others are urban. Some are conservative, some are progressive. Some are the most diverse communities...
LAW241L	Discussion (1L): Conflict Management Design	What is conflict? When is it constructive or destructive? How is it prevented, managed and resolved? As lawyers, we commit to representing clients in an array of formal and informal processes, over discrete violations of law as well as long-ranging b...
LAW241M	Discussion (1L): American Indian Children: Boarding Schools to Brackeen	In 2022, the Supreme Court will hear a blockbuster case, Brackeen v. Haaland, that raises numerous constitutional questions that go to the very heart of federal Indian Law. Are American Indians a race, a political group, or both? How much power does...
LAW241N	Discussion (1L): Equality of Educational Opportunity	This seminar explores the concept of equality of educational opportunity, how law and policy have structured inequality in schools, and the efforts to dismantle inequality and promote equal educational opportunity. We will first consider the concept...
LAW241O	Discussion (1L): How Does Criminal Law "Know" the Truth?	Litigation is supposed to be a search for truth, and this search is especially important in criminal law, where outcomes involve the maximum power of the state against the individual, and the consequences of error seem intolerable. But how does crimi...
LAW241P	Discussion (1L): In Search of Climate Justice	Our rapidly changing climate demands that we act quickly and robustly to decarbonize the economy. But how do we create a just transition that does not merely replicate, or worse yet exacerbate, the inequities of the past? In this discussion seminar,...
LAW241Q	Discussion (1L): Rationalism, Contrarianism, and Bayesian Thinking in Politics: How to Think Better?	In the early 2010s, the Bay Area spawned a movement of thinkers obsessed with cognitive biases and "Bayesian reasoning," a way of using statistics and probability to inform beliefs. This group--that later came to be known as "rationalists"--insists o...
LAW241R	Discussion (1L): The Law of the 2022 Election	This seminar will look at the legal issues coming up in the context of the 2022 election. It will cover issues surrounding election administration and voting rights, as well as any other unexpected controversies leading up to and following the electi...
LAW2502	Climate Change Policy: Economic, Legal, and Political Analysis	(Formerly Law 746) This course will advance students' understanding of economic, legal, and political approaches to avoiding or managing the problem of global climate change. Beyond focusing on economic issues and legal constraints, it will address...
LAW2503	Energy Law	All modern industrial economies, including that in the U.S., require massive energy infrastructure and a coherent legal framework to ensure that energy services are provided to consumers of all types in a manner that is safe, reliable and affordable....
LAW2504	Environmental Law and Policy	Environmental law is critically important and endlessly fascinating. In this course, we will look at the major statutes and policies used, at both the federal and state levels, to protect humans and the environment against exposure to harmful substan...
LAW2505	Land Use Law	This course focuses on the pragmatic (more than theoretical) aspects of contemporary land use law and policy, including: the tools and historical/legal foundation of modern land use law; zoning and General Plans; the process of land development; vest...
LAW2506	Natural Resources Law and Policy	Environmental law subsumes two major sets of issues. One set of issues, which is the subject of Environmental Law & Policy (Law 2504), focuses on pollution containment (e.g., the Clean Air Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act). This course focu...
LAW2508	The Business of Water	Freshwater is our most crucial natural resource, but it is facing mounting pressures from climate change and other factors. While public agencies traditionally dominated water management, private water companies are playing an increasingly important...
LAW2509	Clean Energy Project Development and Finance	(Formerly Law 774) This case study-oriented course will focus on the critical skills needed to evaluate, develop, finance (on a non-recourse basis), and complete grid-scale clean energy projects. This course will be essentially the same as in the pa...
LAW2510	California Coast: Science, Policy and Law	This interdisciplinary course integrates the legal, scientific, and policy dimensions of how we characterize and manage resource use and allocation along the California coast. We will use this geographic setting as the vehicle for exploring more gene...
LAW2512	Cities and Sustainability: Current Issues, Policy, and Law	Cities are on the front lines of solving many of society's sustainability problems, from advancing green buildings and clean energy, to preparing for the effects of climate change. With a diminishing role of the federal government on environmental po...
LAW2513	Climate: Politics, Finance, and Infrastructure	While climate change is often considered an 'environmental problem', the risks and opportunities embedded in a changing climate go well beyond the natural environment. This course reframes climate as a macroeconomic challenge, one in which multilater...
LAW2515	Environmental Justice	This course will introduce environmental justice as a social movement, including its central substantive concerns (the needs of humans in the built environment rather than the need to protect the environment from humans) and its methods (community-ba...
LAW2516	Natural Resources Law and Policy - South Africa: Field Study	This is the South Africa Field Study component of Natural Resources Law and Policy (LAW 2506). For details, see course description for Law 2506. This course will look at three issues covered in Natural Resources Law & Policy from a comparative pers...
LAW2517	Modern Crosscurrents in Energy and Environmental Law	This course explores the close relationship between energy and environmental law. We will work through the major energy sectors and, for each, discuss key environmental law and policy issues that are influencing energy production and use. Our focus...
LAW2518	U.S. Environmental Law in Transition	This course offers an accessible survey of timely topics in environmental law and policy as the United States transitions presidential administrations. Taught by two practicing lawyers, the class introduces students from any background to the interac...
LAW2519	Water Law	This course will study how society allocates and protects its most crucial natural resource -- water. The emphasis will be on current legal and policy debates, although we will also examine the history of water development and politics. The course wi...
LAW2520	Climate Law and Policy	Climate change poses an existential threat to our planet. This course, open to law school students and graduate students from other schools, provides a survey of the legal and political mechanisms and social forces that may be leveraged to support de...
LAW2521	California's Water Policy and Management: Toward a Sustainable Future	This seminar series focuses on the dramatic changes in recent decades in California water policy and management and how water researchers can help forge modern, collaborative solutions that will allow the state to adapt to an uncertain and challengin...
LAW2522	Private Environmental Governance	The tools of private environmental regulation (e.g., eco-certifications, CSR initiatives, supplier contracts) have become an increasingly important source of governance. But how do they work? How do they arise--why and how can corporations participa...
LAW2523	Climate, Energy, and Democracy	This 1-credit, discussion-based seminar will examine the challenge and promise of responding to climate change in democracy. Combining theoretical readings and real-world examples such as California community choice energy programs and the movement f...
LAW2524	Environmental Law Workshop	This workshop will provide students with the opportunity to hear from faculty at other law schools who are at the cutting edge of research in environmental law and policy. This year, the workshop will focus on energy and climate research. Although...
LAW2525	Public Lands	The federal government owns and manages 28% of all land in the United States, and 48% in California, the third-highest percentage in the nation. How the federal government manages public lands therefore has profound implications for countless constit...
LAW3001	Health Law: Finance and Insurance	This course provides the legal, institutional, and economic background necessary to understand the financing and production of health services in the U.S. We will discuss the Affordable Care Act , health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid, employer-sp...
LAW3002	Health Law: Quality and Safety of Care	(Formerly Law 727) Concerns about the quality of health care, along with concerns about its cost and accessibility, are the focal points of American health policy. This course will consider how legislators, courts, and professional groups attempt to...
LAW3003	Health Law: The FDA	This course will examine the Food and Drug Administration. It will focus largely on the FDA's regulation of drugs and biologics, but will also cover its regulation of medical devices, nutritional supplements, and its jurisdiction over special legal,...
LAW3004	Law and Biosciences: Genetics	This seminar will focus on ethical, legal, and social issues arising from advances in our knowledge of human genetics. These will drawn from topics such as forensic uses of genetics, genetic testing, widespread whole genome sequencing, genome editing...
LAW3005	Law and Biosciences Workshop	This workshop seminar will provide students with the opportunity to examine and critique cutting-edge research and work in the field of law and the biosciences presented by different speakers from Stanford and elsewhere. Although it is open to all st...
LAW3006	Law and Biosciences: Neuroscience	This seminar examines legal, social, and ethical issues arising from advances in the biosciences. This year it will focus on neuroscience. It will examine how neuroscience will affect the law, and society, through improvements in predicting illnesses...
LAW3009	Health Law: Improving Public Health	This course examines how the law can be used to improve the public's health. The broad questions explored are: what authority does the government have to regulate in the interest of public health? How are individual rights balanced against this autho...
LAW3010	Mental Health Law	This class will explore timely issues surrounding mental health law. Representative topics include civil commitment proceedings; forced outpatient treatment and hospitalization; mental health in the criminal justice system; guardianship/conservatorsh...
LAW3011	Biomedical Innovation Law and Policy	Why don't we have an HIV vaccine, or a cure for Alzheimer's disease? Why weren't we better prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic? Why do vast inequalities persist in who has access to biomedical innovations, and in what kinds of innovations are brought...
LAW3012	Introduction to Law and the Biosciences	This course will provide an introduction to the legal, ethical, and policy areas important to understanding Law and the Biosciences. Each topic will include both discussion of the relevant legal rules and ethical principles and their application to a...
LAW3254	How to Ask a Question	Asking questions is at the core of the role of an attorney. Whether it is interrogating a witness in a deposition, or conducting a direct or cross examination at trial, knowing how to ask a question is an essential lawyering skill. We'll explore text...
LAW3258	Responsibility for Risk: Perspectives on Liability Insurance	This seminar will explore the intellectual foundations of the institution of insurance, including the following key questions: How is insurance to be conceived: from a contract perspective? a tort perspective? a private governmental perspective? Corr...
LAW3259	The Civil Justice System as an Agent of Change	The past 60 years have witnessed a dramatic expansion in the role of the courts as an agent of change in the United States. Constitutional, civil and economic rights have been created, such as marriage equality and strict liability in tort, but right...
LAW3502	Art and the Law	This course covers the legal, public policy, and ethical issues that concern artists, art dealers, auction houses, museums, collectors, and others who comprise the world of visual art. Our focus will be on artists' rights (including copyright, resale...
LAW3504	U.S. Legal History	This course explores the legal history of what became the United States from the beginning of European colonization until the early twentieth century, focusing on the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It examines both the evolution of legal...
LAW3505	Law and Culture in American Fiction	How do we identify an owner? What does a citizen look like? Whose privacy requires protection? The stories we tell about the experience of being Americans bolster and undermine particular legal arguments and conclusions. In the nineteenth century...
LAW3506	Law and Empire in U.S. History	This course will examine the interrelationship between legal norms and empire in the history of the United States. Topics in this part will include the Constitution as an imperial document; law and the expansion of the United States in western North...
LAW3507	Law and the Rhetorical Tradition	The conventions of legal writing and reasoning taught in law school derive from a long tradition of argument and persuasion. This interdisciplinary seminar locates legal conventions in that broader intellectual history, starting with Aristotle and tr...
LAW3508	Law and Visual Culture	When we represent our experience today, we do so as much through images as language. When we seek to persuade, we offer photographs, charts, videos. When we witness misconduct, we pull out our smartphones. And as images saturate our cultural discours...
LAW3510	Psychological Development: Myth, Law, and Practice	Collective myths from a variety of traditions and cultures capture enduring psychological truths about human choices and the human condition. Lawyers at various stages in their careers have their own personal myths, sometimes conscious and sometimes...
LAW3511	Writing Workshop: Law and Creativity	Practicing law is very much a creative enterprise. Effective advocates and counselors provide innovative and thoughtful solutions to complex problems. But there often isn't enough attention devoted in law school either to thinking creatively or to re...
LAW3512	Markets, Morals and the Law	What things should or should not be for sale - and why? This course will consider several examples of "blocked exchanges" or "contested commodities," including the trade in reproductive services, body parts, environmental resources, political rights...
LAW3514	Law and Inequality (Reading Group)	This reading group will focus on the challenges presented to law by the long-term growth of economic inequality. In addition to exploring evidence of rising inequality (including the work of Thomas Piketty and others), we will examine legal and other...
LAW3515	Law and Humanities Workshop: History, Literature, and Philosophy	(Formerly Law 516) The Law and Humanities Workshop: History, Literature, and Philosophy is designed as a forum in which faculty and students from the Law School and from various humanities departments can discuss some of the best work now being done...
LAW3516	Legal History Workshop	The Legal History Workshop is designed as a forum in which faculty and students from the Law School, the History Department, and elsewhere in the university can discuss some of the best work now being done in the field of legal history. Every other w...
LAW3517	Law and Literature	After its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, many wondered whether the law and literature movement would retain vitality. Within the last decade there has, however, been an explosion of energy in the field, which has expanded beyond the boundaries of the...
LAW3518	Law and Psychology	This course will examine the implications of psychological theory and research for normative legal theory and for contemporary legal policies, procedures, and practices. The course will draw on contemporary cognitive, social, and clinical psychology...
LAW3519	Law and the Greek Classics (Reading Group)	This one credit course, based on materials taught at the Aspen Institute, will read and discuss selected classical Greek documents (in translation, of course) of particular relevance to the contemporary practice of law. We will begin with a reading o...
LAW3520	Selected Topics in the History of Capitalism, Regulation, Corporations and Finance	This seminar will briefly examine recent debates about the role of the financial sector in the United States, considered in light of the long history of American debates over regulation of economic activity. It will be structured as a continuing dia...
LAW3521	Law, Politics and the Arts	This seminar will explore the connections between the arts and questions of law and politics, using several performances from the 2019-2020 Stanford Live season to form the basis of a conversation. Students will attend the multiple performances and...
LAW3522	Legal History: Research Seminar in Legal Biography	The aim of this seminar is to produce a number of student-written studies of the lives of lawyers. In the first half of the seminar, we will read some exemplary biographies of lawyers. In the second half, students in the seminar will report on thei...
LAW400	Directed Research	Directed Research is an extraordinary opportunity for students beyond the first-year to research problems in any field of law. Directed research credit may not be awarded for work that duplicates the work of a course, clinic, or externship for which...
LAW4001	Media, Technology, and the First Amendment	The right to free speech is meaningless without spaces to exercise it. Over the past decades, electronic media---broadcast radio and television, cable television, telephony, and the internet---have become critical spaces where Americans speak to and...
LAW4003	Current Issues in Network Neutrality	Due to the change in administration, the future of net neutrality in the US is in question again. Network neutrality rules are based on a simple principle: Internet service providers like Verizon or Comcast that connect us to the Internet should not...
LAW4004	Cybersecurity: A Legal and Technical Perspective	This class will use the case method to teach basic computer, network, and information security from technology, law, policy, and business perspectives. Using real world topics, we will study the technical, legal, policy, and business aspects of an in...
LAW4005	Introduction to Intellectual Property	This is an overview course covering the basics of intellectual property law -- trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks. This course is designed both for those who are interested in pursuing IP as a career, and those who are looking only fo...
LAW4005	Introduction to Intellectual Property	This is an overview course covering the basics of intellectual property law -- trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks. This course is designed both for those who are interested in pursuing IP as a career, and those who are looking only fo...
LAW4006	Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law	This is an advanced seminar focusing on antitrust law as it applies to the creation, licensing, and exercise of intellectual property rights. At least one IP or antitrust class is a prerequisite, and ideally both. Elements used in grading: Grades wi...
LAW4007	Intellectual Property: Copyright	Copyright law is the engine that drives not only such traditional entertainment and information industries as music, book publishing, news and motion pictures, but also software, video games and other digital products. This course examines in depth a...
LAW4008	Intellectual Property: Copyright Licensing, Principles, Law and Practice	(Formerly Law 625) This course will combine in-depth study, through reading assignments and lectures, of US law governing copyright transactions (contract formalities and construction; recordation and title practice; termination of transfers) and cop...
LAW4009	Intellectual Property: International and Comparative Patent Law	Patentable goods and services are increasingly important in today's global information economy, and they frequently cross national borders, physically or electronically. This course will include a comparative examination of the major national patent...
LAW4010	Intellectual Property: Patents	This intermediate-level patent law course builds on material covered in Introduction to Intellectual Property (which is recommended but not required). Students will gain a thorough grounding in patent doctrine (including patentability, infringement,...
LAW4011	Intellectual Property: The Business & Law of Technology & Patent Licensing	If you practice in any technology-related area (whether transactions, corporate, IP management or litigation), you will encounter licensing, as it is the principal means by which technology and patent rights are disseminated, exploited and commercial...
LAW4012	Intellectual Property: Trademarks	This course will consider the protection and enforcement of trademarks and related state rights in brands and names, including the right of publicity. There is no prerequisite, though some students will have taken Introduction to Intellectual Propert...
LAW4013	Information Privacy Law	This course explores the roots of privacy law, its evolution in the face of rapid technological change, and the challenges to an individual's ability to control third party collection, access, use and disclosure of their personal information. The co...
LAW4014	Law, Technology, and Liberty	New technologies from gene editing to networked computing have already transformed our economic and social structures and are increasingly changing what it means to be human. What role has law played in regulating and shaping these technologies? And...
LAW4015	Modern Surveillance Law	This seminar provides an in depth look at modern government surveillance law, policies and practices. It is taught by Richard Salgado, formerly director of law enforcement and information security at Google and a prosecutor at the U.S. Department of...
LAW4016	Patent Litigation Workshop	This course simulates the strategy and pretrial preparation of a patent lawsuit. The course materials include information typical to a patent lawsuit: a patent, file history, prior art, and information regarding the accused product. Students will rep...
LAW4017	Protection of Personality: Defamation, Privacy, and Emotional Distress	This course will examine the theoretical foundations and common law development of the range of tort remedies designed to afford protection to the interests in personality. Defamation, the right of privacy, and claims of emotional distress and harass...
LAW4018	Intellectual Property: International and Comparative Copyright	Copyright today is global, and copyright counselling, litigation and licensing increasingly require a general understanding of foreign copyright law and of the international copyright system. This course will focus on the exploitation of US-based mus...
LAW4019	Computational Law	Computational Law is an innovative approach to Legal Informatics concerned with the representation of regulations in computable form. From a practical perspective, Computational Law is important as the basis for computer systems capable of performin...
LAW4020	Lawyering for Innovation: A Case Study	(Formerly Law 769) Strategic lawyering in the 21st century requires a combination of critical skillsets, including facility with technology, product design, partnerships, dispute resolution, and policy. No issue in the digital age has demonstrated t...
LAW4021	Free Speech in the Age of the Internet	Taught by top policy leaders from Google/YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, this course will explore the way free speech norms have evolved in the age of the Internet and the pivotal role online platforms play in the information available worldwide. From...
LAW4022	Communications Law: Internet and Telephony	The internet has enabled new forms of innovation, content production and political participation that are transforming our economy, society and democratic system. Technical, legal and economic choices will affect whether the Internet can realize its...
LAW4024	Patent Prosecution	This skill-based course examines the core requirements and strategies for drafting and prosecuting a patent application before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO). The class brings in real inventors and patent examiners to give students a real-w...
LAW4025	Intellectual Property: Trade Secrets	Trade secret protection has become one of the most important issues in intellectual property today. Technology becomes more important to industry every day, but information can be downloaded and shared more easily than ever before. The law has to st...
LAW4026	Internet Platforms and Free Expression	In recent years, Internet platforms like Facebook, Google, or Twitter have increasingly come under fire. Top executives from these companies have testified before Congress about their role in spreading misinformation in the 2016 elections. With the i...
LAW4028	Intellectual Property: Advanced Copyright	Copyright law is the primary legal regime governing human creativity, and it plays some role in nearly all creative industries today. Consequently, copyright law has far-reaching economic and cultural implications. In this seminar, we will consider t...
