Class Act

While students are still required to take standard offerings such as legal methods, civil procedure, and criminal law, they can also choose from a vibrant array of innovative courses, including electives, externships, and clinical studies.

 

Here’s a snapshot of some of the new courses being offered this semester:

 

 

In just a few months, the United States will celebrate the 60th anniversary of one of the most important Supreme Court rulings in the nation’s history: Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case holding that separate public schools for black and white children were unconstitutional.

 

In the meantime, Columbia Law School students can study the law as it relates to discrimination with one of the attorneys who argued in favor of desegregating schools in the Brown case: Professor Jack Greenberg ’48, the Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. Professor of Law. Greenberg, a longtime NAACP attorney whose work was featured in last year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Devil in the Grove, will teach a seminar on discrimination with guest lecturers who are practitioners and leading activists in the field. Besides race, the seminar will cover laws against discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, wealth, age, disability, and many other factors.

 

Professor Jeffrey A. Fagan, the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law takes aim at an entirely different area of the law in Social and Legal Regulation of Firearms. In the wake of last year’s school shooting in Sandy Hook, local, state and federal government officials have revisited the complex web of laws governing the sale and use of weapons in this country. Fagan will lead students as they examine current firearm regulations that span criminal justice, mental health, interstate commerce, privacy, product liability, and financial laws.

 

 

Professor Anu Bradford, an international trade law expert, will teach International Economic Migration, a seminar that will focus on the welfare effects of labor migration on host countries, destination countries, migrants, and their families. Bradford, who has written extensively about the issue and discussed her own theory at the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders meeting in Davos earlier this year, will lead students as they analyze existing restrictions on migration and the economic and policy questions surrounding such restrictions. The class will feature a student-run blog that will facilitate engagement with the assigned readings.

 

 

Law and Finance Theories offers students the opportunity to spend a full-year studying and conducting their own research under the guidance of Professor Katharina Pistor, the Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law, who last year won the Max Planck Research Award for research at the intersection of law and economics. The fall portion of the course will give students theoretical grounding in various law and finance theories while the spring term will be devoted to the students’ own research projects and the analysis of case studies.

 

 

Yet another new course, Anatomy of an M&A Transaction: The Intersection of Deal-Making with Delaware Law taught by M&A attorney Charles Nathan, will allow students to explore the major aspects of a transactional practice with an emphasis on the interconnection of judge-made Delaware corporate law and deal structuring and execution. The class is based on an extensive hypothetical that traces the fortunes of a public company that finds itself the target of an activist shareholder campaign.

 

As always, students will have plenty of opportunities to learn outside the classroom, with a dozen externships and a variety of clinics to choose from. Other new courses focus on law firm finances and management, international family law, corporate criminal responsibility in Europe, entrepreneurship, behavioral law and economics, and civil practice in New York. See a complete listing of new courses for the 2013-2014 academic year.