For many lawyers, whether in public or private practice, dealing with legislatures and government regulatory bodies is an important element of their work.  The list of courses and seminars below illustrate the wide variety of subjects and of intellectual approaches, that students may explore in preparing for this work.  Some, for example, Administrative Law or New Forms of Public Interest Advocacy, focus on institutional issues, in some respects analogs to the foundational course in Civil Procedure or elective courses in Criminal Procedure.  Others, for example Environmental Law, Securities and Capital Markets, or Telecommunications Law, address a particular area of public policy.  The offerings in this area of law include legislation and litigation addressing both sophisticated public policy issues in laws affecting economic and social aspects of our institutions and varieties of issues of administrative law and the application of appropriate standards and sanctions, as well as a variety of procedural issues that arise in the resolution of problems in this vast area.  Any may involve students in the rich secondary literature of the subject, which extends into social science disciplines such as economics and political science.  The first-year elective course in the Regulatory and Administrative State is only one example of that.

L6204 ADMINISTRATIVE LAW (4 pts)
G. Metzger, P. Strauss
The course in Administrative Law is the Civil Procedure of the regulatory state. It relates to courses on regulation in roughly the same way Civil Procedure relates to Contracts, Property, and Torts. The course is concerned with the procedures by which official bodies other than legislatures, courts and prosecutors are governed and reach conclusions in their dealings with the public. Both the procedures employed by agencies themselves, and their oversight relationships with the legislature, the chief executive, and the courts are considered. As government assumes greater control over human activity, lawyers need to know what procedures government agencies employ and what options are available in dealing with them as client, as adversary, or as a fact of public life.

The principal emphasis of the course is on the major federal agencies, the procedures they employ, and the opportunities available for members of the public (regulated industry or interested citizen) to understand, influence, or control their actions. As the course attempts to place agencies in their full operating environment, political as well as judicial controls are stressed. Agency rulemaking and information handling, which involve unfamiliar procedures, are given greater attention than agency adjudication, which approximates the familiar judicial model. Considerable attention may be given to agency uses of electronic media, their increasing importance for agency action, and public awareness of and participation in agency uses.

The course materials are Strauss, Rakoff and Farina, Administrative Law: Cases and Comments (10th Rev. Ed.)

L6293 ANTITRUST AND TRADE REGULATION (3 pts)
H. Goldschmid, S. Hemphill, A. Rapaczynski
The principal focus of the course is the federal antitrust laws, although common-law antecedents and parallels in other areas of the law are also considered. In particular, the course considers: single-firm monopolization; agreements among competitors to restrict competition among themselves (price fixing, division of markets, allocation of customers); price uniformity and other parallel behavior in the absence of agreement; restrictions imposed in agreements between various levels of distribution (resale price maintenance, geographical and other restrictions on resale, exclusive dealing, tying contracts); refusals of business firms to deal with one another; mergers of different companies (horizontal, vertical, and conglomerate); and pricing policies (including predatory pricing).

In addition to case materials, reference is made to economic, social, and political readings and factors influencing the enforcement of the antitrust laws. International and comparative materials are used extensively to provide students with an understanding of how other nations handle competition problems and to raise questions about antitrust policies in the United States. Concrete problems are used with some frequency as the basis for class discussion.

L9827 EDUCATIONAL POLICY MAKING AND THE COURTS (2 pts)
M. Rebell
Beginning with the school desegregation decrees issued by the federal courts in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, the federal and state courts have been called upon to consider a range of asserted educational rights and to oversee far-reaching institutional reforms that bear little relationship to traditional judicial remedies. This course will examine the legal and political justifications for the courts' role in making educational policy and reforming public education institutions, as well as the courts' capacity to undertake these functions. The course will give particular attention to school desegregation cases in the federal courts and education adequacy litigations in the state courts. The course will coordinated with the Symposium on " Re-assessing the Role of the Courts in the Quest for Equal Equal Educational Opportunity,"sponsored by the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College and Columbia Law School , which will be held in November, 2007. Issues to be examined at the Symposium will include a re-consideration of federal desegregation law in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision in the Louisville/Seattle cases and discussions of the role of the courts in the remedial stages of education adequacy litigations by a panel of judges, legislators and former governors. Students will be expected to participate in the Symposium and to critique the papers presented at that event. This course will be listed at both Columbia Law School and Teachers College.