LAW4029	Video Game Law	This seminar discusses a variety of legal issues raised by video games and game platforms. We will devote substantial attention to intellectual property matters, but will also include business and licensing issues, tort law, the First Amendment, and...
LAW403	Senior Thesis	An opportunity for third-year students to engage in original research and to prepare a substantial written-work product on the scale of a law review article. The thesis topic should be chosen no later than two weeks after the beginning of the seventh...
LAW4030	Intellectual Property: Patents - Japan Field Study	This is the Tokyo, Japan component of Intellectual Property: International and Comparative Patent Law (Law 4009) and Intellectual Property: Patents (Law 4010). Students enrolled in either Law 4009 or Law 4010 may apply for this optional field study c...
LAW4031	Disruptive Technologies: Their Impact on Our Laws, and the Laws' Impact on the Technology	The advent of a highly disruptive technology necessarily butts up against existing laws, regulations and policies designed for the status quo as well as established businesses. This course takes the examples of driverless cars and artificial intelli...
LAW4032	Advanced Negotiation of Patent Reform Policies	Patent reform has been a hotly debated topic in recent years in the intellectual property field. Different industries and players have differing and often competing views of our patent system--how effective it is in promoting innovation and what, if...
LAW4035	Cyber Law: International and Domestic Legal Frameworks for Cyber Policy	Was Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. elections an act of war? When do cyber attacks constitute a use of force? Is sovereignty in cyberspace different than in other domains, and can states meaningfully defend their sovereignty in cyberspace? Is...
LAW4038	Does Google Need a Foreign Policy? Private Corporations & International Security in the Digital Age	Facebook has more users than any nation has citizens. Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks more often with Chinese President Xi Jinping than President Trump does. Google's revenues exceed the GDPs of more than half the world's countries. Cybersecurity companies...
LAW4039	Regulating Artificial Intelligence	Even just a generation ago, interest in "artificial intelligence" (AI) was largely confined to academic computer science, philosophy, engineering research and development efforts, and science fiction. Today the term is widely understood to encompass...
LAW4040	Hot Issues in Tech Policy (Reading Group)	In our hyper-networked world dominated by digital gatekeepers, tech policy implicates the law, business, engineering and --- perhaps foremost --- society. Effective lawyering in the field must be multi-dimensional and incorporate economic, technologi...
LAW4041	Lawyering for Innovation: Artificial Intelligence	In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has made the jump from science fiction to technical viability to product reality. Industries as far flung as finance, transportation, defense, and healthcare invest billions in the field. Patent filings f...
LAW4043	The Social & Economic Impact of Artificial Intelligence	Recent advances in computing may place us at the threshold of a unique turning point in human history. Soon we are likely to entrust management of our environment, economy, security, infrastructure, food production, healthcare, and to a large degree...
LAW4044	Lawyering for Innovation: The (Ongoing) Facebook Case Study	Issues of technology law and policy -- many involving Silicon Valley companies -- are among the most interesting and challenging in law today. Drawing on the lecturer's experience as General Counsel of Facebook, the course will focus on actual contro...
LAW4045	Digital Technology and Law: Foundations	Taught by a team of law and engineering faculty, this unique interdisciplinary course will empower students across the University to work together and exercise leadership on critically important debates at the intersection of law and digital technolo...
LAW4046	Data: Privacy, Property and Security	The collection, use and marketing of personal data are ubiquitous in the digital age. This seminar will explore the diverse legal regimes regulating personal data--including privacy, property and security--and the imperfect nature of their protectio...
LAW4047	Ethics, Public Policy, and Technological Change	Examination of recent developments in computing technology and platforms through the lenses of philosophy, public policy, social science, and engineering. Course is organized around four main units: algorithmic decision-making and bias; data privacy...
LAW4048	Regulating Internet Speech Platforms	Internet platforms like Google and Facebook play an enormous role in our online speech and information environment today. This class will review the intermediary liability laws that shape platforms' decisions about online content, and examine how suc...
LAW4049	Hack Lab	This course aims to give students a solid understanding of the most common types of attacks used in cybercrime and cyberwarfare. Taught by a long-time cybersecurity practitioner, a recovering cyberlaw litigator, and a group of hearty, motivated TAs,...
LAW4050	AI and Rule of Law: A Global Perspective	Advances in machine learning, big data, networked communications, and computing are transforming our world and fueling calls for regulation. This course--a joint venture of a Stanford law professor and a former Member of the European Parliament and...
LAW4051	Foundations of Internet Speech Platform Regulation	Internet platforms like Google and Facebook play an enormous role in our online speech and information environment today. This class will review the laws that shape platforms' decisions about online content, with a primary focus on intermediary liabi...
LAW4052	Governing Artificial Intelligence: Law, Policy, and Institutions	Even just a generation ago, interest in "artificial intelligence" (AI) was largely confined to academic computer science, philosophy, engineering, and science fiction. Today the term is understood to encompass not only long-term efforts to simulate...
LAW4053	Confronting Misinformation Online: Law and Policy	This course will examine contemporary challenges and trade-offs for tech law and policy decision-making presented by false information online. Topics will include content policy and regulatory responses to election misinformation; medical misinformat...
LAW4054	Competition in Digital Markets (Reading Group)	Last October, the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law released its long-awaited report "Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets." Following a 16-month investigation into the state of online...
LAW4055	In House Product and Technology Counsel	This course provides a rigorous, hands-on, practical overview of the essential skills you'll need in today's practice of global technology and commercial transactions as in-house counsel. Students will learn key terms in commercial, IP and technology...
LAW4056	Net Neutrality and Broadband Deployment	An open and affordable internet is critical to our economy, democracy, and our country's promise of equal opportunity. After the pandemic, everyone agrees on that. How we get there is the hard part. That's what the debates over net neutrality and br...
LAW4057	Antitrust and the Challenges of Competition in Digital Markets	These are unprecedented times for antitrust concerns about the market power and conduct of big technology companies, in particular Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple. The companies face an onslaught of regulatory and judicial scrutiny around the wor...
LAW4058	False Advertising	This course covers all of the basics regarding marketing law and false advertising, a rapidly changing and expanding area of law that dovetails nicely with trademark and copyright law. In this course, we will cover the basics of false advertising cl...
LAW406	Research Track	The Research Track is for students who wish to carry out a research project of a scope larger than that contemplated for a Senior Thesis. Research Track projects are to be supervised by two or more professors, at least one of whom must be a member of...
LAW411	Directed Professional Writing	Directed professional writing projects involve professional writing, such as motions, briefs, proposed legislation, and congressional testimony, undertaken with the assistance of --- and in collaboration with --- a faculty member. Directed professio...
LAW5001	China Law and Business	The growing tension between China and the rest of the world after the COVID-19 outbreak has made it more important than ever for businesses and their advisers to understand the legal framework in China and related compliance issues. Given their need...
LAW5002	Comparative Law	The big question in comparative law today - and one that is of key importance to anyone interested in international law - is whether we are currently witnessing a convergence of national legal systems. This course examines this question, as well as t...
LAW5003	International Criminal Law and Its Enforcement	The establishment of a global system of international justice reveals that the promises made during the Nuremberg era are not mere history. Over the past two decades, the international community has undertaken a considerable investment in enforcing i...
LAW5005	European Union Law	The U.S. and the European Union (which comprises 27 European states and 450 million people) have the largest bilateral trade relationship in the world. Over 50% of the world's GDP is generated on the Transatlantic Marketplace. U.S. companies rely on...
LAW5006	International Business Transactions, Regulation and Litigation	What legal problems arise when firms go global? Lawyers are increasingly asked to advise clients with global operations and to respond to multiple and sometimes inconsistent national laws. Through a series of case studies, we put you in the driver's...
LAW5007	International Business Negotiation	This course is structured around a quarter-long, simulated negotiation exercise which provides an in-depth study of the structuring and negotiating of an international business transaction. This class will be taught in counterpart with a class at Ber...
LAW5008	International Commercial Arbitration	This course provides a rigorous introduction to the law, theory and practice of international commercial arbitration. International commercial arbitration which has become the default means of settling international disputes and with clients increasi...
LAW5009	International Conflict Resolution	This seminar examines the challenges of managing and resolving intractable political and violent intergroup and international conflicts. Employing an interdisciplinary approach drawing on social psychology, political science, game theory, and interna...
LAW5010	International Human Rights	In part as a result of the rise of international human rights mechanisms in the twentieth century, conflicts over resources, privileges and power are now increasingly mediated through the lens of human rights, in terms of the protection of individual...
LAW5011	International Investment Law	The past few decades have seen a dramatic increase in the number of bilateral investment treaties and other treaties with investment-related provisions, followed by a sharp rise in the number of disputes between private investors and sovereign states...
LAW5012	International Criminal Justice	(Formerly Law 752) The establishment of a global system of international justice reveals that the promises made during the Nuremberg era are not mere history. Over the past decade, the international community has undertaken a considerable investment...
LAW5013	International Law	This course provides a general introduction to international law and its role in today's complex and interdependent world. We will begin by considering foundational questions about the nature of international law, such as: the origins of internationa...
LAW5014	International Trade Law	This course will survey the law and policy of modern international trade agreements, with an emphasis on the treaty network of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other important multilateral arrangements, as well as U.S. laws governing "unfair tr...
LAW5015	International Dealmaking: Vienna Field Negotiation	This course is structured around a week-long, simulated negotiation exercise which provides an in-depth study of the structuring and negotiating of an international business transaction. This class will be taught in counterpart with a class at Univer...
LAW5016	Japanese Law, Society and Economy	This course provides a critical introduction to the institutions and actors that comprise the Japanese legal system. Throughout the course, law is examined within the broader context of Japanese social, political, and economic institutions. Topics co...
LAW5017	Law in Latin America	(Formerly Law 582) The course has two main goals: to introduce students to the civil law tradition and to gain an understanding of the ways in which the law is practiced and lived in Latin American and Spain. Special attention is given to law firms,...
LAW5018	Legal Institutions and Global Economic Development	This course will cover readings on the relationship between legal institutions and economic development across different countries. Some topics are set by the instructor, while others arise depending on the interests of students as they develop their...
LAW5019A	The Law of War (Reading Group)	This course will provide students with exposure to the international law regime governing war, including the law that regulates when states may resort to force (jus ad bellum) and the constraints on the conduct of warfare itself (jus in bello). Eleme...
LAW5021	Current Topics in International Economic Law	This seminar will explore select topics in international economic law, including but not limited to: the formation of new free trade agreements (in particular the proposed Pacific and Atlantic partnerships); the inclusion of "next generation" issues...
LAW5023	The Rule of Law - The Foundation of Functional Communities	We will seek to determine a useful meaning of the notion of the rule of law, to identify a credible measurement of adherence, and to explore the importance of the rule of law in terms of economic, socio-political and human development. We will focus...
LAW5025	Global Poverty and the Law	With more than a billion people living on less than $2 a day, global poverty is one of the biggest challenges currently facing humanity. Even though those who suffer the most are located in the developing world, many of the policies, economic opportu...
LAW5026	Global Poverty, Corruption, and the Law: India Field Study	This is the India Field Study component of Global Poverty and the Law (Law 5025). For details, see course description for Law 5025. Corruption is one of the most difficult challenges facing societies across the developing world. Why is corruption so...
LAW5027	Social Conflict, Social Justice, and Human Rights in 21st Century Latin America	This course will consider significant sources of social conflict, efforts to achieve social justice and the relevance and impact of human rights norms and oversight mechanisms in Latin America in the 21st Century. Led by Prof. James Cavallaro, the c...
LAW5028	Regional Human Rights Protections: The Inter-American System	This course provides an in-depth introduction to the doctrine, practice and critiques of the Inter-American Human Rights System ("IASHR"). Students will examine the major instruments for human rights protections in the IASHR, the Inter-American Court...
LAW5029	Human Trafficking: Historical, Legal, and Medical Perspectives	(Formerly Law 675) This course offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the extent and complexity of the global phenomenon of human trafficking, including trafficking for forced prostitution, labor exploitation, and organ harvesting. I...
LAW5031	Law and Society in Late Imperial China	(Formerly Law 773) Connections between legal and social history. Ideology and practice, center and periphery, and state-society tensions and interactions. Readings introduce the work of major historians on concepts and problems in Ming-Qing history....
LAW5033	International Justice	(Formerly Law 786) Mass atrocities---including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity---continue to rage around the world, from Syria and South Sudan to Iraq and Myanmar. This course examines origins, operations, and outcomes of historica...
LAW5034	Human Trafficking: Law and Policy	Taking an historical and comparative perspective, this course will introduce students to the international, domestic, foreign, and sub-national law governing the many manifestations of human trafficking (including legal prohibitions on forced labor a...
LAW5035	Human Trafficking: Law and Policy - Thailand: Field Study	This field study is being taught in conduction with Law 5034, offered Winter Quarter 2019. During spring break, select students enrolled in Law 5035 will travel to Thailand to tour elements of the anti-trafficking ecosystem in Bangkok and Chiang Mai...
LAW5036	Law and Ethics of War	War is violent and often devastates the lives of those caught up in it. Yet it is also a means by which political communities protect themselves, pursue collective interests, and defend their rights. When, if ever, is the recourse to armed force ju...
LAW5037	Qing Legal Documents	How to use Qing legal documents for research. Winter: sample documents that introduce the main genres including: the Qing code and commentaries; magistrates' handbooks and published case collections; and case records from Chinese archives. Spring: cl...
LAW5038	Jewish Law: Introduction and Topics	This course will provide an overview of the field of Jewish Law and will seek to provide a few case studies of topics in Jewish Law. All the readings are in English and this course presupposes no background in Jewish Law. Jewish Law is the world's ol...
LAW5039	The Future of Global Cooperation	With autocracy resurgent and democracy on the decline, what is the future of global cooperation? What will be the fate of global institutions built to restore and maintain peace? Why pursue global cooperation at all? This seminar examines the role of...
LAW5040	Law, Lawyers, and Transformation in Democratic South Africa	South Africa's transition to democracy in 1994 marked the formal end of the comprehensive political, economic, and social system of racial subordination known as apartheid. The country has changed dramatically since then, as the government has built...
LAW5041	Business, Institutions, and Corruption in Latin America	Corruption is a global problem. Although data suggests that there are places that accumulate more harmful practices than Latin American countries, Latin America is perceived as a champion of corruption. This macro vision may hide the distinctive char...
LAW5042	Comparative Law and Society	This is a course about the relationship between law and the larger society--but with readings drawn almost entirely from studies carried out in countries other than the United States. The course will look, for examples, at readings from Chile, China...
LAW5043	Introduction to Islamic Law	Islamic law, along with English common law and Roman law, is one of the world's great legal systems. This course will introduce students to the following topics: the material sources of Islamic law; the history of its development from western Arabia...
LAW5044	Third World Approaches to International Law, Borders, and Migration	The mass movement of people across international borders is widely framed as among the most pressing challenges of the 21st Century. Globally, debates regarding immigration law and policy remain controversial political flashpoints. The purpose of thi...
LAW5045	Global Trends in Judicial Reform: Colombia Field Study	This is the Colombia Field Study component of Global Trends in Judicial Reform Law 808W). For details, see course description for Law 808W. The past decade has been defined by democratic backsliding and the reemergence of authoritarianism around th...
LAW5101	Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) Seminar	The Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) Seminar is only open to student preselected in spring 2019. The ALEP Seminar will begin with an intensive bootcamp taught by ALEP leadership and members of the law faculty at American University of Afgha...
LAW5102	Advanced Afghanistan Legal Education Seminar	Students who participate in the Afghanistan Legal Education Seminar in the fall quarter will continue their work in the Advanced Seminar in the winter or spring quarter. Only students selected for the Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) in spr...
LAW5103	State-Building and the Rule of Law Seminar	The State-Building and the Rule of Law Seminar is centrally concerned with bridging theory and practice. The seminar introduces the key theories relevant to state-building generally, and strengthening the rule of law in particular. This course explor...
LAW5104	Advanced State-Building and Rule of Law Seminar	Students who participate in the State-Building and Rule of Law Seminar in the fall quarter may seek consent to continue their work in the Advanced Seminar in winter or spring quarter. Six students per quarter will be allowed to participate. Students...
LAW5105	Fundamentals of International Criminal Law and Justice	Learn the history and development of international criminal law from World War I through World War II to the Cold War. Study the substantive contents of the discipline: specifically genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggre...
LAW5201	Foreign Legal Study: Bucerius Law School	This course is for J.D. students who have been approved by the Law School to study at one of the following schools: Bucerius Law School (BLS) -- Hamburg, Germany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) -- Jerusalem, Israel, Institut d'Études Politique...
LAW5204	Foreign Legal Study: Hebrew University of Jerusalem	This course is for J.D. students who have been approved by the Law School to study at one of the following schools: Bucerius Law School (BLS) -- Hamburg, Germany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) -- Jerusalem, Israel, Institut d'Études Politique...
LAW5207	Foreign Legal Study: Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris	This course is for J.D. students who have been approved by the Law School to study at one of the following schools: Bucerius Law School (BLS) -- Hamburg, Germany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) -- Jerusalem, Israel, Institut d'Études Politique...
LAW5210	Foreign Legal Study: National University of Singapore	This course is for J.D. students who have been approved by the Law School to study at one of the following schools: Bucerius Law School (BLS) -- Hamburg, Germany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) -- Jerusalem, Israel, Institut d'Études Politique...
LAW5213	Foreign Legal Study: Peking University Law School	This course is for J.D. students who have been approved by the Law School to study at one of the following schools: Bucerius Law School (BLS) -- Hamburg, Germany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) -- Jerusalem, Israel, Institut d'Études Politique...
LAW5216	Foreign Legal Study: Waseda University	This course is for J.D. students who have been approved by the Law School to study at one of the following schools: Bucerius Law School (BLS) -- Hamburg, Germany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) -- Jerusalem, Israel, Institut d'Études Politique...
LAW5219	Foreign Legal Study: University of Vienna	This course is for J.D. students who have been approved by the Law School to study at one of the following schools: Bucerius Law School (BLS) -- Hamburg, Germany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) -- Jerusalem, Israel, Institut d'Études Politique...
LAW5222	Foreign Legal Study: Esade Law School	This course is for J.D. students who have been approved by the Law School to study at one of the following schools: Bucerius Law School (BLS) -- Hamburg, Germany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) -- Jerusalem, Israel, Institut d'Études Politique...
LAW5801	Legal Studies Workshop	The Legal Studies Workshop is designed to support students working on a piece of legal scholarship with an eye to publication. The workshop will meet four times a quarter, and will be offered in most quarters. Students may sign up for as many quarte...
LAW5802	Modern American Legal Thought	(Formerly Law 500) The course surveys the most significant theories of law and adjudication in this country from the 1880s to the present. We will consider, among other topics, Formalist (Langdellian) Legal Science, Sociological Jurisprudence, Amer...
LAW5805	Animal Law	This course presents a survey of the historical and current status of this rapidly developing specialty. In brief, animal law encompasses all areas of the law in which the nature -- legal, social or biological -- of nonhuman animals is an important f...
LAW5806	Jurisprudence	This course examines the diverse ways in which the philosophy of law bears on the practice of law. Our subject is thus a set of philosophical concepts, particularly legal positivism and natural law, but the approach is not purely conceptual. Rather,...
LAW5807	Feminism and the Law: Selected Topics (Reading Group)	The Reading Group will meet five times during the quarter: April 24, May 1, May 8, May 15, and May 22. We will start by considering the major schools of feminist legal theory, and then look more closely at selected topics of current interest. Topi...
