Introduction to American Law

This course provides an introduction to U.S. law and the U.S. legal system to students already trained in foreign law and legal systems. The theme of the course will be the distinctive mix of common law, statutory law, and constitutional law that shapes the American legal order, and that order's distinctive distribution of authority among various legal decision-makers. The central goal of the course will be to prepare students for the case-based and Socratic methods of teaching that prevail in U.S. law schools. To that end, we will engage in close reading and discussion of selected judicial opinions from canonical first-year courses in U.S. law school: constitutional, contracts, torts, and property law.