Common law systems based on precedent are by their very nature oriented toward history.  Columbia Law School, the University and New York City abound in rich source material for research and courses in legal history.  Classes address topics including the English common law, American law, international law and the law of Greece and Rome.  The joint Law School-History Department Program in Law and History further supports interdisciplinary coursework and scholarship.  Legal history courses are designed to provide students with an enriched understanding of the foundations and development of the law.

Courses and seminars in law and philosophy concentrate on philosophical perspectives as they relate to law.  Among the central inter-related questions are the nature of law, how law relates to morality, how judges do and should decide cases, different forms of legal interpretation and how these forms compare with interpretation in other disciplines, the grounds that citizens and officials have to comply with legal requirements, and requisites of justice for legal systems.  In these offerings the focus is less on resolution of particular legal issues or direct usefulness for the practice of law than on more general inquiries that will enrich one's understanding of law and one's participation in the legal profession.

L6223 COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (3 pts)
(see Constitutional Law)

L6173 CRITICAL LEGAL THOUGHT (3 pts)
(see 1L Electives)

L6600 ENGLISH LEGAL HISTORY (3 pts)
E. Moglen
This course presents an introduction to the legal history of England from the Norman Conquest to the reign of Queen Victoria. Lectures focus on the principal themes of private law development, the intellectual history of constitutional law, and the evolution of criminal procedure. Previous study of English history is not a prerequisite. With the instructor's permission a paper may be substituted for the exam.

L6330 FEDERAL INDIAN LAW (2 pts)
(see Racial, Economic and Social Justice)

L6229 IDEAS OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT (4 pts)
(see Constitutional Law)

L8079 JURISPRUDENCE OF WAR (3 pts)
G. Fletcher
The theoretical issues in the seminar encompass the nature of war, the power of presidency to use military measures without a congressional declaration of war, the constitutional problems posed by military tribunals, the application of the Constitution abroad, and the constitutionality of governmental actions in pending cases. At the time of this writing, the critical issues in pending cases are those posed by the foreign detainees in Guantanamo and the detentions of citizens without access to counsel. The seminar will take a comparative perspective and consider how other countries facing terrorist threats respond in shaping the law of detention and of criminal liability.

L6462 JURISPRUDENCE: SELECTED PROBLEMS (2 pts)
R. Greenawalt
We will examine selected problems including the nature of law, judicial decision, rule of law, and legal interpretation, relying on a combination of books and multilith materials.

L6177 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY (3 pts)
(see 1L Electives)

L6126 LAW OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES (2 pts)
(see Racial, Economic and Social Justice)

L6179 LAW, CULTURE, & NOTIONS OF JUSTICE (3 pts)
(see Racial, Economic and Social Justice)

W9020 CONNOQUIUM: CONSTITUTIONALISM IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE (2 pts)
(see Constitutional Law)

L8650 SEMINAR: ANIMAL LAW (2 pts)
D. Wolfson
This course will examine the legal classification of non-human animals, the laws that govern their treatment, as well as a number of topics that fall within the general headings "animal law" and "animal rights." Such topics include: the historical and philosophical treatment of animals, and how such treatment has impacted the ways in which judges, administrators, politicians, lawyers, law students, legal scholars and lay people see and speak about animals; how humans interact with, and use, animals; current animal protection laws; recent political campaigns to reform animal protection laws; "standing" and the problems of litigating on behalf of animals; the classification of animals as "property" and whether such classification is appropriate or important; and whether current legal protections for animals are sufficient, or, in the alternative, whether new legal strategies, such as "legal personhood" or fundamental "legal rights" for animals, should be pursued. From time to time there will be guest speakers.