LAW5808	The Law of Bystanders and Upstanders (Reading Group)	What duties do or should bystanders have to intervene in crimes (e.g., sexual assault) and crises (e.g., drowning)? What rewards and immunities should upstanders receive? What Good Samaritan laws (which eliminate liability for interveners) and Bad Sa...
LAW5809	Is there an American Legal Canon?	Is there a "canon" of American legal scholarship? And if so, how does it shape our understanding of, or the way we talk about, the law today? In many other academic disciplines, a central element of any course of advanced study is an encounter with a...
LAW5810	Behind the Doctrinal Curtain: Law School's Concepts and Themes	When you have finished law school, you will (hopefully) have mastered a good deal of legal doctrine (many of you will review and/or sharpen your mastery of particular rules when you study for the Bar) and mastered a number of skills you will need to...
LAW5811	Philosophy of Law: Protest, Punishment, and Racial Justice	Philosophy of Law: Protest, Punishment, and Racial Justice (LAW 5811): In this course, we will examine some of the central questions in philosophy of law, including: What is law? What gives law its authority? Must we obey the law? If so, when and why...
LAW5812	Feminist Legal Theory Workshop	Workshop will provide students with a structured opportunity to write a research paper on any aspect of feminist legal theory/feminism and the law (broadly defined) that interests them. Students are expected to formulate a research topic by week 4....
LAW5813	Representation	In this course, we will work together to develop a detailed and comprehensive understanding of the concept(s) of political representation. We will do so by examining a number of historical and contemporary theories of political representation develop...
LAW6001	Legal Ethics	A survey of the major legal and ethical issues presented in the practice of law. We will examine the concept of the lawyer endorsed by the rules of professional responsibility, the principal-agent relationship, and common law doctrines governing law...
LAW6001	Legal Ethics	This course will explore the ethical issues facing all lawyers in the practice of law. We will focus on the ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct as well as ethics opinions, statutes, regulations and relevant case law, with consideration of Calif...
LAW6003	The American Legal Profession	This course will deal with selected aspects of the history, organization, economics, ethics, and possible futures of the legal profession in the United States. Likely topics will include, in addition to the ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct:...
LAW6004	Legal Ethics: The Plaintiffs' Lawyer	This course uses a study of plaintiffs' lawyers as a vehicle to explore many of the most controversial and important issues at the intersection of tort law, civil procedure, and legal ethics. Specifically, in this course, we will study who personal i...
LAW6005	Technological, Economic and Business Forces Transforming the Private Practice of Law	The private practice of law has and will continue to undergo fundamental change. Technological, economic and business forces are placing extreme pressure on not only the traditional 'Big Law' firm model but also role of in-house counsel. These force...
LAW6006	Introduction to Legal Design	(Formerly Law 761) Intro to Legal Design is a 9-week course for law students & other graduate students to reimagine how legal services are delivered, & to learn how to use human-centered design methods to create breakthrough solutions to complex prob...
LAW6007	Legal Profession Workshop: The Future of Big Law	Ever since the global financial crisis, legal media have focused on the contraction of the corporate legal services sector. But today, partners at the top tier of big corporate law firms -- "big law" -- are earning huge profits and job prospects for...
LAW6015	Innovations in the Delivery of Legal Services	This is an era of groundbreaking change in the legal profession. Twenty years ago, email was unheard of at most law firms. Today, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and online services are creating a fundamental shift in how law is practiced....
LAW6016	Reforming the Profession: Opportunities and Challenges Facing Tomorrow's Lawyers	Today's law students are tomorrow's lawyers, and tomorrow's lawyers face a set of fundamental challenges that are likely to reshape the profession in the years ahead. Clients are increasingly dissatisfied with large law firms, and many other people i...
LAW6017	Access to Justice	The American civil justice system sits at a crossroads. In three-quarters of the 20 million civil cases filed in state courts each year, at least one side lacks a lawyer. Beneath those cases sit tens of millions more legal problems that never make...
LAW7001	Administrative Law	Administrative agencies interpret statutes, promulgate regulations, and adjudicate disputes, thereby affecting vast areas of life -- from employment to food and drug safety, from the environment to energy markets, and from telecommunications to immig...
LAW7001	Administrative Law	Federal agencies make an astounding number of policy decisions, engaging in more lawmaking and adjudication than Congress and the federal courts, respectively. These policy decisions range from the seemingly trivial, such as how many cherries are nee...
LAW7001	Administrative Law	Law made by administrative agencies dominates the modern legal system and modern legal practice. This course examines the legal and practical foundations of the modern administrative state. Topics include rationales for delegation to administrative a...
LAW7002	Beyond the Common Law: Tort Reform and Tort Alternatives	(Formerly Law 563) Over the past century, tort law has been under sustained attack. Using a broad mix of case law, case studies, and scholarly analysis, this seminar will interrogate those attacks-including their historical roots, their theoretical...
LAW7003	Cities in Distress	(Formerly Law 735) Despite the end of the Great Recession, serious fiscal challenges remain for many urban and rural local governments. This course will focus on these places and what they need from state and local government. Subjects will include:...
LAW7005	Constitutional Politics	This seminar will explore various ways in which constitutional law interacts with the political process. Topics covered will include the appointment and confirmation process for federal judges, judicial campaigns and elections in the states, various...
LAW7006	Current Issues in Civil Liberties and Civil Rights	This seminar will address current issues in civil liberties and civil rights arising at both the federal and state level, with an emphasis on the policies of the Trump administration. It is intended to be both timely and topical. As a result, the ini...
LAW7007	Constitutional Law: Religion and the First Amendment	(Formerly Law 602) This course covers the major doctrines and decisions interpreting the provisions of the First Amendment affecting religion, especially the free exercise and establishment clauses. The principal focus is on modern Supreme Court cas...
LAW7008	American Constitutional History from the Civil War to the War on Poverty	This course addresses U.S. constitutional history from the post-Civil War Reconstruction period through the mid-20th century. Because of the breadth of the subject matter, the view will necessarily be partial. In particular we will take as our focus...
LAW7010A	Constitutional Law: The Fourteenth Amendment	The Fourteenth Amendment is the focal point for many of the most contentious issues in contemporary constitutional law, from abortion to affirmative action to voting rights to criminal justice. This course will begin by paying attention to the origi...
LAW7010B	Constitutional Law: The Fourteenth Amendment	This is a course about the history, theory and doctrine of the Fourteenth Amendment. We will pay special attention to the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses and will also cover congressional authority under section 5. The course will explore ma...
LAW7011	Constitutional Litigation	This is a course in advanced and applied constitutional law. It focuses on one of the central ways in which constitutional claims are actually litigated: in lawsuits against public officials and local governments. The bulk of the course looks at liti...
LAW7012	Constitutional Law: Speech and Religion	This is a course about the freedoms of speech, press, religion, association, and assembly under the First Amendment. Two- thirds of the course will be about freedoms of speech, press, and assembly. We will examine historical context, doctrinal develo...
LAW7013	Gender, Law, and Public Policy	Topics in this course will include equal protection standards, employment, education, family, reproductive rights, sexual harassment, rape, domestic violence, pornography, sexual orientation, diversity in the profession, and intersections with race,...
LAW7014	Constitutional Theory	The guiding question of this course will be how we should think about the role of the U.S. Constitution in American law and American life. In considering this issue, we will address debates about constitutional interpretation (including both original...
LAW7015	Contemporary Issues in Constitutional Law	(Formerly 448) This is an advanced constitutional law seminar for students who have already taken the introductory Constitutional Law course. The seminar will provide an opportunity for in-depth discussion of competing theories of constitutional inte...
LAW7016	Critical Race Theory	This course will consider one of the newest intellectual currents within American Legal Theory -- Critical Race Theory. Emerging during the 1980s, critical race scholars made many controversial claims about law and legal education -- among them that...
LAW7016	Critical Race Theory	Developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and for decades relevant only to law professors and activists, Critical Race Theory has recently become an object of criticism and controversy far beyond the legal academy. Some of the tenets of Critical Race Theory...
LAW7017	Creation of the Constitution	The course begins with readings setting forth the intellectual and experiential background of the framing, including common law and natural rights theory, republicanism, economic & political scientific ideas, and colonial and post-Independence experi...
LAW7018	Disability Law	This is a survey course of disability rights law, with an emphasis on federal and state statutes and case law. Areas of concentration include employment, government services, public accommodations, education, housing, mental health treatment and invo...
LAW7019	Employment Discrimination	This course will examine legal responses to the barriers to workplace equality that are faced by minority groups. The course will survey the relevant doctrine, focusing primarily on federal employment discrimination statutes, but also addressing more...
LAW7020	Ethics On the Edge: Business, Non-Profit Organizations, Government, and Individuals	The objective of the course is to explore the increasing ethical challenges in a world in which technology, global risks, and societal developments are accelerating faster than our understanding and the law can keep pace. We will unravel the factors...
LAW7021	Family Law	This course will explore how the law regulates the family. It will cover (1) adult relationships, with a focus on formation, recognition, and dissolution of marital and nonmarital relationships; and (2) parent-child relationships, with a focus on rep...
LAW7022	Federal Habeas Corpus	This course covers the history of the Great Writ and the evolution of the scope of federal habeas corpus review and relief; the Suspension Clause; habeas review in capital cases including stays of execution; alternatives to habeas review; state post-...
LAW7023	Federalism	(Formerly Law 742) This course is an overview of legal and policy issues connected to federalism. We will examine a set of core theoretical questions - the values federalism serves; the relationship of federalism and individual and minority rights;...
LAW7024	Food Law and Policy	This seminar explores legal and policy issues related to our food system, including the regulation of food supply, food safety, nutrition / obesity, marketing / labeling, security, and animal treatment. We will examine how laws and regulations affect...
LAW7025	Employment Law	Workplace issues have become one of the fastest-growing areas of state and federal law. Employment-related lawsuits filed in federal court have tripled in volume in the past decade, and now account for a tenth of all civil cases. Many state courts ha...
LAW7026	Immigration Law	This survey course provides a foundation in the constitutional principles and statutory framework governing the regulation and rights of noncitizens and the immigration admission and removal process. The course also explores selected contemporary is...
LAW7027	Critical Race Theory (Reading Group)	This reading group will investigate unresolved issues in Critical Race Theory. Questions explored will include: What exactly are advocates for racial justice fighting for? That is, what does racial justice look like? What is the place of "culture" in...
LAW7028	Lawyers and Leadership	This course will examine the responsibilities and challenges for those who occupy leadership roles, with particular emphasis on those seeking to use law as a vehicle for social and organizational change. Topics will include characteristics and styles...
LAW7029	Legislation and Administration	(Formerly Law 394) This course explores the world of legislation and administration that defines much of our modern legal order. By analyzing agencies, statutes, and legislative procedures, the course prepares students to think about the structures...
LAW7030	Federal Indian Law	This course will provide an overview of the field of federal Indian law. It will consider the origins and scope of tribal sovereignty as recognized under federal law, as well as current federal law on tribal criminal and civil jurisdiction. It will a...
LAW7031	Political Campaigning in the Internet Age	This course will acquaint students with the changing environment for campaigns posed by the rise of the Internet. So much of the traditional way analysts have understood campaigns has revolved around television as the primary mode of campaign communi...
LAW7032	Public Interest Law and Practice	This seminar will consider the history, theoretical frameworks, as well as the strategies used within public interest law practice and by public interest attorneys in the United States. We will consider the role of lawyers and the legal system in adv...
LAW7033	Race, Identity, and National Security	This course explores theoretical, historical, and legal policy questions at the intersection of race, group identity, and national security. Recent political events have thrust the relationship between race, religion, nationality, immigration status,...
LAW7034	Race and Public Education	From at least Brown v. Board of Education, and many would say before that, education has been central to racial justice movements in America. More than fifty years after Brown, most American schools remain segregated by race and class, and many advoc...
LAW7036	Law of Democracy	This course is intended to give students a basic understanding of the themes in the legal regulation of elections and politics. We will cover all the major Supreme Court cases on topics of voting rights, reapportionment/redistricting, ballot access,...
LAW7037	Poverty Law: Introduction and Overview	This one-credit survey course will cover selected topics in American poverty law and policy, with an emphasis on federal poverty relief. Topics covered will include the U.S. Supreme Court's poverty jurisprudence, the history of federal welfare policy...
LAW7038	Remedies	The remedy is arguably the most important part of any lawsuit, and often the most neglected. This course considers the question of what plaintiffs are entitled to when they win a case and why. It will cover damages, punitive damages, restitution, unj...
LAW7039	Reproductive Justice	(Formerly Law 490) This seminar explores Reproductive Justice ("RJ") as a paradigm for understanding reproductive oppression -- that is, the subordination of individuals through their bodies, sexualities, and abilities to reproduce. The RJ paradigm...
LAW7040	Social Justice Impact Litigation: Issues and Strategies	(Formerly Law 572) This seminar explores strategic, legal, and ethical issues related to using law reform and social justice litigation to advance the constitutional and civil rights of vulnerable communities. The seminar is designed to allow student...
LAW7041	Statutory Interpretation	This course will introduce students to the legislative process and statutory interpretation, focusing on the latter subject. Statutes govern nearly every aspect of our society, and this course will give students the tools to understand how statutes a...
LAW7042	Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and the Law	This seminar will focus on how the law regulates the lives and bodies of trans and queer people. We will approach the material primarily through the lens of constitutional law, exploring how courts have used--or might use--federal or state constituti...
LAW7043	Strategic Litigation for Racial Justice	(Formerly Law 715B) Recent events in our country have dramatically highlighted the fact that we are not a post-racial society, and that structural racism and implicit bias are as harmful to people and institutions as intentional discrimination. Cur...
LAW7044	Supreme Court Simulation Seminar	This seminar provides students with the opportunity to analyze, argue, hear oral arguments and draft opinions in cases that are currently pending before the Supreme Court of the United States. Professor Lawrence Marshall will serve as the instructo...
LAW7045	The Article III Judge	(Formerly Law 278) The contemporary debate over the proper role of a federal judge under the Constitution turns, in large measure, on what it is we think an Article III judge is doing when she is called upon to resolve a "case or controversy." Is sh...
LAW7046	The Welfare State	(Formerly Law 765) Much has been written in recent years about the decline of the welfare state. Numerous adjectives have been applied to describe a trend toward austerity -- death, demise, withering, reversal. One writer suggested that the welfare...
LAW7047	Rethinking Campus and School Title IX Policies and Procedures	I apologize in advance for the fact that there are no paragraph breaks in this description. It is not my fault. Please contact me directly if you have questions about the class and I will email you a more readable description. Thanks, MLD. Seminar w...
LAW7048	Legislation	Course description: TBA
LAW7049	Advanced Torts: Law and Practice	Most of civil litigation is in tort. As society changes, this dynamism is reflected in the progression and regression of tort law. Taught by an experienced practitioner, this course will explore contemporary developments in the law of medical malpr...
LAW7050	Toxic Harms	(Formerly Law 280) This seminar will examine the concerns arising from exposure to toxic substances from a variety of perspectives. A principal focus will be tort liability, and a central theme in the course will be whether tort law is an effective...
LAW7051	Local Government Law	Local governments exert tremendous influence over socioeconomics, race relations, environmental health, political power, and housing and real estate. This public law course will investigate the law of these governments (including cities, counties, an...
LAW7054	The 45th President and the Constitution	We will survey a number structural constitutional issues raised during the Trump Presidency, including the role of the judiciary; the scope and limits of unilateral Presidential power; the relationship between state and federal governments; Congressi...
LAW7055	American Legal History, 1930 - 2000: The New Deal, The Rights Revolution and Conservative Reaction	This course examines major transformations in American law brought about by the momentous social and political movements of the mid- to late 20th Century. Part I deals with the response of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal to the economic catastrophe...
LAW7056	Law of Democracy - India: Field Study	This is the Delhi, India component of Political Campaigning in the Internet Age (Law 7031) and Law of Democracy (Law7036). For details, see course description for Law 7031 and Law 7036. Students in this optional field study component will travel to...
LAW7057	Policy, Politics and the 2020 Elections: What 2020 Means for Future Campaigns and Elections	This course looks back at the 2020 election campaign and tries to discern lessons and takeaways for future campaigns and elections. It will provide students with a behind-the-scenes understanding of how campaigns work. Each week, we will explore a di...
LAW7058	Introduction to Antidiscrimination Law	(Formerly Law 734) This course will focus on the statutory legal rules (primarily federal) governing discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex, disability, and other protected classifications. With a rotation of instructors includin...
LAW7059	Labor Law	This course is a survey of the law of labor relations; it is designed to provide the student with an acquaintance with the more important problems of labor law but not with a comprehensive coverage of the entire field. In particular, the course will...
LAW7060	Law and Continental Thought: Resistance	Dominant trends in continental thought will be studied with an emphasis on the complex evolution of the relationship between theories of the rule of law and the definition and assertion of liberal democratic rights, on the one hand, and the sources o...
LAW7061	Children Sexuality and the Law	This seminar focuses on federal and state law designed to protect children from sexual exploitation, as well as federal constitutional law regulating young adults' expressive rights with regard to gender and sexual identity. The seminar provides a g...
LAW7062	Originalism	This two-credit seminar will explore the theory and practice of "originalism" -- the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted in light of the meaning of its text to those who had authority to enact it. This is a controversial approach (as are...
LAW7063	Youth Law and Policy	This course examines current issues in youth law and policy with a focus on the potential and collateral effects of law on certain subpopulations of vulnerable youth. Substantively, the course focuses on case law and statutes in delinquency, depende...
LAW7064	Advanced Immigration Law Seminar	This seminar is an advanced course on immigration law and policy designed for students who have taken the basic immigration law course or have equivalent academic or work exposure to immigration law, foundational constitutional principles, and the fu...
LAW7065	One in Five: The Law, Politics, and Policy of Campus Sexual Assault	CW: SA/GBV: Access the Application Consent Form Here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18Ahwwcl-vQoxVod0PL9HHQg752DJlh3M/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=103752650760265096645&rtpof=true&sd=true. Over the past decade the issue of campus sexual assault and ha...
LAW7067	Law and Policy in the Post-Obama Era	This course will consider a number of current issues of law and policy that achieved prominence during the Presidency of Barack Obama and remain unresolved. These issues include: 1) immigration law reform and DACA, 2) the role of the Department of J...
LAW7070	Federal Indian Law: Historiographical Readings in Federal Law and Policy	This is the one unit, Mandatory P/R/F component to Federal Indian Law (LAW 7030). Enrollment is by consent of instructor. See LAW 7030 in the SLS Course Catalog for details. Students will meet five times over the quarter. Meeting dates to be arra...
LAW7071	Philanthropy and Civil Society	Associated with the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS). Year-long workshop for doctoral students and advanced undergraduates writing senior theses on the nature of civil society or philanthropy. Focus is on pursuit of progressive resear...
LAW7073	Antidiscrimination Law and Algorithmic Bias	Human decision making is increasingly being displaced by algorithms. Judges sentence defendants based on "risk scores;" regulators take enforcement actions based on predicted violations; advertisers target materials based on demographic attributes; a...
LAW7075	Family Law I: Regulating Marriage and other Intimate Relationships	Intimate sexual relationships are central to most people's lives. Marriage has long been the primary locus of such relationships, the foundation of family life. In recent decades, though, marriage has undergone unprecedented changes. Sustained poli...
LAW7076	Race, Disadvantage, and Elite Education: The Allocation of Opportunity	In recent years, selective universities have become more academically selective than ever. During the past half century their applicant pools have grown considerably--now including women, minorities, immigrants, and international students--while the...
LAW7077	Native Peoples and the Law (Reading Group)	This reading group of five evening meetings over the quarter will explore Native peoples' encounters with U.S. law as recounted in novels, documentaries, essays, and other material, emphasizing indigenous perspectives and voices. The class is intend...
LAW7078	The United States Senate as a Legal Institution	This course will familiarize students with major, and/or emerging legal and constitutional issues concerning the U.S. Senate. In so doing, it will examine: 1) the Senate's nature as a complex legal institution, and 2) the issue of the Senate's legiti...
