Criminal law addresses the most fundamental issues of the relationship of individuals with each other and with the state.  What behavior so transgresses our basic values that it should be met with the most serious condemnation of society?  How should we treat those who violate such fundamental rules?  How can we secure ourselves against abuse by the state of the awesome power of criminal punishment, while still enabling the use of that pwer, where appropriate, to secure ourselves against criminal acts?  The practitioner or student of criminal law must come to terms with deep philosophical questions about the nature of justice.  But, at the same time, both lawyer and scholar must have an appreciation of the human and practical side of these issues.  Criminal practice deals with intensely human and emotional matters.  Criminal lawyers must be skilled in dealing with clients, police officers, witnesses, and jurors; their practice, more than most others, is in the courtroom, in the station house, and even in the street.  The scholarly work of Columbia's criminal law faculty has ranged from the philosophy and comparative dimensions of substantive criminal law to the practices of police officers on the street, from rape to white-collar crime, from the ethics of ending life in a hospital to the morality of ending life by execution; its members are not without practical experience, having prosecuted or defended cases from death row to the White House.  The course work available to students is equally wide-ranging, and th estudent interested in criminal law should be prepared to study both the philosophy of justice and the skills involved in its day-to-day administration.

The basis of the curriculum is the first-year foundation course in Criminal Law, which deals with the substantive law of crimes.  The next basic building block is the sequence of criminal procedure courses: the course in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments deals with the law governing police investigation and the constitutional rights that limit the police.  Students interested in enriching their understanding of the theoretical foundations of criminal law should enroll in International and Comparative Criminal Law.  Criminal Adjudication picks up the criminal process when a charge is instituted and covers the procedureal system by which such charges are adjudicated in court.  Juvenile Justice examines the function, rationale and jurisprudence of the separate court for young offenders who violate the criminal law and the unique legal setting where child protection is integrated into the constitutional norms of criminal law and procedure.  A range of seminar options is available for advanced study.  The curriculum regularly includes seminars on death penalty, policing and drugs, law and policy, white-collar crime, criminology, sentencing, prisoners' rights, the intersection of civil and criminal regulation of behavior and advanced problems in substantive criminal law.  The Criminal Court Clerkship program permits students to sit with judges in criminal cases and observe the actual operation of criminal courts.  Because criminal practice is essentially a litigation practice, a student interested in this specialty is well advised to develop the knowledge and skills involved in courtroom work.  Any criminal lawyer must be expert in the law of evidence, for example, and the courses in Trial Practice, Briefcraft and Negotiation teach skills critical for the criminal litigator. 

Participation in the moot court and trial advocacy competitions also allows students to improve their courtroom skills.  We also offer an intensive seminar ("proseminar"), currently at four points, on topics in crime, community and the law.  The actual seminar topic varies from year to year.  Past topics include "problem solving courts" and "terrorism and national security."  Finally, any student thinking of criminal law as a career should take at least one clinical course, in which students can experience and reflect on the entire range of lawyering skills and ethical issues involved in understanding and solving a client's problems, from interviewing and counseling to repsenting the client in court. 

L6109 CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS (3 pts)
D. Livingston
This course will examine the legal rules surrounding the investigation of crime. We will explore basic constitutional constraints imposed on law enforcement by the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments?including constraints on search and seizure, interrogation, and identification procedures. We will also consider statutory rules, such as the rules governing use of wiretaps and other forms of electronic surveillance.

We will address a number of questions over the course of the semester. How do we accommodate our competing interests in both personal security and autonomy, and effective law enforcement? How do we regulate, or fail to regulate, police conduct? How could we more effectively minimize police misconduct? This course is designed to complement L6238, the Criminal Adjudication course. It may, however, be taken before, after, or without that course.

L6241 EVIDENCE (3 or 4 pts)
(see Civil Procedure and Dispute Resolution)

L6429 FEDERAL CRIMINAL LAW (3 pts)
D. Richman
This course will provide an introduction to Federal Criminal Law, both as a body of statutory law and as an enforcement system.
Although much of the focus will be on the degree to which statutes and their underlying legislative history reflect Congress' reliance on, and embrace of, prosecutorial discretion, we will also explore the institutional constraints on the exercise of that discretion. Among the areas explored will be the mail fraud, extortion, criminal civil rights, and racketeering statutes, and the relationships between Main Justice and U.S. Attorneys Offices, and between prosecutors and investigative agencies.

L6428 INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE CRIMINAL LAW (3 pts)
G. Fletcher
This course will provide a general introduction to the issues of international criminal law, including the problems of jurisdiction, extradition, and the role of international criminal courts. The perspective will be that of a criminal lawyer rather than an international lawyer, with the primary concern directed to issues of legality and due process. The issues of criminal responsibility for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity will be analyzed critically and comparatively, with primary attention given to the problem of philosophical and legal foundations of international criminal liability.