L6250 Immigration Law (3 pts)
L. Benson
This course examines the legal rules and administrative procedures that define U.S. citizenship, permanent residence, non-immigrant categories, and refugee status. Phrased another way, we examine the statutes and regulations that define "who" can be admitted to the United States and under what conditions and/or restrictions. We will discuss the nature of "illegal" immigration and examine the government's enforcement procedures, both at the border and in the interior of the United States. We will also consider the government's power to remove non-citizens, in particular those who have been convicted of criminal activity. Essential to this discussion is close study of the Immigration and Nationality Act, related regulations and the special constitutional doctrines operating in immigration and alienage law. This course is valuable for all law students because immigration law intersects with many fields of law such as criminal law, family law. It may be of special interest to students studying international business law because of our discussion of the regulated movement of people as a part of international trade. Similarly, students of international human rights may find the discussion of substantive and procedural protections for refugees of interest.

L6511 LAW & EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: ISSUES OF AUTHORITY (2 pts)
Heubert, Sigall
This survey course focuses on selected legal issues that arise in public and private elementary and secondary schools. Topics include compulsory education; regulation of public and private schools; church-state issues, including voucher and choice plans; free speech rights of students and teachers; the school's authority to make and enforce rules governing student and staff conduct, on and off school grounds; the duty to protect the safety of students and others; child abuse; search and seizure; and due process. This course is also offered through Teachers College in the fall semester as ORLA 4086.

L6511 LAW AND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: EQUITY ISSUES (2 pts)
J. Heubert
(see Racial, Economic and Social Justice)

L6270 LEGISLATION (3 pts)
(see Constitutional Law)

L6351 NEW FORMS OF PUBLIC INTEREST ADVOCACY (3 pts)
C. Sabel
This course examines the possibility of new strategies for reforming public institutions through law. Its fundamental assumption is that the same pressures that are leading to the partial dismantlement and decentralization of many parts of public administration in the United States and abroad are also creating new opportunities for citizens and communities to participate in the redirection and constitution of government, and for lawyers to facilitate that process in new and imaginative ways. Background readings trace the causes and consequences of the broad reordering of government; prior and current practices of "public interest" lawyers; and the limits of and alternatives to litigation and other adversarial practices by such lawyers. Case studies from the United States, the Westminster systems, and continental Europe (in, for example, school reform, affirmative action claims, aboriginal representation, and environmental regulation) will document the extent to which citizens, communities, and legal practitioners already are beginning to adjust to and further ongoing changes in public administration and the obstacles-doctrinal, institutional, and political-those actors face in doing so. Looking ahead, the course will consider relationships between such innovative administrative models and emerging global trends in democratic participation. This course is intended to be a vehicle for students to engage in original research work in an applied setting of their choice. LLMs and students with an interest in comparative public decision-making structures are encouraged to participate.

This is a one-year course (two units per semester) taught by Prof. Sabel. Classes will be held throughout the first semester, with the second semester set aside for developing projects in groups of two or three, with which he will meet on a bi-weekly basis, or as needed. The goals of the project work are to immerse you in a field of ongoing, innovative institutional reform and public interest practice and for you to produce a major piece of written work that (for those who are interested) would qualify as the core of an article to be published by you in a law or policy journal. The class will meet at a time to be determined that avoids conflicting with the class schedules of all participants. So, you need not worry about scheduling conflicts with other courses you wish to take.

L6174 REGULATION: DECENTRALIZATION & GLOBALIZATION (3 pts)
(see 1L Electives)

L6174 The Regulatory and Administrative State (3 pts)
(see 1L Electives)

L6423 SECURITIES AND CAPITAL MARKETS (3 or 4 pts)
(see Corporate and Securities Law)

L6292 STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT LAW (3 pts)
R. Briffault
In the United States, state and local governments enjoy substantial law-making and regulatory authority; bear significant responsibility for the financing and provision of most domestic public goods and services; and are key sites for political participation. This course considers the constitutional status of state and local governments and the legal rules that structure their powers and obligations. Specific topics include: voting rights at the local level; local government formation and boundary change; state-local relations and local home rule; interlocal conflicts; school finance reform; regional governance; and state and local finance. The course will give particular attention to state constitutional issues.