LAW7079	Advanced Immigration Policy Reform	This is a seminar for students with some background and interest in immigration and administrative law based on prior coursework, clinic enrollment, academic study, or other experience who want to engage in an examination of the administrative proces...
LAW7080	Amending the U.S. Constitution	This seminar explores the legal and historical dimensions of the American constitutional amendment process as well as its current and potential role in our political system and public debate. The principal focus will be on Article V of the Constiutio...
LAW7081	Family Law II: Parent-Child Relationships	This course will examine the legal regulation of the parent-child relationship. The law used to be much simpler than it is today. The law treated marriage as the near exclusive setting for the rearing of children, defining the woman who gave birth t...
LAW7082	Free Speech, Democracy and the Internet	This course will cover contemporary issues in regulation of the Internet. Topics will include disinformation, polarization, privacy, competition, transparency, advertising, security, and algorithmic ranking. Guest speakers from academia, NGOs, and i...
LAW7083	Race and Law Workshop	The Race and Law Workshop will meet once each week. The broad theme of the workshop is to probe the relation of law and justice with respect to race and inequality. Most weeks will feature a speaker who will present a draft of a paper. Students will...
LAW7084	The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech and Press	Introduction to the constitutional protections for freedom of speech, press, and expressive association. All the major Supreme Court cases dealing with issues such as incitement, libel, hate speech, obscenity, commercial speech, and campaign finance....
LAW7085	The U.S. and the Use of Force	This course examines legal issues involved in the formulation and implementation of U.S. policy and actions with respect to the use of armed force, with emphasis on recent and current conflict situations. It will explore these issues from the point...
LAW7086	Transitional Justice	The political, social, and legal problems confronting societies after periods of mass human rights violations or war have attracted increasing attention from policymakers and scholars in the last three decades. This course will examine the legacies o...
LAW7088	Defining Discrimination	Federal, state and local laws prohibit discrimination based on many grounds such as race, sex, religion, national origin and disability. But the operative term, "discrimination," is typically quite vaguely defined in statutory language. As a conseq...
LAW7089	Originalism and the American Constitution: History and Interpretation	Except for the Bible no text has been the subject of as much modern interpretive scrutiny as the United States Constitution. This course explores both the historical dimensions of its creation as well as the meaning such knowledge should bring to bea...
LAW7090	Race and International Law	This mini-course is an introduction to thinking about race as method for the study of international law. If the international legal order is primarily structured around the categories of nation and state, the notion of race continues to haunt it in i...
LAW7091	Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction	This mini-course revisits the core elements that have traditionally defined family law: gender, sexuality and reproduction. Historically, family law had two main functions. It created a framework for bearing and raising children, and organized the ch...
LAW7092	Suffering (Reading Group)	The law is in large part about suffering. As lawyers, we recognize suffering [or we do not], we articulate what suffering means [or does not], and we measure remedies for suffering [or we do not]. Despite the central import of suffering to the law, s...
LAW7093	Legal Lags: Regulatory Challenges Posed by Social, Economic & Technological Change (Reading Group)	This Reading Group will explore the legal and regulatory challenges posed by fast-moving social, economic and technological developments. Examples include privacy regulation in the age of Facebook; transportation safety in the era of autonomous vehic...
LAW7094	Tribal Law	This course is about tribal law: The diverse body of law that the 574 American Indian tribal governments within the United States make to govern their citizens, their territories, and--to a limited extent--non-Indians. We will explore the many questi...
LAW7095	Advanced Administrative Law	This advanced course will combine theory and practice, drawing from scholarship, doctrine, current events and litigation, and guest speakers. It will explore a series of subjects, including the following: the waiver of (and continued viability of) Ch...
LAW7096	Law and Politics of Bureaucracy	Modern government is bureaucratic government. In the words of Justice Jackson, the rise of the administrative state is likely "the most significant legal trend of the last century and perhaps more values today are affected by [agency] decisions than...
LAW7097	Educational Rights Workshop	This workshop will be offered to students who were enrolled in the Spring 2020 Education Advocacy Clinic (which was cancelled). The workshop will consider historical legal and policy efforts to ensure that all children have a right to equal education...
LAW7098	Topics in Constitutional Law	This class will be a hybrid between a group seminar and independent research projects. The seminar will meet over Zoom every other week to cover basic topics in constitutional law, potentially including interpretive methods, federalism and the separa...
LAW7099	Optimal Size and Scope of Government	While some political debates are simply efforts to craft a message that will enable the proponent to seize or maintain political power, others are rooted in different conceptions of what government can and should be doing. Opinions about issues rangi...
LAW7100	Reconstruction: Adding the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments	This course will explore the changes to the Constitution made after the Civil War and their enforcement statutes. Materials will primarily be original source texts, supplemented by selected secondary literature. The majority of class time will be dev...
LAW7101	Election 2020	We are living in extraordinary times. The historic convergence of social, economic, and public health challenges has profoundly impacted the lives of millions of Americans. In the midst of great uncertainty, the 2020 U.S. presidential election will b...
LAW7102	Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab: Practicum	The Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab) partners with government agencies to envision how data science can improve administrative governance. Students enrolled in this practicum will be working on projects related to the core mission...
LAW7103	Race and Policing: Accountability and Civil Liability	This seminar will investigate ways in which policing has served as an instrument of racial subordination and violence in the United States. It will also explore how the primary remedial tool for addressing excesses in policing--42 U.S.C. § 1983, ena...
LAW7104	The Youth Justice Lab: Imagining an Anti-Racist Public Education System	This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to these issues by enrolling students from the Law School and the Graduate School of Education. Specifically, partnering with Public Counsel and IntegrateNYC, Youth Justice Lab students will gather...
LAW7105	The Law and Policy of America's Safety Net: Examined Through the Great Stress Test of COVID-19	America's social safety net--from health insurance to food support to housing assistance to unemployment insurance--was built over many years and embedded into America's system of federalism, a partnership between the federal and state governments, a...
LAW7106	Judging in the 21st Century	Since your first week of law school, you have been reading legal opinions written by judges. Who were those judges and did their identities affect their views? From a judge's perspective, what makes a case hard or easy? Did the process by which th...
LAW7107	Executive Power Under the Constitution	This new course will address the full range of issues involving executive power under the U.S. Constitution, including the process of election (Electoral College; voting disputes, the Electoral Count Act), impeachment, foreign affairs (including cont...
LAW7108	State Constitutional Law	Most consideration of constitutional law in law school focuses exclusively on the federal constitution. Traditionally, state constitutional law has been a neglected body of law. That may begin to change, as the U.S. Supreme Court makes significant ch...
LAW7109	Foreign Affairs and the Constitution	This course will cover the constitutional and statutory doctrines at the core of U.S. foreign affairs. Topics will include the distribution of foreign affairs powers among the three branches of the federal government; cooperative and uncooperative f...
LAW7110	Record-Pressed Revolution: Black Auditory Advocacy and the Late Civil Rights Movement	The movement had all but ended--Malcolm and Martin twin Moseses toward the new decade's Canaan, their people at once led to and lost in Equal Right's promised land. Two Kennedys and administrations sat lost to the threshold too. Tribute to the 60s--m...
LAW7111	Lawyering for Change: A Case Study in Efforts to Abolish the Death Penalty	Over the past fifty years, there have been dramatic ebbs and flows in support for, and application of, the death penalty in the United States. Lawyers have played key roles in these shifts--through their in-court work and through other forms of organ...
LAW7113	Constitutional Crises from the Founding to the Present	This course focuses on episodes of heightened political conflict that have been framed in constitutional terms. Each of the episodes has raised anxieties about the capacity of the constitutional order to resolve severe conflict. Much current constit...
LAW7114	Temporary Leadership in Government and Business	Temporary leaders exist in almost every sector--acting cabinet secretaries, interim chief executive officers, interim university presidents, temporary pastors, interim coaches, to name just a few. In many roles, they abound as more permanent leaders...
LAW7115	Thinking in Systems	Virtually every public policy has causes and consequences beyond those that are intended or immediately visible. This is true of criminal law policies that use algorithmic predictions of flight before trial; environmental policies involving greenhous...
LAW7116	Carceral Borders	This seminar will explore the intersection of U.S. criminal law and immigration law enforcement, including: the bureaucratic bonds between the criminal law enforcement and immigration law enforcement systems; the effect of citizenship status on crimi...
LAW7117	Platform Regulation and the First Amendment	Social media platforms are arguably the most important channels of communication in the modern world and now it suddenly seems like everyone has ideas about how the legal framework they operate in needs to change. This course will explore the changin...
LAW7119	How Cities Can Save the World	In our cities, we find the greatest concentrations of the world's great problems--poverty, homelessness, violent crime, and GHG emissions, to name a few. So too, cities present many of the most innovative, impactful solutions to these challenges. I...
LAW7501	Carrots, Sticks, Norms, and Nudges: Changing Minds and Behaviors	In this class, we will survey the current state of the science of behavior change. By the 1990s, social scientists had already built a massive literature on this topic, and an integrative consensus theoretical framework began to emerge. But in the...
LAW7502	Economic Analysis of Law	This course will provide a broad overview of the scholarly field known as "law and economics." The focus will be on how legal rules and institutions can correct market failures. We will discuss the economic function of contracts and, when contracts f...
LAW7503	Introduction to Law and Economics	This course will introduce students to the "law and economics" way of thinking about the legal system. It is designed primarily for students who have little or no prior training in economics and who are unlikely to take more advanced courses in the f...
LAW7504	Introduction to Organizational Behavior	(Formerly Law 327) Why do firms exist? Is their sustained success in markets possible? How do leaders choose and execute on a strategy? What should the role of firms be in society? This course will meet once a week to discuss these questions and oth...
LAW7505	Law and Economics of the Death Penalty Seminar	This seminar will examine the legal and policy aspects of a capital punishment regime, with a focus on three primary issues: 1) the Supreme Court's forty-year effort to define what cases can permissibly receive the death penalty and the procedures un...
LAW7506	Law and Economics Seminar I	This seminar will examine current research by lawyers and economists on a variety of topics in law and economics. Several sessions of the seminar will consist of an invited speaker, usually from another university, who will discuss his or her current...
LAW7507	Law and Economics Seminar II	This seminar will examine current research by lawyers and economists on a variety of topics in law and economics. Several sessions of the seminar will consist of an invited speaker, usually from another university, who will discuss his or her current...
LAW7508	Problem Solving and Decision Making for Public Policy and Social Change	Stanford graduates will play important roles in solving many of today's and tomorrow's major societal problems--in areas such as education, health, energy, and domestic and global poverty--that call for actions by nonprofit, business, and hybrid orga...
LAW7509	Bayesian Statistics and Econometrics	This course examines econometrics from a Bayesian perspective including linear and nonlinear regression, covariance structures, panel data, qualitative variable models, nonparametric and semiparametric methods, time series, Bayesian model averaging a...
LAW7510	Empirical Legal Studies: Research Design	Empirical legal studies have become trendy in the U.S. and are now spreading to law faculties in other countries as well. The popular image of an empirical study is that it involves sophisticated statistical analysis of quantitative data. Often the a...
LAW7511	Sociology of Law	This course explores major issues and debates in the sociology of law. Topics include historical perspectives on the origins of law; rationality and legal sanctions; normative decision making and morality; cognitive decision making; crime and devianc...
LAW7512	Statistical Inference in Law	Drawing inferences from quantitative data lies at the heart of many legal and policy decisions. This course provides the tools, concepts, and framework for lawyers to become sophisticated consumers of quantitative evidence and social science. The cou...
LAW7514	Behavioral Law and Economics	The field of "law and economics" provides important lessons for how legal institutions should be designed, but many of those lessons rely on the assumption that individuals behave in a way that maximizes their self-interest. Research from psychology...
LAW7515	Law and the New Political Economy	In this seminar, we consider key legal topics through the lens of political economy -- that is, is the interplay among economics, law, and politics. This perspective has had a powerful and growing impact on how scholars and judges view the nature and...
LAW7518	Social Science of Identity and Prejudice	This a one-unit, Law Mandatory P/R/F course that grows out of the recommendations of the 2018 Faculty and Student Working Group on Diversity and Inclusion. The course is built around a series of outside speakers on identity and prejudice. These spe...
LAW7519	Empirical Legal Studies Workshop	Empirical Legal Studies uses data to inform legal and policy debates. Traditional empirical legal scholarship uses methods such as observational studies and experiments to examine the effects of various policies or legal decisions. More recently, adv...
LAW7520	Learning from Evidence	Many legal and policy debates rest on central claims that are either true or false. Does hiring more police officers reduce crime? Does increasing the minimum wage lead to reduced employment? Do risk assessment tools help judges identify defendants w...
LAW7801	Leadership and Influence Skills for Lawyers	You want to do important, meaningful, and impactful work. You've got the legal skills and the intellectual firepower, but leaders in law and business are looking for more than that from their trusted advisors. They want attorneys who not only excel...
LAW7802	Accounting	This course covers basic accounting principles. Please note that this class differs from a typical introductory accounting class as it is more law-based. Class time will be allocated to a combination of short lectures, group work, and discussions of...
LAW7803	Alternative Dispute Resolution: Law, Practice, and Policy	The emergence of the "multi-door" courthouse and the rapid growth of private alternative dispute resolution (ADR) providers has re-shaped the litigation landscape. Today, civil litigators face "process pluralism" both in our courts and the private s...
LAW7804	Alternative Dispute Resolution: Practicum	Effective client representation increasingly calls for lawyers with skill within a broad range of alternative dispute resolution processes. In this course, you will have the opportunity to observe two day-long ADR processes being handled by Bay Area...
LAW7805	Career Development: Alchemy, Law, and Practice	Career development is embedded in life development. This course offers a space and time for each student to consider both through course materials, class interactions, and a series of reflection papers. The course includes one class facilitated in co...
LAW7806	Redesigning Dispute Systems	Lawyers are often called upon to apply their creative skills to help design systems (comprised of one or more processes) for preventing, managing, and resolving conflicts. Examples span many domains: 1. what combination of international and domestic...
LAW7807	Facilitation for Attorneys	Most lawyers and other professionals spend a significant amount of time in meetings and working in teams or groups for a variety of purposes, and many report that this can be a frustrating experience. As the practice of law becomes more complex, it i...
LAW7808	Foreign and International Legal Research	This course will introduce students to concepts and skills used in international and foreign law research. Students will learn to construct successful research strategies for questions of foreign law, public international law, and private internation...
LAW7809	Advanced Legal Research: Litigation	This course aims to prepare law students for research in litigation practice and judicial clerkships. More broadly, the primary goal is to enable students, now and later in their professional lives, to map out a coherent plan of action when asked to...
LAW7809	Advanced Legal Research: Litigation	This course aims to prepare law students for research in litigation practice and judicial clerkships. More broadly, the primary goal is to enable students, now and later in their professional lives, to map out a coherent plan of action when asked to...
LAW7815A	Advanced Legal Writing: Business Transactions	This course offers comprehensive preparation for the practice of the transactional lawyer. Students will learn foundational tools to write clear, effective, plain language business contracts and analyze other transactional writings used to manage and...
LAW7815B	Advanced Legal Writing: Business Transactions	This course offers comprehensive preparation for the practice of the transactional lawyer. Students will learn foundational tools to write clear, effective, plain language business contracts and analyze other transactional writings used to manage and...
LAW7816	Advanced Legal Writing: Litigation	Building on the skills developed in Federal Litigation, this course will give students additional practice with legal analysis, argument structure, and writing in the pre-trial context. Students will draft a predictive office memo, an e-mail memo, an...
LAW7817	Advanced Legal Writing: Global Litigation	This course offers an introduction to the practical, procedural and analytical aspects of private transnational litigation in the U.S. and Europe. Through a case simulation students will examine differences in legal systems and how to effectively na...
LAW7818	Advanced Legal Writing: Technology Transactions	This course covers the foundations of drafting contracts in a modern commercial setting, primarily through weekly hands-on writing exercises that illustrate business problems commonly found in today's technology transactions law practice. Topics to b...
LAW7819	Mediation	As law is practiced today, attorneys are far more likely to participate in multiple mediations than trial. Mediation has become the preferred approach to conflict resolution in most states and many parts of the world. With the assistance of a mediato...
LAW7820	Moot Court	The major moot court activity at Stanford Law School is the Marion Rice Kirkwood Memorial Competition, which takes place each year during Autumn and Winter terms. Autumn term will be dedicated to brief writing and completion of the written portion of...
LAW7820	Moot Court	The major moot court activity at Stanford Law School is the Marion Rice Kirkwood Memorial Competition, which takes place each year during Autumn and Winter terms. Autumn term will be dedicated to brief writing and completion of the written portion of...
LAW7821	Negotiation	As a lawyer, you will probably negotiate more than you do anything else. You will negotiate not just over cases, but any time that you need something that you cannot get alone. You will negotiate with your boss, your clients, your paralegal, and all...
LAW7822	Negotiation on the Ground: Discussions at the Intersection of Theory and Practice	We can read any number of books about negotiation, but how do the concepts and principles play out in the real world? This dinner colloquium will meet with distinguished negotiators working in a variety of fields to reflect on and draw lessons from t...
LAW7823	Advanced Negotiation: International	This hands-on, advanced seminar is designed to teach students how to prepare for, participate in, and critically evaluate complex multiparty negotiations in the public international field. Through experience-based learning, simulations, guest speaker...
LAW7824	Advanced Negotiation: Environmental Policy	Advanced negotiation courses are designed to take students beyond the two-party, lawyer-client negotiations that were the focus of the Negotiation Seminar, to examine many facets of negotiation complexity, both in terms of the participants and topics...
LAW7825	Advanced Negotiation: Transactions	Advanced Negotiation takes students beyond the two-party, lawyer-client negotiations that were the focus of the Negotiation Seminar. This course, Advanced Negotiation: Transactions, places the student in more difficult and more nuanced transactional...
LAW7826	Oral Argument Workshop	Building on the skills developed in Federal Litigation, this simulation course will give students the unique opportunity to argue and judge pretrial motions from actual federal court cases. The instructor will provide the written briefs, and each wee...
LAW7827	Advanced Legal Writing for American Practice	This course orients advanced degree students to a range of legal writing genres used by lawyers in practice in American law offices and before American courts. At the core of these genres are the techniques of legal research, objective and persuasive...
LAW7827	Advanced Legal Writing for American Practice	This course orients students to a range of legal writing genres used by lawyers in practice in American law offices and before American courts. At the core of these genres are the techniques of legal research, objective and persuasive legal writing,...
LAW7828	Trial Advocacy Workshop	This lawyering skills course gives students an orientation to and constant practice in most basic pretrial and trial advocacy skills areas. Topics include: taking and defending depositions, trial evidence, including admission of trial exhibits in evi...
LAW7830	Topics in American Legal Practice	This course is designed to introduce international students to American legal practice. To do this, the course begins in the spring quarter by working with students to look ahead to their summer experience and begin to identify ways in which the cult...
LAW7831	Transition to Practice: Selected Topics	This course is designed to explore issues of professional identity for students transitioning into the legal profession. It will begin in the spring quarter and continue into the fall quarter, and will require the writing of a paper. Elements used in...
LAW7832	Transitioning Into Public Interest Practice	This course is designed for students transitioning into the practice of public interest law. It will begin in the spring quarter and continue into the fall quarter, and will require the writing of a paper. Elements used in grading: Final Paper.
LAW7833	Spanish for Lawyers	The goal of Spanish for Lawyers is to offer students an opportunity to enhance existing Spanish communication skills in legal practice through simulated in class exercises with a focus on cultural humility and trauma-informed interviewing skills. The...