L9181 SEMINAR: ASIAN AMERICANS AND THE LAW (2 pts)
(see Racial, Economic and Social Justice)

L9698 SEMINAR: CONSTITUTIONAL IDEAS OF THE FOUNDING PERIOD (2 pts)
(see Constitutional Law)

L9467 SEMINAR: CONTRACTS, COLLABORATION AND INTERPRETATION (2 pts)
(see Administrative Law and Public Policy)

L8256 SEMINAR: LAW, INSTITUTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY AMERICA (2 pts)
C. Priest
Lawyers, development experts, and legal scholars increasingly emphasize the importance of law and institutions to global economic development. Examples from American institutional and legal history, such as Alexander Hamilton's financial system and American property law, are frequently invoked as models for developing economies. In addition, understanding the early American legal, political, and economic climate is essential to a thorough understanding of the United States Constitution. It is arguable that the Framers of the Constitution viewed the new nation's economic framework as the most crucial issue they addressed. Yet, American legal, institutional, and economic history is rarely examined in detail.

This seminar examines the foundations of the American legal, political, and economic order as a case study in development. The first third of the seminar will analyze how the imperial structure of the British Empire and the expansion of the Atlantic economy led to the emergence of American federalism, the creation of the American law of slavery, and the reform of property and inheritance law to facilitate credit markets. It will examine the economic context of the framing of the Constitution, Hamilton's financial system, the emergence of the corporation as the dominant economic form, Thomas Jefferson's competing vision of political economy rooted in an agrarian (but radical and complex) ideal, and the creation of the American patent system. The second third of the semester will examine the entrenchment of the slave labor system in the South; nineteenth century family law; the legal transformations underpinning modern capitalism; and modern historical theories of American law and economic development. The final third of the seminar will analyze the current leading scholarship on the role of law and institutions in modern economic development.

L9105 SEMINAR: LEGAL EDUCATION (2 pts)
P. Strauss
The spring of 2007 saw publication of three significant works concerning legal education in the United States: "Educating Lawyers," a publication of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching grounded in an extensive empirical study of legal education at a range of law schools (but not Columbia; "The Language of Law School: Learning to 'Think Like a Lawyer,'" studying, again with an empirical background, how law school classroom discourse prompts students to shift away from moral and emotional terms in thinking about conflict, toward frameworks of legal authority instead; and "Best Practices for Legal Education," an extended project of the Clinical LEgal Education Association.  2007-2008 is the 150th year of continuous legal education at Columbia.  It seems a ripe time to revive the dormant Seminar on Legal Education for collective thought about what we are doing and how we are doing it here at Columbia and in law schools generally.

The seminar will read these and other studies of legal education (including Julius Goebel's history of our school) collectively, focusing on the variety of issues legal education has long presented.  An effort will be made to engage colleagues on issues of particular relevance to their work and interests.  Seminar papers may explore one or another of these general issues in relation to Columbia's approach to legal education; seminarians will be expected to observe one or more classes in which they are not enrolled in connection with this work.  The collective product will constitute a thoughtful appraisal of today's realities and tomorrow's possible directions.

L9555 SEMINAR: LEGAL INTERPRETATION (2 pts)
R. Greenawalt
This seminar will consider various theories about interpretation of legal texts. The primary emphasis will be on statutory interpretation and constitutional interpretation, but we shall pay some attention to interpretation of wills, trusts, and contracts, and to interpretation of nonlegal texts. In these contexts, we will evaluate the claims of textualism, intentionalism, purposivism, evolutionary interpretation, and other approaches. Most of the readings will be of scholarly writings, but some cases will be included. In the first part of the semester, we will discuss assigned materials. In the second part, we will discuss drafts of students papers. Prior to those discussions, other students will write brief comments about the papers. The final papers will respond to those comments as well as the review of the professor.

L8049 SEMINAR: LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP (2 pts)
E. Emens, P. Hamburger, A. Rapaczynski
The Legal Theory Workshop is a longstanding faculty seminar, in which invited speakers, from law and other disciplines, present works in progress for comment and discussion. The topics of the papers -- and therefore of the discussions -- vary widely, depending on the current interests of the invited speakers.

In recent years, students have been invited to participate in the workshop for academic credit. The current structure of the Legal Theory Workshop is as a year-long 3-credit course, with two main classroom components. First, students will read each speaker's paper and attend the biweekly workshop sessions, which are typically held Mondays 4:10 - 6:00. (This year, four of the sessions will be held during Tuesday lunch time.) Second, students will attend biweekly one-hour discussion sessions, led by one of the workshop's faculty directors, at lunchtime (12:10 - 1:00) on Mondays of the workshops (or prior to the Tuesday workshops).