L6700 TELECOMMUNICATIONS LAW (3 pts)
T. Wu
This is a basic introductory telecommunications course. It will consider the legal structure for all information-delivery technologies: wireline and wireless telephone, cable, broadcast, and satellite services. Particular attention to problems of internet broadband and other internet services.

L8881 SEMINAR: CIVIL LIBERTIES AND NATIONAL SECURITY (2 pts)
(see Constitutional Law)

L9805 SEMINAR: COMPARATIVE & INTERNATIONAL ANTITRUST (2 pts)
M. Janow, P. Mavroidis
This seminar will consider competition law and policy in a global economy. It will examine the contribution of national law and enforcement as well as the variety of international enforcement and harmonization proposals that are under consideration at the present time. The course examines competition law and policy enforcement at the national level through a comparison of approaches in the U.S., the EC and selected other jurisdictions with respect to such key areas as horizontal cartels, vertical distribution restraints, abuse of dominance/monopolization, and competitor collaborations. The latter part of the seminar will consider bilateral, multilateral and other international arrangements in place or under consideration at the present time. The seminar will require students to read cases, guidelines, hypotheticals, and essays. The class will meet once a week for two hours. Background knowledge in U.S. antitrust or EC competition law and policy is a prerequisite.

L9467 SEMINAR: CONTRACTS, COLLABORATION AND INTERPRETATION (2 pts)
C. Sabel
The seminar examines the increasingly common situation in which to follow a rule means in practice to re-write the rule in the light of (joint) efforts to implement it. How, if at all, can such rule-making and revision provide the various forms of accountability we associate with the rule of law? By what institutional means is such revisionary rule making accomplished? What are its implications for our understanding of administrative and constitutional law as well as contractual agreements? These general themes will be explored in the context of case studies of the rights of first peoples, the WTO trade regime, EU governance, and reform of public schools in the US.

L8019 SEMINAR: DIVERSITY AND INNOVATION (3-4 pts)
(see Law and Social Sciences)

L9155 SEMINAR: ENVIRONMENTAL LITIGATION (2 pts)
(see Environmental Law)

L9060 SEMINAR: IMMIGRATION LAW AND POLICY (2 pts)
T. Ruthizer
This seminar is an advanced immigration offering that will focus on current issues of immigration law and policy. We will study legal doctrine and policy issues related to immigration and will consider the rights of non-citizens under the immigration laws, as well as under general constitutional principles.

Among the issues the seminar will address are the rights of immigrants to due process and judicial review, the economic impact of immigrants on U.S. workers and businesses, the current system and proposed alternatives for admitting employment-based and family-based immigrants, the protections for immigrants against discrimination in employment, standards and procedures for determining refugee and asylum claims, grounds for removal, birthright citizenship, loss of citizenship, and consular nonreviewability.

We will also spend considerable time analyzing recent legislative proposals to legalize the unddocumented immigrant population, to create temporary guestworker programs, to increase workplace and border enforcement, and to reconfigure and increase the level of family and employment-based immigration categories.

L9410 SEMINAR: LAW AND POLICY OF HOMELESSNESS (2 pts)
(see Racial, Economic and Social Justice)

L8173 SEMINAR: LAW, MEDIA AND PUBLIC POLICY (2 pts)
P. Williams
This seminar will examine ways in which issues in law and journalism are
intertwined. First, we will examine a few of the more well-publicized first
amendment debates, particularly in the context of campus "culture wars." We will look at matters involving academic freedom, hate speech and
speech/conduct codes, as well as questions surrounding controversial campus newspaper and internet publications. Secondly, we will compare the rhetorical conventions of law and journalism. We will compare legal and journalistic accounts of the same debates. We will also look at the tension between privacy and publicity; issues of personal perspective, the responsibilities of representation, the complexities of truth-telling, the ethics of fairness. Thirdly, we will look at larger public policy interests, such as concentration of media ownership, propaganda, the technology of popularized culture, embedded journalism (in police stations and corporations as well as the military), access to media and diversity of opinion, cultural diversity and affirmative action in the newsroom, and the commerce of news in tension with the notion of a "free" press.
N.B.: This course is not chiefly about the FCC, communications law or administrative questions of media regulation.