Antitrust

Antitrust law sets the ground rules for competition. This class provides an introduction to federal antitrust law. We will examine cartels and competitor collaborations, monopolization, vertical restraints and horizontal mergers. The class prepares y...

LAW1002

Advanced Antitrust: Hot Topics

There is more focus today on antitrust enforcement and competition policy than at any point in recent memory. This two-credit advanced antitrust seminar, taught by Obama's Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust (2013-16), examines topics that have...

LAW1003

Bankruptcy

This course is an introduction to federal bankruptcy law with an emphasis on corporate reorganization. The course examines various aspects of the bankruptcy process including the automatic stay, the avoidance and recovery of certain pre-bankruptcy t...

LAW1004

Comparative Corporate Law and Governance

From the United States to China, and from Brazil to the EU, corporate capitalism has triumphed globally as the dominant form of economic organization. Yet despite the common attributes of the corporation familiar to every U.S. law student, corporatio...

LAW1005

Comparative Venture Capital - China

(Formerly Law 736) This course is taught in conjunction with Law 1006. Students may enroll for this course alone or for both this course and Law 1006. Law 1005 is intended to introduce students to the legal and financial principles underlying vent...

LAW1006

Comparative Venture Capital - China: Field Study

(Formerly Law 736A) This is the Stanford Center at Peking University in Beijing component of Comparative Venture Capital - China (Law 1005). For details, see course description for Law 1006. During spring break 2017, the course will be held at the...

LAW1007

Contracts: American Law

This course will provide advanced-degree students with coverage of Contracts law comparable to the fall course offered for first-year JD students. The course will identify the scope and purpose of the legal protection accorded to interests created by...

LAW1008

Contract Design: Principles and Practice

Contract Design: Principles and Practice (1008): (Formerly Law 434) Transaction lawyers spend much time drafting contracts and related documents, and they can contribute very significant value by designing transactions. While transactions should be t...

LAW1009

Corporate Finance I

The course discusses the major financial decisions made by corporate managers and investors. Topics include criteria for making investment decisions, valuation of financial assets and liabilities, relationship between risk and return, capital structu...

LAW1010

Corporate Income Taxation

This course will cover the basic principles and rules regarding the taxation of domestic corporations. Prerequisite: LAW 1029 Taxation 1. Students must contact the instructor if they wish to have the prerequisite substituted or waived. Elements u...

LAW1011

Advanced Corporate Finance

Lawyers often need an advanced understanding of corporate financial decisions, instruments, and transactions, including equity financing and initial public offerings, the determination of a firm's cost of capital, valuation, payout policy, recapitali...

LAW1012

Corporate Reorganization

This course examines the reorganization of a financially distressed company under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. We will examine reorganization through several stages of a business turnaround and restructuring (such as an out-of-court workout, a...

LAW1013

Corporations

This course is an introduction to the basic legal rules and principles governing the relations between managers, investors, and (to a lesser extent) creditors in the corporation. The course is the foundation for advanced business law courses. We focu...

LAW1013

Corporations

This course is an introduction to the basic legal rules and principles governing the relations between managers, investors, and creditors in the business enterprise. The course is the foundation for advanced business law courses. We focus on problems...

LAW1013

Corporations

This course is an introduction to the basic legal rules and principles governing the relations among managers, investors, and (to a lesser extent) creditors in the business enterprise. The course is the foundation for advanced business courses. We fo...

LAW1014

Current Issues in Tax Practice

This course will introduce students to major issues in tax practice. Each class will be co-taught by one or more leading practitioners in the tax bar, with other members of the bar attending. Subjects include international tax, intellectual proper...

LAW1015

Corporate Social Responsibility

Although corporate social responsibility ("CSR") initiatives have been pursued by a range of companies as voluntary measures for decades, recent developments have rendered the exercise by companies of designing and implementing environmental, social...

LAW1016

Deals I

This course applies economic concepts to the practice of structuring business transactions. The course extends over two quarters. In the Fall quarter it will meet four hours per week. In the Winter quarter, it will meet ONLY FOR FIVE WEEKS for four h...

LAW1017

Deals II

This course is the continuation of Deals I. In order to register for this course you must have taken Deals I; and if you took Deals I, you must register for Deals II. Deals I and II are in effect a single course that extends over two quarters. The co...

LAW1018

Derivatives

The course will examine the legal, regulatory, trading and risk management aspects of the $600 trillion notional over-the-counter and cleared derivatives markets. Derivatives have historically not been well-understood by regulators or the public and...

LAW1019

Current Topics in Sports Law

Current Topics in Sports Law is a one-unit seminar for up to 15 students with San Francisco 49ers General Counsel and SLS alumna Hannah Gordon. The class is made up of six 90-minute sessions and brief reflection papers. Attendance is mandatory at a...

LAW1020

Entertainment Law

Entertainment law is not, in and of itself, a separate legal discipline. Instead, the practice of entertainment law lies at the intersection of various traditional legal disciplines, such as contract, tort, copyright, trademark, antitrust, secured tr...

LAW1021

Estate Planning

This class will cover the basics of the gift and estate tax system and estate planning principles. With these fundamentals, the course will then examine basic and advanced estate planning and wealth transfer techniques, including wills, various types...

LAW1022

International Tax

This course examines the United States federal income taxation of international operations and transactions, including international joint ventures and M&A transactions. Traditional issues such as income source, foreign tax credits, Subpart F, and in...

LAW1023

International Securities Offerings

This course will focus on the application of United States securities laws and regulations to non-US issuers. We will examine how that regulatory framework differs for Foreign Private Issuers, as compared to other issuers in the United States. Ini...

LAW1024

Private Equity Investing

(Formerly Law 522) This course will focus on the central issues involved in private equity investing. Topics will include: pricing, structuring and valuation of private equity and venture capital investments; buyouts and other transactions involving...

LAW1026

Securities Litigation

(Formerly Law 300) Executives of American public companies control one of the largest accumulations of wealth in history, amounting to trillions of dollars in market capitalization. Tens of billions of dollars of securities in these companies are t...

LAW1027

Securities Regulation

This course provides an overview of the regulation of securities offerings and trading under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The course explores the elaborate disclosure obligations that this country imposes on the...

LAW1028

Tax Policy

This course will explore various tax policy issues. In past years, the issues we've explored have included the carbon tax, health care, social security, consumption tax, tax compliance, tax shelters and school financing. Special Instructions: Grades...

LAW1029

Taxation I

This course provides an overview of the federal income tax from learning to read the charming prose of the Internal Revenue Code to the principles and policies underlying the income tax, which is - by far - the largest source of revenue for the feder...

LAW1029

Taxation I

This course provides an overview of the federal income tax. Elements used in grading: Class participation and final exam.

LAW1030

Partnership Tax

(Formerly Law 377) This course will cover the basic rules that govern the tax treatment of partnerships and partners, with a focus on agreements and issues that are relevant to venture capital and private equity investment partnerships. The course w...

LAW1031

Current Issues in Business Law

This course will focus on issues in law and business that are both important to practitioners and the subject of academic or policy debates. We will cover a range of legal and economic issues, including the following topics: nonbank lending, gatekeep...

LAW1032

Banking Law

(Formerly 378) This course will examine the legal and regulatory system governing financial institutions, with an emphasis on banks. It will do so by exploring the underlying economics of banking, and the ongoing effort to reform financial regulatio...

LAW1033

Trusts and Estates

This course will cover the following topics: intestacy; will execution and revocation; will provisions and interpretations; restrictions on the right to devise; probate; creation, amendment and termination of trusts; revocable and irrevocable trusts;...

LAW1034

Real Estate Transactions

Real Estate Transactions and Commercial Development examines the structuring, negotiation and documentation of commercial real estate transactions. Working both individually and in groups, students will learn the requisite skills for drafting and neg...

LAW1035

Mergers and Acquisitions in the Technology Sector and Beyond

This course is a comprehensive introduction to the law and practice of mergers and acquisitions with a special focus on technology mergers and acquisitions. The technology sector continues to be one of the most active areas for the practice of merge...

LAW1036

Introduction to Finance

This course is a basic introduction to the principles of finance. It will prepare you for the 3-credit version (Corporate Finance 1009) and introduce you to principles of valuation that are useful in everything from family law to settlement negotiat...

LAW1037

The Evolution of Finance

(Formerly Law 487) This course provides a framework to understand how uncertainty and technology affect the evolution of finance (and businesses generally), with heavy emphasis on recent developments and future trends. In recent years Myron Scholes...

LAW1038

The Future of Finance

This 2-credit course will examine vast changes driven by innovation both from within traditional finance and from new ecosystems in fintech among others. Breathtaking advances in financial theory, big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence,...

LAW1039

Deal Litigation Seminar

This seminar is designed as an introduction to mergers and acquisitions litigation. The course provides both a practical and doctrinal perspective on M&A-related litigation and relies heavily on readings and issues derived from practice in the Delawa...

LAW1040

Venture Capital

This course examines the venture capital (VC) ecosystem from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. The course traces the start-up process from initial formation of a new venture through angel investments and institutional venture capital fi...

LAW1041

Venture Capital II: Starting and Running a Venture-Backed Company

(Formerly Law 401) This class will focus on the legal and non-legal tactical details of entrepreneurial endeavors. The legal specifics of corporate formation, tax, and contracts are well covered by a variety of other courses at the Law School and wi...

LAW1042

New Venture Finance

This is a practice-oriented business law seminar designed to provide students with an understanding of the legal, business, financial and practical issues that arise in advising venture capital-backed and emerging growth companies through the typical...

LAW1043

Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies: Law, Economics, Business and Policy

Blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies have spawned an extensive and rapidly growing set of businesses along with a corresponding rapidly expanding need for lawyers and regulators with the required expertise. This course provides core background...

LAW1045

Prediction and Complexity in Corporate and Securities Litigation

Success as an attorney and businessperson depends on the ability to predict outcomes in complex situations. Law school courses generally do not develop this skill set. The traditional "case method" asks us to understand how and why cases have been de...

LAW1046

Deals in Hong Kong: Field Study

This is a travel course that is integrated into Deals I and Deals II. Students who take this course will have taken Deals I and Deals II in the same year. The course will have two elements. First, there will be two deals assigned to two groups of...

LAW1047

Business, Social Responsibility, and Human Rights

Large corporations now routinely spend millions of dollars to protect human rights and the environment. Shell Nigeria builds hospitals and schools in the Niger Delta. Nike employs hundreds of inspectors to improve conditions for the factory workers w...

LAW1048

Introduction to Commercial Law

Although definitions of commercial law vary, it generally concerns a business enterprise's contracts with its customers and suppliers (usually not with its investors or employees, and not relating to real property). This course surveys legal issues i...

LAW1049

Corporate Governance

This seminar will focus on key topics in corporate governance. We will cover a range of legal and economic issues, including the following topics: hedge fund activism, gatekeeper liability, executive compensation, proxy advisory services, environment...

LAW1050

Law, Business, and Policy Strategy in the Startup Economy

This seminar explores the intersection of legal, business, and policy strategy in the startup economy. The class operates along two concurrent paths: First, under faculty supervision, students will act as if they were outside counsel to a Stanford-...

LAW1051

Payment Systems: Cryptocurrencies

This seminar is designed to afford students the opportunity to study the regulation of new, cutting edge payment systems that employ blockchain technology. To do so, students will familiarize themselves with the current state of the law of payment sy...

LAW1052

Venture Capital and the Dual Fiduciary

This course introduces students to the business and legal/governance issues in venture capital. We will begin with the role of venture capital in the broader US economy, who the players are in the ecosystem and how venture capital funds are raised an...

LAW1053

International Securities Regulation

This course will focus on the application of United States securities laws and regulations to non-US issuers. We will examine how that regulatory framework differs for non-US issuers, as compared to issuers domiciled in the United States. Initial pub...

LAW1054

Economics of Contracts

This course will combine contract theory, a field of economics for which several Nobel prizes have been awarded, with a study of the practice of business transactions. Our discussion will explore how well economic theory illuminates actual contractin...

LAW1055

Law of Nonprofits

This course provides an overview of laws and policies affecting the nonprofit sector. The course will focus both on state laws governing nonprofit corporations and charitable trusts as well as federal tax laws applicable to section 501(c) entities. T...

LAW1056

Regulatory Economics

Law 1056 examines public policies for dealing with problems arising in markets in which competitive forces are weak. The focus is on monopolies, oligopolies, cartels, and other environments where market mechanisms are unlikely to produce outcomes tha...

LAW1057

The Role of the General Counsel

Many of today's lawyers look to the role of the corporate general counsel as a dynamic career at the intersection of law and business. This course will explore how in-house lawyers add value as a strategic advisor on business strategy and execution,...

LAW1059

Race, Class and Tax

This one unit course is only an option for students who are concurrently enrolled Taxation I (LAW 1029) or who have previously taken Taxation 1. The course is an extension of Taxation I with a greater focus on race and class. Goals of the class inc...

LAW1060

Global Business Law and Policy: Europe

This seminar prepares students for the field study portion of the Global Quarter and is only open to students participating in the Global Quarter. Through a mix of guest lectures and class discussions, the seminar will explore subjects to be addresse...

LAW1061

Global Business Law - Europe: Field Study

This course is the field study portion of the Global Quarter. The field study is comprised of a three-week itinerary of office visits, simulated negotiations and counseling sessions, and seminars in Geneva, London, Oxford, Berlin and Frankfurt. Parti...

LAW1061B

Global Business Law - Asia: Legal Practice

This course is the field study portion of the Global Quarter. The field study is comprised of a three-week itinerary of office visits, simulated negotiations and counseling sessions, and seminars in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Singapore, and Tokyo...

LAW1062

Global Capital Markets

This course will cover a mix of issues that lie at the intersection of the financial regulation of capital markets and corporate finance. The course will include an examination of US regulation of capital flows into and out the United States (inclu...

LAW1063

Global Business Law and Public Policy

This seminar explores selected topics at the intersection of the practice of transnational business law and public policy. This quarter, we will examine three topics of great interest to corporate executives, their legal advisors, and policy makers:...

LAW1064

Selected Topics in Antitrust Law (Reading Group)

Antitrust law has in the last couple of years become a controversial topic and the subject of intense academic debate, proposed legislation, and international discussion. The seminar will provide a forum in which the students could better understand...

LAW1065

Partnership Tax (Reading Group)

This course will acquaint you with the basic rules and structure of partnership tax. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation. Class will meet five Thursdays, 4:15PM to 6:15PM. Precise meeting dates TBA by instructor. This class...