L9816 SEMINAR: MEANINGS OF MOTHERHOOD (3 pts)
(see Family Law)

L9183 SEMINAR: NUREMBERG TRIALS AND WAR CRIMES LAW (2 pts)
(see Human Rights)

L9392 SEMINAR: PHILOSOPHY OF JEWISH LAW (2 pts)
I. Englard
This seminar will first deal with the history and general structure of Jewish Law, its literary sources and attempts of codification. It will then enquire into its religious nature and the inevitable human dimension of an assumed divine law. Additional central topics are: the place of natural law in Jewish law, the relationship between law and morality, between Halakha and Aggada, and finally the specific problems pertaining to the application of Jewish law by secular courts in the U.S.A. and Israel.

The course is geared to accommodate both novices with no prior background in Jewish law, as well as advanced students. The materials will be primarily articles and texts in English.

L9095 SEMINAR: PROBLEMS IN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY (2 pts)
D. Enoch, J. Raz
The seminar is open to students who have a genuine interest in and some prior knowledge of modern analytical political and legal philosophy. It is not an introductory course.. Participants should be familiar with the work of Hart, Rawls, and Dworkin among others. As the seminar will explore metaethical presuppositions of political principles participants should also have some basic competence in meta-ethics. Those wishing to enroll should read chapter one of Alexander Miller, Introduction to Meta-ethics, to make sure of their interest in and ability to participate in this seminar.

Meta-ethics is the philosophical sub-discipline that asks questions about rather than within morality, such as questions about the meaning and truth of moral judgments, their objectivity, their existence, how (and if) we know them, and so on. Discussions in legal and political philosophy sometimes seem to presuppose metaethical theses. In this seminar we plan to make some of these presuppositions explicit and examine them critically. More generally, we want to see whether political and legal philosophy needs to rely on metaethical presuppositions, and which metaethical presuppositions have which political ramifications. Following a first session, which will introduce students to some basic issues in meta-ethics we will turn to a discussion of a range of questions including: does persistent disagreement undermine the possibility of knowledge (and in particular does persistent moral disagreement undermine the possibility of moral knowledge)? Is there a politically significant difference between disagreement on factual matters and disagreement on moral ones? Should the law treat differently factual and moral mistakes? Does the legitimacy of political authority depend on some form of agreement or consent? Is there such a thing as moral authority, and if so how is it and how should it be related to political authority? Does liberalism in general, or the doctrine of liberal neutrality in particular, presuppose metaethical scepticism or nihilism? Does the justification of democracy presuppose any metaethical claims? If so, which? And can they be defended?

L8257 SEMINAR: READINGS IN AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY (2 pts)
J. Witt
Readings in the history of law in America from the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century arrival of Europeans to the present. Topics include the law of conquest, empire, and independence; the constitution and judicial review; the law of slavery and freedom; the law of industry and the New Deal; the mid-twentieth-century Supreme Court; and the history of international law in the United States.

L9600 SEMINAR: THE HIGH-PROFILE TRIAL (2 pts)
R. Ferguson
An examination of the relation between legal decision and larger event in major trials that capture the communal imagination. The emphasis will be on the tensions between levels of discourse from indictment to court transcript to judicial decision and on to newspaper report, editorial comment, blog, journal description, and fictional or dramatic account. At issue will be the way courtroom events reflect communal anxieties while also gauging and sometimes changing ideological aspirations in a culture.

Readings in the seminar will include the trials of John Scopes, Oscar Wilde, and Adolf Eichmann, as well as a series of seduction-murder cases, an important custody battle, a court- martial hearing, and an environmental pollution case - all with related texts.

L8264 SEMINAR: THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW (2 pts)
J. Witt, S. Moyn
This seminar takes up the history of the branch of international law known as the law of war, including international humanitarian law (IHL). It is principally concerned with the law governing the conduct of belligerents in war, known to specialists as the ius in bello, as opposed to the law governing the legality of wars themselves, known as the ius ad bellum. The seminar is principally concerned with the laws of war in the modern period, from the Napoleonic Wars to the present, though it begins deep in the history of western warfare in the medieval period. The goal is to integrate the evolution of law with historical study of the evolution of warfare itself.