L9115 SEMINAR: LEGISLATIVE DRAFTING (2 pts)
F. Grad
The emphasis of the seminar is on the professional skills of legislative research and bill drafting. The principal emphasis is on practiced drafting experience in a "hands-on" fashion, taught by a legislative drafter with years of experience.

A significant current problem of federal or state legislative policy is assigned for study and discussion, and members of the seminar are required to conduct necessary background investigation and research. The members of the seminar then proceed to act in the manner of a legislative committee in examining the different policy alternatives proposed in the light of constitutional issues, practical issues of administration and enforceability, and issues arising out of related legislation or case law.

A preliminary draft is then prepared. One member of the seminar is assigned the preparation of a draft in final form and a supporting memorandum which is then discussed in seminar sessions in great detail before other students complete their final drafts and supporting memoranda.

For the second half of the term, each student is required to select, with the approval of the instructor, a topic of legislative interest or special concern to the student, and to prepare a draft of legislation and supporting memorandum on that topic. Some of the topics selected may involve bills to be drafted for legislators who have asked for such assistance. Students circulate their drafts or preliminary memoranda to the group prior to the meeting at which they report on their problem and its proposed solution.

L8818 SEMINAR: PUBLIC BENEFIT LAW IN CHANGING TIMES (2 pts)
(see Racial, Economic and Social Justice)

L9220 SEMINAR: RACE AND POVERTY LAW (2 pts)
(see Racial, Economic and Social Justice)

L8056 SEMINAR: ROLE OF THE STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL (2 pts)
J. Tierney
Over the last decade, the role of the state attorney general has dramatically expanded so as to allow them to be increasingly significant actors in the making of legal and social policy. In the aftermath of the historic litigation against the tobacco industry, attorneys general have made their mark in securities regulation, antitrust law, consumer protection, internet privacy, environmental reviews, labor law enforcement, reproductive rights policy and much more. Working alone or in combination, the state attorneys general are now major players in American jurisprudence.

Students who are intrigued by this emerging and highly controversial role for attorneys general, or if you think you will need to defend your clients against this new effort, you should consider this two credit seminar that is taught by the former Attorney General of Maine who now serves as th Director of Columbia's National Attorney General Program. The course explores the means used by attorneys general to conduct their responsibilies. Attorneys General and their senior staffs regularly visit the class. A paper is required that will fulfil the requirement for either a Major or Minor Writing credit.

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

L8057 ADVANCED SEMINAR ON STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL (2 pts)
C. Lott, J. Tierney
This two credit seminar is designed to give students with a particular interest in state litigation the opportunity to study how state attorneys general and their staffs make critical litigation decisions including case selection, legal and policy strategies, multistate coordination, and settlements. The seminar will require one-on-one meetings with a number of attorneys general and assistant attorneys general who will be visiting at Columbia Law School during this Spring semester.

L9192 SEMINAR: WELFARE LAW, ENTITLEMENTS AND THE POOR (2 pts)
(see Racial, Economic and Social Justice)

L8003 EXTERNSHIP: COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (2 pts)
(see Individual Student Community and Court Projects)

L6604 EXTERNSHIP: IMMIGRATION LAW (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.

L8025 SEMINAR: ADMINISTRATIVE LAW & GLOBAL POLITICS (2 pts)
C. Sabel
The very idea of a global democracy beyond the Westphalian world of nations but without the support of a global state is no longer a utopian fantasy. In particular two claims of potentially far-reaching importance are advanced in current debate. The first is that to a substantial, and growing, extent, rule making directly affecting the freedom of action of individuals, firms, and nation states (and the making of rules to regulate this rule making) is taking place, undemocratically but not entirely unaccountably, in global settings created by the world's nations but no longer under their effective control. Call this the global administration in the making claim. The second claim is that ensuring the accountability of this emerging global administration will require the elaboration and diffusion of new forms of governance. Because global rule-making does not operate in the shadow of a state, and is not subject to an encompassing authority, its accountability cannot be understood as a matter of strengthening the incentives of rule-making agents to implement the plans of an authorizing principal. In general, the principal-agent models that deeply shape our ideas about the effective and legitimate delegation of such authority seem irrelevant to the global administrative space. Call this the new accountability thesis.