L6501 JUVENILE JUSTICE (3 pts)
J. Fagan
Children have received special and separate treatment before the criminal law for centuries, but the juvenile justice system is a relatively modern institution that is little more than a century old. This course will explore the jurisprudence, law and practice of juvenile justice in the United States. Through analyses of legal theory, policy, case law, and social science evidence, students will examine topics including: the culpability of children for criminal acts, unique criminal laws and procedures that govern the legal responses to children who break the law, and the societal responses of punishment and protection of adolescent offenders. Recent and significant changes in juvenile justice policy will be examined and analyzed, and located in the context of patterns and explanations of juvenile crime and the social construction of adolescence. Contemporary controversies in juvenile justice and recent Supreme Court cases will serve as topics for student debates and hypotheticals. The course complements current offerings on children and the law and family with minimal overlap by focusing in depth on the conceptual bases and modern practices of contemporary juvenile justice. Students will use case decisions, empirical research, and practice materials to analyze topics from both policy and legal perspectives.

L9080 SEMINAR: BLACK LETTER LAW AND WHITE COLLAR CRIME (2 pts)
J. Coffee, J. Rakoff
This seminar will focus on contemporary issues in the federal prosecution of white collar crime, with special attention to crimes committed within corporations and other large organizations. The initial focus will be on the substantive law and the primary federal statutes: mail and wire fraud, the Hobbs Acts, the federal securities laws, RICO, money laundering statutes, the False Statements Act, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The scope of several of these statutes is uncertain, particularly after recent Supreme Court decisions.

A second focus will be on corporate criminal responsibility, including the rationale therefore and the problems of optimal corporate sanctions. Some attention will be given to the current proposals before the United States Sentencing Commission. Unique procedural issues also arise in this context: simultaneous civil and criminal proceedings, primary jurisdiction questions, and the issue of whether federal regulatory statutes preempt state criminal prosecutions. A final focus will be on representing defendants, both corporate and individual, in a white collar prosecution.

L8997 SEMINAR: CIVIL LIBERTIES AND THE WAR ON TERROR (2 pts)
(see Constitutional Law)

L9327 SEMINAR: INTERNET AND COMPUTER CRIMES (2 pts)
J. DeMarco, A. Devore
This course will explore the legal issues that judges, legislators, and lawyers increasingly confront as they respond to the recent explosion in Internet and computer-related crime. In particular, we will consider how crimes in cyberspace will challenge traditional approaches to the investigation and prosecution of crime that have evolved from our experience with crimes in physical space. Topics will include: the Fourth Amendment in cyberspace, the law of electronic surveillance, computer hacking, computer viruses, online economic espionage, cyberterrorism, national sovereignty, and civil liberties online. No previous experience is required, although familiarity with the Internet and basic principles of criminal law will be helpful.

This seminar will examine how the criminal justice system should respond to computer-related crime. We will consider three broad questions. First, what conduct should be considered criminal in cyberspace? Second, what privacy regime should govern law enforcement investigations of computer crime? And third, how should traditional notions of sovereignty, adversarial proceedings, and punishment that govern the criminal law in the physical world apply in cyberspace? After our introductory first class, we will devote four to five classes to each of these questions.

We will also make direct use of a case study involving computer intrusion and electronic eavesdropping based on a recent case here in the Southern District of New York. This case study will be used as an aid to explaining both the basics of computer crimes and cybercrime investigations, as a means of illustrating many of the problems and difficult issues that exist in cybercrime and its enforcement, and as a vehicle to address the core three questions of this course. We will integrate this investigation into each week's topics where appropriate.

Students will be required to write three 1,000 word papers. These papers should represent an original work of scholarship that analyzes one of the issues that we discuss in class or, after speaking with the instructors, another appropriate topic.

L9074 SEMINAR: INTERPLAY OF CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LAW (2 pts)
W. Loughlin, J. Rakoff
This seminar is designed both for those who want to be successful practitioners and for those who simply want to know where the law is going and why: in other words, the seminar's focus is both practical and jurisprudential. The subject of the seminar is the breakdown, if not abandonment, of the historic legal distinction between tort and crime. Civil juries, for example, are routinely requested to award "punitive" damages, while sentencing judges are required to impose "civil" restitution. The Supreme Court, asked to determine when "civil" fines constitute "criminal" punishment for double jeopardy purposes, has struggled to define a satisfactory doctrinal borderline between civil and criminal proceedings, twice reversing itself in less than a decade. Everyday business lawyers increasingly find it difficult to advise their clients of whether in, say, building a new plant, doing business overseas, or marketing on the Internet, they face risks of civil or criminal exposure, or both. Litigators increasingly find themselves simultaneously defending criminal prosecutions, regulatory proceedings, and private class actions all premised on the same underlying conduct. These and other such problems that characterize the ever-increasing interplay of civil and criminal law will be examined in the seminar from practical, theoretical, and policy perspectives in detailed case studies drawn from such diverse areas as tax, antitrust, securities, and racketeering. There are, however, no prerequisites for the seminar other than an open mind.