L9068 SEMINAR: TOPICS IN JEWISH LAW (2 pts)
S. Berman
This course shall serve as an introduction to the history and literature of Jewish Law. The dynamic elements of the legal system will be investigated through the study of illustrative selected topics from their earliest ancient legal roots, through medieval elaboration and codification, to the contemporary judicial decisions. No prior study of Jewish Law is required for this course.

The following topics will be explored: The right of self-defense and the status of preemptive war, capital punishment, self-incrimination, right of privacy, the duty of confidentiality, environmental law, and the application of duty to testify to foreign courts.

L9390 SEMINAR: TOPICS IN JEWISH LAW: BIOMEDICAL ETHICS (2 pts)
S. Berman
This course will attempt to analyze the ways in which contemporary Jewish jurists have met the challenge of the application of a traditional legal system to novel conditions. The judicial and analytic approaches will be studied in the context of responses to advancement in medical technology. The areas of study will be: abortion, contraception, artificial insemination and surrogate motherhood, autopsies, euthanasia and definition of death.

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

L6176 SEMINAR: THE RULE OF LAW: PERSPECTIVES AND PHILOSOPHY (3 pts)
(see 1L Electives)

L9453 SEMINAR: BIBLICAL JURISPRUDENCE (3 pts)
In the fall of 2006 the seminar will concentrate on the interaction between the book of Genesis and the history of Western art. Professors Stone and Fletcher will lead the discussion of the moral, legal, and philosophical implications of the classic stories in the Book of Genesis (Creation, Adam and Eve, the Flood, Babel, Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph). Professor Michaelsen will present the interpretation of the story in specific paintings with emphasis on the works of Michelangelo, Ghiberti, Dürer, and Rubens. The seminar will meet in three hours sessions on Tuesday evenings from 6 to 9 PM on the following dates: September 12, 19, 26, October 3, 17, and 31, November 7, 14, and 21. Students are expected to attend all sessions and to participate actively. Enrollment is limited to 18. An interview is required. A serious research paper related to the subjects of the seminar will be required. The paper can qualify for major writing credit.

L9097 SEMINAR: DRUGS, LAW AND POLICY (2 pts)
The use of both natural and synthetic intoxicants has been practiced in virtually all cultures and in all epochs of history. In the U.S., the control and regulation of drug use has been a recurring legal and social problem, commanding significant political attention and public resources for over two centuries. Beginning with widespread alcohol abuse in colonial New York and continuing into the post-Civil War era, through the opium dens of the 19th century, and continuing in the contemporary heroin cocaine crises of the late 20th century, the control of intoxicants has engendered important social experiments such as the Harrison and Volstead Acts, several recurring “wars on drugs,” widespread drug testing, the accretion of power to police and prosecutors, and a significant expansion of incarceration. Contemporary drug policy has raised significant constitutional issues, including landmark Fourth (search and seizure), Fourteenth (racial profiling), and Eighth (penal proportionality) amendment decisions. Issues of race, gender, public health, crime, political economy, and bioethics also intersect with drug law and policy. In the international arena, American drug policy often conflicts with law, culture and social norms in both Western and developing countries. In the US, attempts to integrate medical and legal controls have produced unique jurisprudence and institutional arrangements to reconcile competing normative strains.

In this seminar, we will examine the social and historical processes of the construction of drug use and drug “problems,” survey the phenomena of drug and alcohol use, assess the legal and social theories underlying efforts to reduce drug abuse, and examine law and policy to designed to control drugs use and curtail illegal markets to distribute them. Comparative analyses will locate American drug policy in the broader context of international norms to reduce and control the harmful effects of drug abuse.

L8251 SEMINAR: SURVEY OF AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY, 1620-1870 (2 pts)
This course explores the character and role of law in America from European settlements through Reconstruction, with an emphasis on the relation between social and legal developments. Topics include: government on the early frontier; the regulation of morals; the theory and law of contract; religious diversity; commerce and federalism; private associations; codification; slavery; struggles for equality. Most of the readings are primary sources.