This class investigates these claims and, finding them plausible, goes on to assess two potentially far reaching implications. One is that establishing new forms of accountability at the global level will—because of the way that the nature of global administration connects it with national rule-making—reshape national politics, perhaps helping to re-invigorate democracy there by opening areas of domestic rule-making to a wider range of information, experience, and argument. The second is that those same accountability-enhancing measures have the potential to democratize emergent global administration itself, not by creating institutions of electoral accountability, but by forming the people and public sphere that lie at the heart of democracy. To be sure, if the accountability of global administration depends on arrangements that are elsewhere anomalous and exceptional, then the demos to which it is ultimately accountable may be a comparably anomalous global demos that does not comprise the members of a single ethnically-defined people or nation or state. Still, the anomalous demos may be sufficiently familiar to give substance to the now-fugitive idea of a global democracy without a global state or nation.

This is a 2 point seminar with no prerequisite to register. Students will write a research paper on a topic selected by the student and related to the issues examined in the seminar. J.D. students interested in registering for a major writing credit in this seminar should inform the instructor in the first week of classes.

L8995 SEMINAR: LEGAL ISSUES IN THE WAR ON TERROR (2 pts)
(see Criminal Law)

L8170 SEMINAR: SOCIAL JUSTICE LITIGATION (3 pts)
Today's robust civil rights and civil liberties legal infrastructures share common genealogical roots. Born in the early 20th century, both the ACLU and the NAACP developed aggressive legal approaches to address social injustice through law. These efforts were among the first progeny of the unlikely marriage between radical philanthropy and the traditionally conservative American institution, law. The fundamental shifts that these and other organizations have produced in American constitutional law, as well as in the everyday understanding of most Americans concerning their legally protected rights, reflect the general success of this historical phenomenon. Indeed, the path breaking achievements of these two organizations anchored the development of a cohesive and dynamic legal industry.

The civil rights and civil liberties industry that emerges from this history is marked by a proliferation of legal defense funds and law-based groups advocating for social justice across a range of constituencies and issues. Race-based civil rights organizations have multiplied and laid the path for other organizations representing the interests of constituencies defined by gender, sexual orientation, poverty, immigrant status, disability and other axes of societal differentiation. Civil liberties organizations have further subdivided into groups that address issues of privacy, prisoners? rights, police misconduct, and the like.

Yet, despite these organizations? productive legal reforms and commitment to democratic rights and liberties, the industry is facing significant, potentially destructive pressures. On the domestic scene, the doctrinal infrastructure has been destabilized by Supreme Court decisions and federal legislation which narrow access to courts and limit available remedies. Also, the industry has been weakened by a gradual transformation of the judiciary and a redirected public perception of the scope and significance of civil rights and liberties. On the international scene, economic and global developments undermine the capacity of the industry to meet the contemporary challenges of social injustice precisely at a time when critical issues are transcending national boundaries.

Although national and international pressures may threaten the efficacy of most civil rights and civil liberties organizations, communication and cooperative work between organizations in the industry remain underdeveloped. Limited time, the realities of organizational survival, divisive legal doctrine, and to some extent, entrenched institutional practices militate against the development of a coherent, collective response. Collaborative possibilities between social justice organizations and the academy have yet to reach their full potential as well. This critical juncture constitutes the focal point of this research initiative on civil rights/civil liberties organizations.

The following are broad questions guiding this research initiative: How are social justice organizations adapting to contemporary pressures? What kind of work do they engage in and what future possibilities remain for collaborative work that strengthens their efficacy and ensures their survival? What types of barriers preclude productive convergences and how can these organizations negotiate these barriers? What kinds of structures can best facilitate productive synergies between social justice advocates and legal academics? How can legal education better prepare the next generation of social justice lawyers to function proactively and collaboratively in a shifting legal environment?

Participants will work with a selected social justice organization over the course of the semester to identify existing challenges and to find opportunities for collaborative work. Weekly meetings will be organized to discuss background readings, to share observations, and to engage with invited guest speakers. Topics for group discussion include: a) the genealogy of social justice organizations; b) key constitutional decisions shifting the litigation terrain; c) challenges in financing social justice organizations; d) challenges in public education; and e) the effects of globalization on domestic social justice practice.