L8672 SEMINAR: LANGUAGE OF DNA IN THE DOMAIN OF LEGAL CULTURE (2 pts)
(see Law and Social Sciences)

L9136 SEMINAR: ORGANIZED CRIME CONTROL (2 pts)
R. Goldstock
This seminar will explore the variety of challanges organized crime poses to society and to traditional law enforcement techniques. Students will undertake a simulated investigation using physical and electronic surveillance, the analysis of documentary evidence, and the examination of recalcitrant witnesses before the grand jury. The RICO statute will be explored in detail as will a variety of non-criminal remedies including forfeiture and court-imposed trusteeships. Students may submit a paper for major or minor writing credit or choose a take-home exam.

L9167 SEMINAR: PROSECUTING VIOLENT GANGS (2 pts)
S. Cohen
This seminar will examine the investigation and prosecution of violent gangs, focusing on gaining an understanding of how prosecutors attack complex criminal activity and engage in strategic problem solving, sometimes expanding the bounds of the criminal law. During the first two-thirds of the semester, students will examine and discuss: definitions of "gangs" and "gang activity"; the traditional array of legal tools available to prosecute violent crimes (such as state and federal gun, murder, and assault statutes); the application of non-traditional legal tools to the prosecution of gang activity; and the rationale for and benefits of the prosecution of gang members as a group rather than as individuals. The students will also consider how the availability of various law enforcement tools and resources tend to shape a prosecutor's response to gang activity. In the final third of the semester, the students will consider case studies and participate in exercises in which the tools and strategies previously studied will be applied to real-world situations.

L8801 SEMINAR: RACE, LAW & CRIMINAL JUSTICE (4 pts)
(see Racial, Economic and Social Justice)

L9137 SEMINAR: SENTENCING (2 pts)
G. Lynch
In 1972, Judge Marvin Frankel wrote that "the almost wholly unchecked and sweeping powers we give to judges in fashioning of sentences are terrifying and intolerable for a society that professes devotion to the rule of law." In part as a response to this bitter criticism, the last 20 years have seen considerable academic and legislative attention to sentencing issues. In particular, a powerful movement for more determinate sentencing has resulted in the adoption of federal sentencing guidelines. Today, many judges denounce the lack of sentencing discretion in terms as strong as those used by Judge Frankel in denouncing its excess.

This seminar will begin with a consideration of the purposes of sentencing, and the rationales for determinate and indeterminate sentencing regimes. We will then proceed to consider a variety of issues arising under the federal guidelines. The overall emphasis will be on issues relevant to the development of a rational, humane, and effective sentencing system.

L8991 SEMINAR: SEPARATION OF POWERS: LAW OF NATIONAL SECURITY (2 pts)
(see Constitutional Law)

L9175 SEMINAR: TRIAL PRACTICE (2 pts)
(see Civil Procedure and Dispute Resolution)

L9233 HUMAN RIGHTS CLINIC (7 pts)
(see Clinics)

L6656 EXTERNSHIP: COMMUNITY DEFENSE (4 pts)
(see Individual Student Community and Court Projects)

The following are not offered in 2007-2008 but are part of the regular course offerings at Columbia Law School.

L8201 ADVANCED CRIMINAL PROCEDURE AND LITIGATION (2 pts)
This course addresses the law, strategy, and ethical considerations of criminal procedure and litigation beginning with a prosecutor's decision to commence an investigation and/or charge though sentencing. Topics to be explored will include: the prosecutorial decision to charge; defense representation (e.g., conflicts, compensation); grand jury practice and privileges; immunity and plea negotiating; discovery; pre-trial motions practice; prosecutorial and defense misconduct; selected trial issues; and sentencing. Materials for this course will be handed out and include court opinions, pleadings from actual cases, Department of Justice/FBI manuals and policies, and general news and law articles. If possible, the course will be organized around a real, complex criminal case.

L9203 PRISONERS AND FAMILIES CLINIC (5 pts)
The goal of the PFC is to provide advocacy to prisoners who are seeking parole release in order to be reunified with their families. Students enroll in the Clinic for one semester only but are generally able to continue working with their clients in subsequent semesters. Students, working in pairs, have primary responsibility for interviewing and counseling a client, examining records from their underlying criminal cases, obtaining documents in support of parole release, developing a case theory and litigating on behalf of the client. The cases typically involve administrative or judicial challenges to parole denials. Cases involve significant opportunities for client contact and legal research and writing, and some cases also involve oral advocacy.

To prepare for the client representation students are educated through a process of classroom and experiential learning. In the early part of the semester, students are exposed to some of the rich literature about prisons and prison life and are provided with a background in the relevant substantive criminal law. Students also participate in intensive simulation exercises designed to develop lawyering skills, and they examine the issues of professional responsibility that are implicated by representation of indigent clients involved in the criminal justice system. Students consider, among other issues, the differences between their cultural and economic backgrounds and those of their clients and the extent to which these differences affect their ability to form effective attorney-client relationships. Finally, students discuss the ways in which gender differences manifest themselves in the prison setting.