LAW1066

Global Business Law and Public Policy - Asia Field Study

This field study is open to students enrolled in the seminar LAW 1063 Global Business Law and Public Policy (GBLPP). Health and safety conditions permitting, students will travel to Singapore with the instructors over spring break for a series of mee...

LAW1067

FinTech Innovation and the Transformation of Financial Services

This course will focus on the so-called "FinTech Revolution" which is transforming traditional banking and financial services. FinTech generally refers to disruptive financial sector innovations involving technology-enabled (online and mobile device...

LAW1068

Corporate Purpose: Beyond Shareholder Value

The neoliberal orthodoxy that corporate managers' sole duty is to maximize shareholders' financial value has never been entirely adhered to in practice and has been increasingly challenged in recent decades. While acknowledging the importance of shar...

LAW1070

Social Responsibility, Race, Gender, and the Corporation

The course explores a series of controversial social challenges facing publicly traded corporations. Among other topics, the course will likely analyze: (1) The constitutionality and effectiveness of recent California legislation mandating boardroom...

LAW1071

Exemptions from the Securities Act

This course examines in detail the operation of the exemptions from the Securities Act of 1933, with particular emphasis on the operation of these exemptions in the context of venture capital practice. Thus, the focus is on the private placement exem...

LAW1072

Advanced Contracts: Commercial Transactions

Although definitions of commercial transactions vary, they generally concern a business enterprise's relationships with its customers, suppliers and creditors (typically, not with its investors or employees, and not relating to real property). This c...

LAW1073

Land and Real Property Taxation

This course examines legal, economic, and policy aspects of land and real property taxation. These taxation methods are a principal source for local government finance in many countries and have substantial economic impact. We will examine real prope...

LAW1074

State and Local Taxation

This class will provide a foundation to working with state and local tax systems. We will begin with a discussion of the primary rules, mostly derived from the federal constitution, that govern state and local taxation. We will then discuss the sta...

LAW1075

Blockchain Tax

This course examines United States federal income taxation as applied to blockchain technology. The course covers the tax treatment of cryptocurrency transactions, including airdrops, loans, mining, staking, hard forks, microservices transactions, a...

LAW1076

Blockchain Engineering: Techniques and Legal Implications

Blockchain technology is an increasingly important financial tool with unique legal implications--however, a theoretical understanding is often insufficient to fully grasp its current and, more importantly, future capabilities. This course, designed...

LAW1077

Global Corporate Governance

This seminar explores major contemporary topics and global trends in corporate law and capital market regulation from a comparative perspective, focusing on the United States, the United Kingdom, continental Europe (particularly Germany) and East Asi...

LAW1078

Blockchain Governance

This course offers an overview of blockchain governance and DAOs, including the governance of layer-1 blockchains, DAO tooling, on-chain and off-chain voting, delegation and constitutional design, identity, and privacy. We will cover these topics bot...

LAW2001

Criminal Procedure: Adjudication

The Law School offers two survey courses dealing with constitutional criminal procedure. "Criminal Investigation" will consider questions that arise under the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments regarding investigations, interrogations, and charging...

LAW2002

Criminal Procedure: Investigation

The law school offers two survey courses dealing with constitutional criminal procedure. "Criminal Adjudication" covers the formal pretrial and trial processes, including the right of counsel, prosecutorial charging criteria, grand juries, bail, spee...

LAW2006

Race, Class, and Punishment

Since the early 1970s, the criminal justice system in the United States has expanded dramatically. America has adopted an array of increasingly tough approaches to crime, including aggressive street-level policing, longer sentences, and a range of c...

LAW2008

Three Strikes Project: Criminal Justice Reform & Individual Representation

This seminar offers an opportunity to study mass incarceration and criminal law reform in real time while getting hands-on experience in active litigation on behalf of Three Strikes Project clients serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes. In thi...

LAW2009

White Collar Crime

This course explores the law of economic and political crimes associated with the rubric "white collar crime." The class is divided thematically between mens rea issues and substantive issues. Among the substantive areas which are covered are: obstru...

LAW201

Civil Procedure I

This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. 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...

LAW2010

Sentencing, Corrections, and Criminal Justice Policy

(Formerly Law 621) This introductory course will familiarize students with the history, structure, and performance of America's sentencing and corrections system for adult offenders. Sentencing is the process by which criminal sanctions are imposed i...

LAW2013

United States v. Milken: A Case Study

The most recent financial crisis that began in 2008 has resulted in a call, mostly ignored, for significant jail time for those allegedly responsible, without any explanation of the crimes that may have been committed. The aggressive use of the crimi...

LAW2015

Advanced Criminal Law

The intensity of the current debates over criminal law and criminal justice policy is at an unusually high level, with strong and conflicting positions being staked out in the areas of race and crime, policing, incarceration and sentencing, drug poli...

LAW2016

Violence and the Law

This seminar will explore how the law thinks about violence. Across various legal domains---e.g., criminal law, criminal procedure, juvenile justice, immigration, domestic violence, family law, civil rights, free speech, firearms regulation---we wil...

LAW2018

Wrongful Convictions: Causes, Preventions and Remedies

Over the course of the past two decades there has been increasing recognition that, despite its commitment to the concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, our criminal justice system yields a steady stream of wrongful convictions. This Seminar wil...

LAW2019

Criminal Procedure: Theoretical Foundations

This course examines the theoretical foundations of criminal procedure---political, historical, and, above all, philosophical. What are the ideas at work in the American system of criminal procedure? How, historically, did the system develop, and why...

LAW2020

History of Criminal Justice

This seminar will deal with the history of criminal justice in the United States, since the colonial period. The emphasis will not be on doctrines of criminal law, or (for the most part) on reported case law; but rather on the relationship between t...

LAW2023

Law, Order & Algorithms

Human decision making is increasingly being displaced by predictive algorithms. Judges sentence defendants based on statistical risk scores; regulators take enforcement actions based on predicted violations; advertisers target materials based on demo...

LAW2024

Search Warrants in the Digital Era

This will be a 2-hour advanced criminal procedure class, designed to acquaint students with the challenges confronting judges as they apply the Fourth Amendment to the bewildering array of search and surveillance techniques available to law enforcem...

LAW2025

Search and Seizure Issues for Criminal Lawyers

This seminar on selected issues in search and seizure for criminal lawyers will enhance your future clinic experience. Students will explore thorny issues raised in suppression motions using fact patterns and investigative materials from actual, prio...

LAW2026

American Criminal Justice and Its Discontents

In this course students will participate in direct dialogs with major national experts and institutional leaders from a variety of perspectives on the country's criminal law system. We will hear from experts and leaders from law enforcement, prosecut...

LAW2027

Prosecutorial Discretion and Ethical Duties in the Enforcement of Federal Criminal Law

Prosecutors wield enormous power over life, liberty and reputation and are subject to ethical standards higher than those that apply to other attorneys. As former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sutherland recognized in the context of federal prosecutors,...

LAW2028

Criminal Justice and the Crisis of American Democracy

How is the crisis of American criminal justice connected with the crisis in American democracy? How can policing, prosecution, and punishment best be reformed in an era of polarization? What does the rise of exclusionary forms of populism mean for...

LAW2029

Law and Disorder: Advanced Criminal Law

This seminar is essentially an advanced criminal law class in which we will be studying selected criminal law/procedure issues. The only prerequisite is having taken Criminal Law. Each week you will be asked to watch a particular episode of the long...

LAW203

Constitutional Law

This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. This course offers an introduction to American constitutional law. In addition to examining questions of interpretive method, the course focuses on the powers of the federal government...

LAW205

Contracts

This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It 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...

LAW207

Criminal Law

This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It examines the traditional general issues in the substantive criminal law, including the purposes of punishment and the appropriate limits on the use of the criminal sanction. It focuses...

LAW217

Property

This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It 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 interes...

LAW219

Legal Research and Writing

Legal Research and Writing is a two-unit course taught as a simulation. Students work on a legal problem starting with an initial interview, and they conduct fact investigation and legal research related to that problem. Students receive rigorous tr...

LAW223

Torts

This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It 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 d...

LAW224A

Federal Litigation in a Global Context: Coursework

This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It is an introductory course in the litigation process. Students represent the plaintiff or defendant in a simulated global torts case set in a federal district court that raises complex i...

LAW224B

Federal Litigation in a Global Context: Methods and Practice

This course is part of the required first-year JD curriculum. It is an introductory course in the litigation process. Students represent the plaintiff or defendant in a simulated global torts case set in a federal district court that raises complex i...

LAW2401

Advanced Civil Procedure

This course will address significant areas of procedural law and design that go beyond the first-year civil procedure course, with special attention to the relevance of procedural choices to civil rights and public law litigation. Contemporary litiga...

LAW2401

Advanced Civil Procedure

This course will address significant areas of procedural law and design that go beyond the first- year civil procedure course, with special attention to aggregate and multiparty litigation (e.g., class actions and Multidistrict Litigation (MDL)). Con...

LAW2402

Evidence

This course examines the law of proof, with special attention to the Federal Rules of Evidence, constitutional restrictions on proving facts in criminal cases, and selected provisions of the California Evidence Code that diverge significantly from fe...

LAW2402

Evidence

Evidence rules constrain proof at criminal and civil trials. We will study the Federal Rules of Evidence, related caselaw, and those constitutional concepts that limit proof at criminal trials. Topics include relevance, unfair prejudice, character ev...

LAW2403

Federal Courts

This course addresses the role of the federal courts in the American system of federalism and separation of powers, as well as their role in the development of substantive federal law and constitutional rights. A central premise of the course is that...

LAW2403

Federal Courts

This course addresses the role of the federal courts in the American system of federalism and separation of powers, as well as their role in the development of substantive federal law and constitutional rights. These roles are defined by both constit...

LAW2404

Global Litigation

German owned VW admits that it included a "defeat device" in the software for its diesel cars so they could fraudulently pass US environmental tests, and is sued by thousands of US consumers in state and federal courts in the US. Very quickly, the ca...

LAW2406

Conflict of Laws

(Formerly Law 251) Instances are common in law where more than one legal authority potentially governs a particular event, occurrence or transaction. When the outcome required by these authorities differs, which law governs? Beginning with the class...

LAW2407

Arbitration: Law, Practice & Politics

Arbitration, once narrowly defined as a party-selected method for resolving contract-based disputes arising out of commercial transactions, is now ubiquitous. In the U.S. in addition to resolving run-of the-mill commercial disputes, arbitration may b...

LAW2408

Advanced Federal Courts

This advanced course in structural constitutional law builds on concepts, doctrines, and themes developed in Federal Courts. Modern doctrines attempting to reconcile federalism, the supremacy of federal law, separation of powers, and the specific ju...

LAW2409

Anatomy of the Opioid Litigation: A Case Study in Complex Litigation

Although easy to lose sight of in the midst of the Coronvirus epidemic, the United States is in the midst of an opioid addiction epidemic. More than 10 million Americans 12 years and older are estimated to have misused opioids in 2018, most of which...

LAW240A

Discussion (1L): Asian Americans and the Law

This discussion seminar will consider the legal treatment of Asian Americans. We will read materials about the history of citizenship, exclusion, and internment, and discuss contemporary issues affecting the individuals of Asian descent in the Americ...

LAW240B

Discussion (1L): Comparative Approaches to Law and Inequality

In this discussion seminar, we will examine how various countries across Europe and Latin American, as well as the United States, seek to deploy law to promote equality for subordinated groups---including especially racial minorities and women. We wi...

LAW240C

Discussion (1L): Corporate Social Responsibility

How can a company's managers safeguard the firm's financial value for its shareholders while, at the same time, operating ethically and purposively benefiting other stakeholders, including its employees and the communities in which the firm operates?...

LAW240D

Discussion (1L): Criminal Legal Histories

This seminar will trace the roots of four critical aspects of the American criminal justice system: jury independence and the power of jurors to render verdicts according to conscience; plea bargaining and the marginalization of juries; penitentiarie...

LAW240E

Discussion (1L): Dress Codes: Race, Identity and Personal Appearance

Dress Codes may seem a bit old fashioned, but in fact we are constantly told who should wear what and when. Rules---written and implied---divide formal from casual attire and children's clothing from that of adults. There are rules for what to wear i...

LAW240F

Discussion (1L): Feminist Jurisprudence

This discussion seminar will consider some of the major theoretical writings of the past 40 years in feminist legal theory, and explore the application of different theoretical approaches to contemporary issues in the law. Likely readings include Cat...

LAW240G

Discussion (1L): Innovation and Inequality

Throughout history, innovation has been a leading driver of economic growth and has helped lift communities out of poverty, and the importance of knowledge goods to the global economy has only increased with the rise of computing and information tech...

LAW240H

Discussion (1L): Measuring Access to Justice and Access to Information in Marginalized Communities

In this discussion seminar, we will explore the intersection of access to information and access to justice. Our current social and technological moment promises increased access to basic legal information without economic or geographic boundaries....

LAW240I

Discussion (1L): Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys as Agents of Change

What opportunities do prosecutors and defense attorneys have to help reform the criminal justice system and the wider society? And how can they best take advantage of those opportunities? We will explore these questions by reading and discussing th...

LAW240J

Discussion (1L): Religion, Identity and Law

This seminar will focus on the dynamic interplay between religious identity, community, and worldview, and the study, practice, and profession of law. As a defining force for so many across the globe, and in the norms through which human beings recog...

LAW240K

Discussion (1L): Representations of Criminal Lawyers in Popular Culture Through the Lens of Bias

This seminar will explore the portrayal of criminal lawyers in popular films and will engage in critical analysis of how misconceptions about the criminal justice system and biases against women, people of color and the poor are amplified on the big...

LAW240L

Discussion (1L): Robot Ethics

We will consider the developing legal and ethical problems of robots and artificial intelligence (AI), particularly self-directed and learning AIs. How do self-driving cars (or autonomous weapons systems) value human lives? How do we trade off accura...

LAW240M

Discussion (1L): The Central Park Five Case

This discussion seminar will focus on racial factors in the criminal justice system, using the Central Park 5 case and the Netflix series "When They See Us" as the jumping off point for the discussion. Following each episode of the series, the semina...

LAW240N

Discussion (1L): Theories and Critiques of Legal Education

Much of the basic structure of twenty-first-century American legal education was put in place by late nineteenth-century Harvard Law School Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell. This seminar will begin by examining the impetus for and nature of Langdel...

LAW240O

Discussion (1L): Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

Reasonable people sometimes disagree. How can reflective individuals hope to evaluate those disagreements? Fundamental notions of justice and rationality seem to dominate particular traditions in different places and different times. How can a twenty...

LAW240P

Discussion (1L): Election 2020

The discussion group will examine key factors in the 2020 election. In the first three classes, we will consider (among other topics) how and why people vote; vote suppression; the demographics of the electorate and how to increase the participation...

LAW240Q

Discussion (1L): Human Reproduction in the 21st Century: Legal and Ethical Issues

This seminar will discuss issues around human reproduction in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will talk about abortion "including the Dobbs case," and the problems of when life or rights begin, eugenics, embryo selection, and embryo editing (also kno...

LAW240R

Discussion (1L): Litigating the 2020 Election

This discussion seminar will explore legal issues in the 2020 election. We will read the cases or litigation materials as they are filed. The discussion group will also consider the various logistical, administrative, and civil rights issues that ju...

LAW240S

Discussion (1L): Monuments, Counter-Monuments, and the Law and Politics of Memory

In this reading group we will examine the intimate connection between the nation's retreat from Reconstruction in the 1870s, the constrained interpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments adopted by the Supreme Court, and the development of national...

LAW240T

Discussion (1L): Race and Technology

People often tend to think of technology as value neutral, as essentially objective tools that can be used for good or evil, particularly when questions of race and racial justice are involved. But the technologies we develop and deploy are frequentl...

LAW240U

Discussion (1L): Race, Civil Rights, and Human Rights

In this seminar, we will explore the evolution in the mid-twentieth century of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, at the same time that the international system for legal protection of human rights was also taking shape. Readings will di...

LAW240V

Discussion (1L): Reform, Defund, or Reimagine? The Problem of Policing

The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020, and the nationwide wave of protests that followed, have brought new attention to the nature of policing in the United States and its connection with racial inequality. For man...

LAW240W

Discussion (1L): Reimagining Capitalism

Scholars' and policy makers' thinking about political economy evolves as one understanding of the role of government ceases to reflect people's aspirations and views of social reality and is superseded by another. The laissez faire thinking of the 19...

LAW240X

Discussion (1L): Tort Encounters

Lawsuits for compensation for personal injury often provide lay people with their first -- or even only -- interaction with the civil side of courts. Those interactions are rarely wholly happy, raising fundamental issues for plaintiffs about the defi...

LAW240Y

Discussion (1L): Violence, Resistance, and the Law

This reading group will examine the force of law -- the ways in which law both depends upon and abjures violence, the ways it suppresses and invites resistance, and the identity of subjects against whom legal violence is deployed. A central object o...

LAW240Z

Discussion (1L): We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident? Race and Criminal Law in the 21st Century

There is no responsible person denying that those institutions that form the core of the "criminal justice system," with its explicit commitment to securing "justice," are the very institutions that have been (and continue to be) primary engines of i...

LAW2410

Comparative Evidence Law

Sponsored by Professors George Fisher and David Sklansky, this one-credit, one-month seminar is the creation of its two primary instructors, Professors Joan Picó i Junoy and Juan Antonio Andino López, both of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Professors...

LAW241A

Discussion (1L): Why is the USA Exceptional -- In Crime and Punishment?

It has long been a national controversy, and for many an international embarrassment, that the imprisonment rate in this country stands at the very top among nations -- currently just barely behind those of countries we would never want to be compare...

LAW241B

Discussion (1L): Race and Urban Law in the Bay Area

From the Black Power movement for self-governance that formed East Palo Alto to the battle to preserve the history of the "Little Manila" neighborhood in Stockton, from the anti-gentrification politics of San Francisco's historically Latinx Mission D...

LAW241C

Discussion (1L): Asian Americans Justice Struggles

Over the past eighteen months, coronavirus-related racism and anti-Asian hate violence have renewed perennial conversations about Asian American identity and advocacy in the United States. What does it mean to be Asian American? What is and has bee...

LAW241D

Discussion (1L): Corporate Dilemmas

The principle that corporate managers' sole duty is to maximize shareholders' financial value has never been entirely adhered to in practice and has been increasingly challenged in recent decades. While acknowledging the importance of shareholder val...

LAW241E

Discussion (1L): Crime and Punishment in American History

This discussion seminar will deal with the relationship between criminal justice and American society, at various points in American history. The emphasis will not be on doctrines of criminal law, or case-law in general, but on the living law, and t...

LAW241F

Discussion (1L): Ethical Lawyering: An Oxymoron?

National polls consistently rank lawyers as very low on the ethical/trustworthiness scale. For example, a recent Gallup Poll indicated that only 21% of respondents viewed lawyers as trustworthy, as compared to 77% who viewed physicians that way. In...

LAW241G

Discussion (1L): Reflecting on Red Power: 50 Years After Alcatraz

This seminar will explore the legal, cultural, political, and racial complexities underlying the Red Power movement that resulted in the 19-month occupation of nearby Alcatraz Island 50 years ago from 1969-1971. Readings will include excerpts from th...

LAW241H

Discussion (1L): The Law, Politics and Technology of the 2020 Redistricting Process

This discussion group will examine the law governing the 2021 redistricting process. We will learn about the one person one vote rule, constitutional prohibitions on racial gerrymandering, the Voting Rights Act, and applicable state law. Students e...

LAW241I

Discussion (1L): The Politics of Procedure

When you first encounter civil procedure in the fall quarter, it may seem dry and technical. With so much to learn so fast there isn't always time to talk about the political dimension of the rules. Simply put, the rules determine who gets access t...

LAW241J

Discussion (1L): The State of Democratic Discourse

This group will be devoted to candid discussion about the current state of public discourse both nationally and in universities, focusing especially on misinformation and intimidation. We will use Jonathan Rauch's new book, The Constitution of Knowle...

LAW241K

Discussion (1L): Governing Poverty

Decades of cuts to local government have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Some of these discarded places are rural, others are urban. Some are conservative, some are progressive. Some are the most diverse communities...

LAW241L

Discussion (1L): Conflict Management Design

What is conflict? When is it constructive or destructive? How is it prevented, managed and resolved? As lawyers, we commit to representing clients in an array of formal and informal processes, over discrete violations of law as well as long-ranging b...

LAW241M

Discussion (1L): American Indian Children: Boarding Schools to Brackeen

In 2022, the Supreme Court will hear a blockbuster case, Brackeen v. Haaland, that raises numerous constitutional questions that go to the very heart of federal Indian Law. Are American Indians a race, a political group, or both? How much power does...

LAW241N

Discussion (1L): Equality of Educational Opportunity

This seminar explores the concept of equality of educational opportunity, how law and policy have structured inequality in schools, and the efforts to dismantle inequality and promote equal educational opportunity. We will first consider the concept...

LAW241O

Discussion (1L): How Does Criminal Law "Know" the Truth?

Litigation is supposed to be a search for truth, and this search is especially important in criminal law, where outcomes involve the maximum power of the state against the individual, and the consequences of error seem intolerable. But how does crimi...

LAW241P

Discussion (1L): In Search of Climate Justice

Our rapidly changing climate demands that we act quickly and robustly to decarbonize the economy. But how do we create a just transition that does not merely replicate, or worse yet exacerbate, the inequities of the past? In this discussion seminar,...

LAW241Q

Discussion (1L): Rationalism, Contrarianism, and Bayesian Thinking in Politics: How to Think Better?

In the early 2010s, the Bay Area spawned a movement of thinkers obsessed with cognitive biases and "Bayesian reasoning," a way of using statistics and probability to inform beliefs. This group--that later came to be known as "rationalists"--insists o...

LAW241R

Discussion (1L): The Law of the 2022 Election

This seminar will look at the legal issues coming up in the context of the 2022 election. It will cover issues surrounding election administration and voting rights, as well as any other unexpected controversies leading up to and following the electi...

LAW2502

Climate Change Policy: Economic, Legal, and Political Analysis

(Formerly Law 746) This course will advance students' understanding of economic, legal, and political approaches to avoiding or managing the problem of global climate change. Beyond focusing on economic issues and legal constraints, it will address...

LAW2503

Energy Law

All modern industrial economies, including that in the U.S., require massive energy infrastructure and a coherent legal framework to ensure that energy services are provided to consumers of all types in a manner that is safe, reliable and affordable....

LAW2504

Environmental Law and Policy

Environmental law is critically important and endlessly fascinating. In this course, we will look at the major statutes and policies used, at both the federal and state levels, to protect humans and the environment against exposure to harmful substan...

LAW2505

Land Use Law

This course focuses on the pragmatic (more than theoretical) aspects of contemporary land use law and policy, including: the tools and historical/legal foundation of modern land use law; zoning and General Plans; the process of land development; vest...

LAW2506

Natural Resources Law and Policy

Environmental law subsumes two major sets of issues. One set of issues, which is the subject of Environmental Law & Policy (Law 2504), focuses on pollution containment (e.g., the Clean Air Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act). This course focu...

LAW2508

The Business of Water

Freshwater is our most crucial natural resource, but it is facing mounting pressures from climate change and other factors. While public agencies traditionally dominated water management, private water companies are playing an increasingly important...

LAW2509

Clean Energy Project Development and Finance

(Formerly Law 774) This case study-oriented course will focus on the critical skills needed to evaluate, develop, finance (on a non-recourse basis), and complete grid-scale clean energy projects. This course will be essentially the same as in the pa...

LAW2510

California Coast: Science, Policy and Law

This interdisciplinary course integrates the legal, scientific, and policy dimensions of how we characterize and manage resource use and allocation along the California coast. We will use this geographic setting as the vehicle for exploring more gene...

LAW2512

Cities and Sustainability: Current Issues, Policy, and Law

Cities are on the front lines of solving many of society's sustainability problems, from advancing green buildings and clean energy, to preparing for the effects of climate change. With a diminishing role of the federal government on environmental po...

LAW2513

Climate: Politics, Finance, and Infrastructure

While climate change is often considered an 'environmental problem', the risks and opportunities embedded in a changing climate go well beyond the natural environment. This course reframes climate as a macroeconomic challenge, one in which multilater...

LAW2515

Environmental Justice

This course will introduce environmental justice as a social movement, including its central substantive concerns (the needs of humans in the built environment rather than the need to protect the environment from humans) and its methods (community-ba...

LAW2516

Natural Resources Law and Policy - South Africa: Field Study

This is the South Africa Field Study component of Natural Resources Law and Policy (LAW 2506). For details, see course description for Law 2506. This course will look at three issues covered in Natural Resources Law & Policy from a comparative pers...

LAW2517

Modern Crosscurrents in Energy and Environmental Law

This course explores the close relationship between energy and environmental law. We will work through the major energy sectors and, for each, discuss key environmental law and policy issues that are influencing energy production and use. Our focus...

LAW2518

U.S. Environmental Law in Transition

This course offers an accessible survey of timely topics in environmental law and policy as the United States transitions presidential administrations. Taught by two practicing lawyers, the class introduces students from any background to the interac...

LAW2519

Water Law

This course will study how society allocates and protects its most crucial natural resource -- water. The emphasis will be on current legal and policy debates, although we will also examine the history of water development and politics. The course wi...

LAW2520

Climate Law and Policy

Climate change poses an existential threat to our planet. This course, open to law school students and graduate students from other schools, provides a survey of the legal and political mechanisms and social forces that may be leveraged to support de...

LAW2521

California's Water Policy and Management: Toward a Sustainable Future

This seminar series focuses on the dramatic changes in recent decades in California water policy and management and how water researchers can help forge modern, collaborative solutions that will allow the state to adapt to an uncertain and challengin...

LAW2522

Private Environmental Governance

The tools of private environmental regulation (e.g., eco-certifications, CSR initiatives, supplier contracts) have become an increasingly important source of governance. But how do they work? How do they arise--why and how can corporations participa...

LAW2523

Climate, Energy, and Democracy

This 1-credit, discussion-based seminar will examine the challenge and promise of responding to climate change in democracy. Combining theoretical readings and real-world examples such as California community choice energy programs and the movement f...

LAW2524

Environmental Law Workshop

This workshop will provide students with the opportunity to hear from faculty at other law schools who are at the cutting edge of research in environmental law and policy. This year, the workshop will focus on energy and climate research. Although...

LAW2525

Public Lands

The federal government owns and manages 28% of all land in the United States, and 48% in California, the third-highest percentage in the nation. How the federal government manages public lands therefore has profound implications for countless constit...

LAW3001

Health Law: Finance and Insurance

This course provides the legal, institutional, and economic background necessary to understand the financing and production of health services in the U.S. We will discuss the Affordable Care Act , health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid, employer-sp...

LAW3002

Health Law: Quality and Safety of Care

(Formerly Law 727) Concerns about the quality of health care, along with concerns about its cost and accessibility, are the focal points of American health policy. This course will consider how legislators, courts, and professional groups attempt to...

LAW3003

Health Law: The FDA

This course will examine the Food and Drug Administration. It will focus largely on the FDA's regulation of drugs and biologics, but will also cover its regulation of medical devices, nutritional supplements, and its jurisdiction over special legal,...

LAW3004

Law and Biosciences: Genetics

This seminar will focus on ethical, legal, and social issues arising from advances in our knowledge of human genetics. These will drawn from topics such as forensic uses of genetics, genetic testing, widespread whole genome sequencing, genome editing...

LAW3005

Law and Biosciences Workshop

This workshop seminar will provide students with the opportunity to examine and critique cutting-edge research and work in the field of law and the biosciences presented by different speakers from Stanford and elsewhere. Although it is open to all st...

LAW3006

Law and Biosciences: Neuroscience

This seminar examines legal, social, and ethical issues arising from advances in the biosciences. This year it will focus on neuroscience. It will examine how neuroscience will affect the law, and society, through improvements in predicting illnesses...

LAW3009

Health Law: Improving Public Health

This course examines how the law can be used to improve the public's health. The broad questions explored are: what authority does the government have to regulate in the interest of public health? How are individual rights balanced against this autho...

LAW3010

Mental Health Law

This class will explore timely issues surrounding mental health law. Representative topics include civil commitment proceedings; forced outpatient treatment and hospitalization; mental health in the criminal justice system; guardianship/conservatorsh...

LAW3011

Biomedical Innovation Law and Policy

Why don't we have an HIV vaccine, or a cure for Alzheimer's disease? Why weren't we better prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic? Why do vast inequalities persist in who has access to biomedical innovations, and in what kinds of innovations are brought...

LAW3012

Introduction to Law and the Biosciences

This course will provide an introduction to the legal, ethical, and policy areas important to understanding Law and the Biosciences. Each topic will include both discussion of the relevant legal rules and ethical principles and their application to a...

LAW3254

How to Ask a Question

Asking questions is at the core of the role of an attorney. Whether it is interrogating a witness in a deposition, or conducting a direct or cross examination at trial, knowing how to ask a question is an essential lawyering skill. We'll explore text...

LAW3258

Responsibility for Risk: Perspectives on Liability Insurance

This seminar will explore the intellectual foundations of the institution of insurance, including the following key questions: How is insurance to be conceived: from a contract perspective? a tort perspective? a private governmental perspective? Corr...

LAW3259

The Civil Justice System as an Agent of Change

The past 60 years have witnessed a dramatic expansion in the role of the courts as an agent of change in the United States. Constitutional, civil and economic rights have been created, such as marriage equality and strict liability in tort, but right...

LAW3502

Art and the Law

This course covers the legal, public policy, and ethical issues that concern artists, art dealers, auction houses, museums, collectors, and others who comprise the world of visual art. Our focus will be on artists' rights (including copyright, resale...

LAW3504

U.S. Legal History

This course explores the legal history of what became the United States from the beginning of European colonization until the early twentieth century, focusing on the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It examines both the evolution of legal...

LAW3505

Law and Culture in American Fiction

How do we identify an owner? What does a citizen look like? Whose privacy requires protection? The stories we tell about the experience of being Americans bolster and undermine particular legal arguments and conclusions. In the nineteenth century...

LAW3506

Law and Empire in U.S. History

This course will examine the interrelationship between legal norms and empire in the history of the United States. Topics in this part will include the Constitution as an imperial document; law and the expansion of the United States in western North...

LAW3507

Law and the Rhetorical Tradition

The conventions of legal writing and reasoning taught in law school derive from a long tradition of argument and persuasion. This interdisciplinary seminar locates legal conventions in that broader intellectual history, starting with Aristotle and tr...

LAW3508

Law and Visual Culture

When we represent our experience today, we do so as much through images as language. When we seek to persuade, we offer photographs, charts, videos. When we witness misconduct, we pull out our smartphones. And as images saturate our cultural discours...

LAW3510

Psychological Development: Myth, Law, and Practice

Collective myths from a variety of traditions and cultures capture enduring psychological truths about human choices and the human condition. Lawyers at various stages in their careers have their own personal myths, sometimes conscious and sometimes...

LAW3511

Writing Workshop: Law and Creativity

Practicing law is very much a creative enterprise. Effective advocates and counselors provide innovative and thoughtful solutions to complex problems. But there often isn't enough attention devoted in law school either to thinking creatively or to re...

LAW3512

Markets, Morals and the Law

What things should or should not be for sale - and why? This course will consider several examples of "blocked exchanges" or "contested commodities," including the trade in reproductive services, body parts, environmental resources, political rights...

LAW3514

Law and Inequality (Reading Group)

This reading group will focus on the challenges presented to law by the long-term growth of economic inequality. In addition to exploring evidence of rising inequality (including the work of Thomas Piketty and others), we will examine legal and other...

LAW3515

Law and Humanities Workshop: History, Literature, and Philosophy

(Formerly Law 516) The Law and Humanities Workshop: History, Literature, and Philosophy is designed as a forum in which faculty and students from the Law School and from various humanities departments can discuss some of the best work now being done...

LAW3516

Legal History Workshop

The Legal History Workshop is designed as a forum in which faculty and students from the Law School, the History Department, and elsewhere in the university can discuss some of the best work now being done in the field of legal history. Every other w...

LAW3517

Law and Literature

After its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, many wondered whether the law and literature movement would retain vitality. Within the last decade there has, however, been an explosion of energy in the field, which has expanded beyond the boundaries of the...

LAW3518

Law and Psychology

This course will examine the implications of psychological theory and research for normative legal theory and for contemporary legal policies, procedures, and practices. The course will draw on contemporary cognitive, social, and clinical psychology...

LAW3519

Law and the Greek Classics (Reading Group)

This one credit course, based on materials taught at the Aspen Institute, will read and discuss selected classical Greek documents (in translation, of course) of particular relevance to the contemporary practice of law. We will begin with a reading o...

LAW3520

Selected Topics in the History of Capitalism, Regulation, Corporations and Finance

This seminar will briefly examine recent debates about the role of the financial sector in the United States, considered in light of the long history of American debates over regulation of economic activity. It will be structured as a continuing dia...

LAW3521

Law, Politics and the Arts

This seminar will explore the connections between the arts and questions of law and politics, using several performances from the 2019-2020 Stanford Live season to form the basis of a conversation. Students will attend the multiple performances and...

LAW3522

Legal History: Research Seminar in Legal Biography

The aim of this seminar is to produce a number of student-written studies of the lives of lawyers. In the first half of the seminar, we will read some exemplary biographies of lawyers. In the second half, students in the seminar will report on thei...

LAW400

Directed Research

Directed Research is an extraordinary opportunity for students beyond the first-year to research problems in any field of law. Directed research credit may not be awarded for work that duplicates the work of a course, clinic, or externship for which...

LAW4001

Media, Technology, and the First Amendment

The right to free speech is meaningless without spaces to exercise it. Over the past decades, electronic media---broadcast radio and television, cable television, telephony, and the internet---have become critical spaces where Americans speak to and...

LAW4003

Current Issues in Network Neutrality

Due to the change in administration, the future of net neutrality in the US is in question again. Network neutrality rules are based on a simple principle: Internet service providers like Verizon or Comcast that connect us to the Internet should not...

LAW4004

Cybersecurity: A Legal and Technical Perspective

This class will use the case method to teach basic computer, network, and information security from technology, law, policy, and business perspectives. Using real world topics, we will study the technical, legal, policy, and business aspects of an in...

LAW4005

Introduction to Intellectual Property

This is an overview course covering the basics of intellectual property law -- trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks. This course is designed both for those who are interested in pursuing IP as a career, and those who are looking only fo...

LAW4005

Introduction to Intellectual Property

This is an overview course covering the basics of intellectual property law -- trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks. This course is designed both for those who are interested in pursuing IP as a career, and those who are looking only fo...

LAW4006

Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law

This is an advanced seminar focusing on antitrust law as it applies to the creation, licensing, and exercise of intellectual property rights. At least one IP or antitrust class is a prerequisite, and ideally both. Elements used in grading: Grades wi...

LAW4007

Intellectual Property: Copyright

Copyright law is the engine that drives not only such traditional entertainment and information industries as music, book publishing, news and motion pictures, but also software, video games and other digital products. This course examines in depth a...

LAW4008

Intellectual Property: Copyright Licensing, Principles, Law and Practice

(Formerly Law 625) This course will combine in-depth study, through reading assignments and lectures, of US law governing copyright transactions (contract formalities and construction; recordation and title practice; termination of transfers) and cop...

LAW4009

Intellectual Property: International and Comparative Patent Law

Patentable goods and services are increasingly important in today's global information economy, and they frequently cross national borders, physically or electronically. This course will include a comparative examination of the major national patent...

LAW4010

Intellectual Property: Patents

This intermediate-level patent law course builds on material covered in Introduction to Intellectual Property (which is recommended but not required). Students will gain a thorough grounding in patent doctrine (including patentability, infringement,...

LAW4011

Intellectual Property: The Business & Law of Technology & Patent Licensing

If you practice in any technology-related area (whether transactions, corporate, IP management or litigation), you will encounter licensing, as it is the principal means by which technology and patent rights are disseminated, exploited and commercial...

LAW4012

Intellectual Property: Trademarks

This course will consider the protection and enforcement of trademarks and related state rights in brands and names, including the right of publicity. There is no prerequisite, though some students will have taken Introduction to Intellectual Propert...

LAW4013

Information Privacy Law

This course explores the roots of privacy law, its evolution in the face of rapid technological change, and the challenges to an individual's ability to control third party collection, access, use and disclosure of their personal information. The co...

LAW4014

Law, Technology, and Liberty

New technologies from gene editing to networked computing have already transformed our economic and social structures and are increasingly changing what it means to be human. What role has law played in regulating and shaping these technologies? And...

LAW4015

Modern Surveillance Law

This seminar provides an in depth look at modern government surveillance law, policies and practices. It is taught by Richard Salgado, formerly director of law enforcement and information security at Google and a prosecutor at the U.S. Department of...

LAW4016

Patent Litigation Workshop

This course simulates the strategy and pretrial preparation of a patent lawsuit. The course materials include information typical to a patent lawsuit: a patent, file history, prior art, and information regarding the accused product. Students will rep...

LAW4017

Protection of Personality: Defamation, Privacy, and Emotional Distress

This course will examine the theoretical foundations and common law development of the range of tort remedies designed to afford protection to the interests in personality. Defamation, the right of privacy, and claims of emotional distress and harass...

LAW4018

Intellectual Property: International and Comparative Copyright

Copyright today is global, and copyright counselling, litigation and licensing increasingly require a general understanding of foreign copyright law and of the international copyright system. This course will focus on the exploitation of US-based mus...

LAW4019

Computational Law

Computational Law is an innovative approach to Legal Informatics concerned with the representation of regulations in computable form. From a practical perspective, Computational Law is important as the basis for computer systems capable of performin...

LAW4020

Lawyering for Innovation: A Case Study

(Formerly Law 769) Strategic lawyering in the 21st century requires a combination of critical skillsets, including facility with technology, product design, partnerships, dispute resolution, and policy. No issue in the digital age has demonstrated t...

LAW4021

Free Speech in the Age of the Internet

Taught by top policy leaders from Google/YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, this course will explore the way free speech norms have evolved in the age of the Internet and the pivotal role online platforms play in the information available worldwide. From...

LAW4022

Communications Law: Internet and Telephony

The internet has enabled new forms of innovation, content production and political participation that are transforming our economy, society and democratic system. Technical, legal and economic choices will affect whether the Internet can realize its...

LAW4024

Patent Prosecution

This skill-based course examines the core requirements and strategies for drafting and prosecuting a patent application before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO). The class brings in real inventors and patent examiners to give students a real-w...

LAW4025

Intellectual Property: Trade Secrets

Trade secret protection has become one of the most important issues in intellectual property today. Technology becomes more important to industry every day, but information can be downloaded and shared more easily than ever before. The law has to st...

LAW4026

Internet Platforms and Free Expression

In recent years, Internet platforms like Facebook, Google, or Twitter have increasingly come under fire. Top executives from these companies have testified before Congress about their role in spreading misinformation in the 2016 elections. With the i...

LAW4028

Intellectual Property: Advanced Copyright

Copyright law is the primary legal regime governing human creativity, and it plays some role in nearly all creative industries today. Consequently, copyright law has far-reaching economic and cultural implications. In this seminar, we will consider t...

LAW4029

Video Game Law

This seminar discusses a variety of legal issues raised by video games and game platforms. We will devote substantial attention to intellectual property matters, but will also include business and licensing issues, tort law, the First Amendment, and...

LAW403

Senior Thesis

An opportunity for third-year students to engage in original research and to prepare a substantial written-work product on the scale of a law review article. The thesis topic should be chosen no later than two weeks after the beginning of the seventh...

LAW4030

Intellectual Property: Patents - Japan Field Study

This is the Tokyo, Japan component of Intellectual Property: International and Comparative Patent Law (Law 4009) and Intellectual Property: Patents (Law 4010). Students enrolled in either Law 4009 or Law 4010 may apply for this optional field study c...

LAW4031

Disruptive Technologies: Their Impact on Our Laws, and the Laws' Impact on the Technology

The advent of a highly disruptive technology necessarily butts up against existing laws, regulations and policies designed for the status quo as well as established businesses. This course takes the examples of driverless cars and artificial intelli...

LAW4032

Advanced Negotiation of Patent Reform Policies

Patent reform has been a hotly debated topic in recent years in the intellectual property field. Different industries and players have differing and often competing views of our patent system--how effective it is in promoting innovation and what, if...

LAW4035

Cyber Law: International and Domestic Legal Frameworks for Cyber Policy

Was Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. elections an act of war? When do cyber attacks constitute a use of force? Is sovereignty in cyberspace different than in other domains, and can states meaningfully defend their sovereignty in cyberspace? Is...

LAW4038

Does Google Need a Foreign Policy? Private Corporations & International Security in the Digital Age

Facebook has more users than any nation has citizens. Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks more often with Chinese President Xi Jinping than President Trump does. Google's revenues exceed the GDPs of more than half the world's countries. Cybersecurity companies...

LAW4039

Regulating Artificial Intelligence

Even just a generation ago, interest in "artificial intelligence" (AI) was largely confined to academic computer science, philosophy, engineering research and development efforts, and science fiction. Today the term is widely understood to encompass...

LAW4040

Hot Issues in Tech Policy (Reading Group)

In our hyper-networked world dominated by digital gatekeepers, tech policy implicates the law, business, engineering and --- perhaps foremost --- society. Effective lawyering in the field must be multi-dimensional and incorporate economic, technologi...

LAW4041

Lawyering for Innovation: Artificial Intelligence

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has made the jump from science fiction to technical viability to product reality. Industries as far flung as finance, transportation, defense, and healthcare invest billions in the field. Patent filings f...

LAW4043

The Social & Economic Impact of Artificial Intelligence

Recent advances in computing may place us at the threshold of a unique turning point in human history. Soon we are likely to entrust management of our environment, economy, security, infrastructure, food production, healthcare, and to a large degree...

LAW4044

Lawyering for Innovation: The (Ongoing) Facebook Case Study

Issues of technology law and policy -- many involving Silicon Valley companies -- are among the most interesting and challenging in law today. Drawing on the lecturer's experience as General Counsel of Facebook, the course will focus on actual contro...

LAW4045

Digital Technology and Law: Foundations

Taught by a team of law and engineering faculty, this unique interdisciplinary course will empower students across the University to work together and exercise leadership on critically important debates at the intersection of law and digital technolo...

LAW4046

Data: Privacy, Property and Security

The collection, use and marketing of personal data are ubiquitous in the digital age. This seminar will explore the diverse legal regimes regulating personal data--including privacy, property and security--and the imperfect nature of their protectio...

LAW4047

Ethics, Public Policy, and Technological Change

Examination of recent developments in computing technology and platforms through the lenses of philosophy, public policy, social science, and engineering. Course is organized around four main units: algorithmic decision-making and bias; data privacy...

LAW4048

Regulating Internet Speech Platforms

Internet platforms like Google and Facebook play an enormous role in our online speech and information environment today. This class will review the intermediary liability laws that shape platforms' decisions about online content, and examine how suc...

LAW4049

Hack Lab

This course aims to give students a solid understanding of the most common types of attacks used in cybercrime and cyberwarfare. Taught by a long-time cybersecurity practitioner, a recovering cyberlaw litigator, and a group of hearty, motivated TAs,...

LAW4050

AI and Rule of Law: A Global Perspective

Advances in machine learning, big data, networked communications, and computing are transforming our world and fueling calls for regulation. This course--a joint venture of a Stanford law professor and a former Member of the European Parliament and...

LAW4051

Foundations of Internet Speech Platform Regulation

Internet platforms like Google and Facebook play an enormous role in our online speech and information environment today. This class will review the laws that shape platforms' decisions about online content, with a primary focus on intermediary liabi...

LAW4052

Governing Artificial Intelligence: Law, Policy, and Institutions

Even just a generation ago, interest in "artificial intelligence" (AI) was largely confined to academic computer science, philosophy, engineering, and science fiction. Today the term is understood to encompass not only long-term efforts to simulate...

LAW4053

Confronting Misinformation Online: Law and Policy

This course will examine contemporary challenges and trade-offs for tech law and policy decision-making presented by false information online. Topics will include content policy and regulatory responses to election misinformation; medical misinformat...

LAW4054

Competition in Digital Markets (Reading Group)

Last October, the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law released its long-awaited report "Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets." Following a 16-month investigation into the state of online...

LAW4055

In House Product and Technology Counsel

This course provides a rigorous, hands-on, practical overview of the essential skills you'll need in today's practice of global technology and commercial transactions as in-house counsel. Students will learn key terms in commercial, IP and technology...

LAW4056

Net Neutrality and Broadband Deployment

An open and affordable internet is critical to our economy, democracy, and our country's promise of equal opportunity. After the pandemic, everyone agrees on that. How we get there is the hard part. That's what the debates over net neutrality and br...

LAW4057

Antitrust and the Challenges of Competition in Digital Markets

These are unprecedented times for antitrust concerns about the market power and conduct of big technology companies, in particular Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple. The companies face an onslaught of regulatory and judicial scrutiny around the wor...

LAW4058

False Advertising

This course covers all of the basics regarding marketing law and false advertising, a rapidly changing and expanding area of law that dovetails nicely with trademark and copyright law. In this course, we will cover the basics of false advertising cl...

LAW406

Research Track

The Research Track is for students who wish to carry out a research project of a scope larger than that contemplated for a Senior Thesis. Research Track projects are to be supervised by two or more professors, at least one of whom must be a member of...

LAW411

Directed Professional Writing

Directed professional writing projects involve professional writing, such as motions, briefs, proposed legislation, and congressional testimony, undertaken with the assistance of --- and in collaboration with --- a faculty member. Directed professio...

LAW5001

China Law and Business

The growing tension between China and the rest of the world after the COVID-19 outbreak has made it more important than ever for businesses and their advisers to understand the legal framework in China and related compliance issues. Given their need...

LAW5002

Comparative Law

The big question in comparative law today - and one that is of key importance to anyone interested in international law - is whether we are currently witnessing a convergence of national legal systems. This course examines this question, as well as t...

LAW5003

International Criminal Law and Its Enforcement

The establishment of a global system of international justice reveals that the promises made during the Nuremberg era are not mere history. Over the past two decades, the international community has undertaken a considerable investment in enforcing i...

LAW5005

European Union Law

The U.S. and the European Union (which comprises 27 European states and 450 million people) have the largest bilateral trade relationship in the world. Over 50% of the world's GDP is generated on the Transatlantic Marketplace. U.S. companies rely on...

LAW5006

International Business Transactions, Regulation and Litigation

What legal problems arise when firms go global? Lawyers are increasingly asked to advise clients with global operations and to respond to multiple and sometimes inconsistent national laws. Through a series of case studies, we put you in the driver's...

LAW5007

International Business Negotiation

This course is structured around a quarter-long, simulated negotiation exercise which provides an in-depth study of the structuring and negotiating of an international business transaction. This class will be taught in counterpart with a class at Ber...

LAW5008

International Commercial Arbitration

This course provides a rigorous introduction to the law, theory and practice of international commercial arbitration. International commercial arbitration which has become the default means of settling international disputes and with clients increasi...

LAW5009

International Conflict Resolution

This seminar examines the challenges of managing and resolving intractable political and violent intergroup and international conflicts. Employing an interdisciplinary approach drawing on social psychology, political science, game theory, and interna...

LAW5010

International Human Rights

In part as a result of the rise of international human rights mechanisms in the twentieth century, conflicts over resources, privileges and power are now increasingly mediated through the lens of human rights, in terms of the protection of individual...

LAW5011

International Investment Law

The past few decades have seen a dramatic increase in the number of bilateral investment treaties and other treaties with investment-related provisions, followed by a sharp rise in the number of disputes between private investors and sovereign states...

LAW5012

International Criminal Justice

(Formerly Law 752) The establishment of a global system of international justice reveals that the promises made during the Nuremberg era are not mere history. Over the past decade, the international community has undertaken a considerable investment...

LAW5013

International Law

This course provides a general introduction to international law and its role in today's complex and interdependent world. We will begin by considering foundational questions about the nature of international law, such as: the origins of internationa...

LAW5014

International Trade Law

This course will survey the law and policy of modern international trade agreements, with an emphasis on the treaty network of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other important multilateral arrangements, as well as U.S. laws governing "unfair tr...

LAW5015

International Dealmaking: Vienna Field Negotiation

This course is structured around a week-long, simulated negotiation exercise which provides an in-depth study of the structuring and negotiating of an international business transaction. This class will be taught in counterpart with a class at Univer...

LAW5016

Japanese Law, Society and Economy

This course provides a critical introduction to the institutions and actors that comprise the Japanese legal system. Throughout the course, law is examined within the broader context of Japanese social, political, and economic institutions. Topics co...

LAW5017

Law in Latin America

(Formerly Law 582) The course has two main goals: to introduce students to the civil law tradition and to gain an understanding of the ways in which the law is practiced and lived in Latin American and Spain. Special attention is given to law firms,...

LAW5018

Legal Institutions and Global Economic Development

This course will cover readings on the relationship between legal institutions and economic development across different countries. Some topics are set by the instructor, while others arise depending on the interests of students as they develop their...

LAW5019A

The Law of War (Reading Group)

This course will provide students with exposure to the international law regime governing war, including the law that regulates when states may resort to force (jus ad bellum) and the constraints on the conduct of warfare itself (jus in bello). Eleme...

LAW5021

Current Topics in International Economic Law

This seminar will explore select topics in international economic law, including but not limited to: the formation of new free trade agreements (in particular the proposed Pacific and Atlantic partnerships); the inclusion of "next generation" issues...

LAW5023

The Rule of Law - The Foundation of Functional Communities

We will seek to determine a useful meaning of the notion of the rule of law, to identify a credible measurement of adherence, and to explore the importance of the rule of law in terms of economic, socio-political and human development. We will focus...

LAW5025

Global Poverty and the Law

With more than a billion people living on less than $2 a day, global poverty is one of the biggest challenges currently facing humanity. Even though those who suffer the most are located in the developing world, many of the policies, economic opportu...

LAW5026

Global Poverty, Corruption, and the Law: India Field Study

This is the India Field Study component of Global Poverty and the Law (Law 5025). For details, see course description for Law 5025. Corruption is one of the most difficult challenges facing societies across the developing world. Why is corruption so...

LAW5027

Social Conflict, Social Justice, and Human Rights in 21st Century Latin America

This course will consider significant sources of social conflict, efforts to achieve social justice and the relevance and impact of human rights norms and oversight mechanisms in Latin America in the 21st Century. Led by Prof. James Cavallaro, the c...

LAW5028

Regional Human Rights Protections: The Inter-American System

This course provides an in-depth introduction to the doctrine, practice and critiques of the Inter-American Human Rights System ("IASHR"). Students will examine the major instruments for human rights protections in the IASHR, the Inter-American Court...

LAW5029

Human Trafficking: Historical, Legal, and Medical Perspectives

(Formerly Law 675) This course offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the extent and complexity of the global phenomenon of human trafficking, including trafficking for forced prostitution, labor exploitation, and organ harvesting. I...

LAW5031

Law and Society in Late Imperial China

(Formerly Law 773) Connections between legal and social history. Ideology and practice, center and periphery, and state-society tensions and interactions. Readings introduce the work of major historians on concepts and problems in Ming-Qing history....

LAW5033

International Justice

(Formerly Law 786) Mass atrocities---including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity---continue to rage around the world, from Syria and South Sudan to Iraq and Myanmar. This course examines origins, operations, and outcomes of historica...

LAW5034

Human Trafficking: Law and Policy

Taking an historical and comparative perspective, this course will introduce students to the international, domestic, foreign, and sub-national law governing the many manifestations of human trafficking (including legal prohibitions on forced labor a...

LAW5035

Human Trafficking: Law and Policy - Thailand: Field Study

This field study is being taught in conduction with Law 5034, offered Winter Quarter 2019. During spring break, select students enrolled in Law 5035 will travel to Thailand to tour elements of the anti-trafficking ecosystem in Bangkok and Chiang Mai...

LAW5036

Law and Ethics of War

War is violent and often devastates the lives of those caught up in it. Yet it is also a means by which political communities protect themselves, pursue collective interests, and defend their rights. When, if ever, is the recourse to armed force ju...

LAW5037

Qing Legal Documents

How to use Qing legal documents for research. Winter: sample documents that introduce the main genres including: the Qing code and commentaries; magistrates' handbooks and published case collections; and case records from Chinese archives. Spring: cl...

LAW5038

Jewish Law: Introduction and Topics

This course will provide an overview of the field of Jewish Law and will seek to provide a few case studies of topics in Jewish Law. All the readings are in English and this course presupposes no background in Jewish Law. Jewish Law is the world's ol...

LAW5039

The Future of Global Cooperation

With autocracy resurgent and democracy on the decline, what is the future of global cooperation? What will be the fate of global institutions built to restore and maintain peace? Why pursue global cooperation at all? This seminar examines the role of...

LAW5040

Law, Lawyers, and Transformation in Democratic South Africa

South Africa's transition to democracy in 1994 marked the formal end of the comprehensive political, economic, and social system of racial subordination known as apartheid. The country has changed dramatically since then, as the government has built...

LAW5041

Business, Institutions, and Corruption in Latin America

Corruption is a global problem. Although data suggests that there are places that accumulate more harmful practices than Latin American countries, Latin America is perceived as a champion of corruption. This macro vision may hide the distinctive char...

LAW5042

Comparative Law and Society

This is a course about the relationship between law and the larger society--but with readings drawn almost entirely from studies carried out in countries other than the United States. The course will look, for examples, at readings from Chile, China...

LAW5043

Introduction to Islamic Law

Islamic law, along with English common law and Roman law, is one of the world's great legal systems. This course will introduce students to the following topics: the material sources of Islamic law; the history of its development from western Arabia...

LAW5044

Third World Approaches to International Law, Borders, and Migration

The mass movement of people across international borders is widely framed as among the most pressing challenges of the 21st Century. Globally, debates regarding immigration law and policy remain controversial political flashpoints. The purpose of thi...

LAW5045

Global Trends in Judicial Reform: Colombia Field Study

This is the Colombia Field Study component of Global Trends in Judicial Reform Law 808W). For details, see course description for Law 808W. The past decade has been defined by democratic backsliding and the reemergence of authoritarianism around th...

LAW5101

Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) Seminar

The Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) Seminar is only open to student preselected in spring 2019. The ALEP Seminar will begin with an intensive bootcamp taught by ALEP leadership and members of the law faculty at American University of Afgha...

LAW5102

Advanced Afghanistan Legal Education Seminar

Students who participate in the Afghanistan Legal Education Seminar in the fall quarter will continue their work in the Advanced Seminar in the winter or spring quarter. Only students selected for the Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) in spr...

LAW5103

State-Building and the Rule of Law Seminar

The State-Building and the Rule of Law Seminar is centrally concerned with bridging theory and practice. The seminar introduces the key theories relevant to state-building generally, and strengthening the rule of law in particular. This course explor...

LAW5104

Advanced State-Building and Rule of Law Seminar

Students who participate in the State-Building and Rule of Law Seminar in the fall quarter may seek consent to continue their work in the Advanced Seminar in winter or spring quarter. Six students per quarter will be allowed to participate. Students...

LAW5105

Fundamentals of International Criminal Law and Justice

Learn the history and development of international criminal law from World War I through World War II to the Cold War. Study the substantive contents of the discipline: specifically genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggre...

LAW5201

Foreign Legal Study: Bucerius Law School