New Academic Year Brings New Courses

Taught by Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Betts Professor of Law, this student-facilitated reading group focuses on the reproductive justice framework, abortion and state constitutions, abortion and race, abortion and religion, and abortion as an LGBTQ+ issue.

This course, taught by Jeffrey A. Fagan, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law,  addresses the fundamental issues that scientific evidence poses for the law and explores such questions as: What is the role of scientific evidence in adjudicating factual claims? When and how can behavioral science be applied to adjudicate constitutional questions? Does legal analysis using the tools of empirical analysis lead to different conclusions than might a doctrinal analysis?

This reading group, taught by David Pozen, Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law, empowers students to understand a cross section of substantive areas of justice-oriented lawyering, as well as key legal tools and approaches to advocacy. Themes will include the role of impacted communities, the intersectional nature of justice-oriented advocacy, and the importance of collaboration. 

Taught by Matthew C. Waxman, Liviu Librescu Professor of Law, this seminar is organized around contemporary national security law issues, including such possible topics as oversight of covert CIA activities, electronic surveillance and foreign intelligence collection, and presidential versus congressional control of military operations. Meetings with government national security officials will deepen students’ understanding of real-world dilemmas and the way government decision-making works.

The colloquium, taught by Associate Professor of Law Lina Khan, closely examines the major economic governance initiatives of President Joe Biden’s administration across key areas of public economic law, including industrial policy, trade, labor, transportation, health care, and consumer protection, with insights from top administration officials.

Co-taught by Gillian Metzger, Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law, and Kate Andrias, Patricia D. and R. Paul Yetter Professor of Law, a workshop on Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Constitutional Governance gives students insight into current scholarship in public law through presentations of working papers by leading scholars. In the spring semester, Metzger and Lecturer in Law Donald B. Verrilli Jr. ’83, former Solicitor General of the United States, will co-teach the Perspectives on the Presidency workshop, with a focus on the U.S. presidency. 

In this course, Associate Professor of Law Kate Redburn explores the ways in which the law constructs and regulates gender and sexuality in the United States, both as a body of law and from the perspective of legal movements representing people who are marginalized by gender and sexual identities. By examining doctrine, history, and theory, the class provides the conceptual tools necessary to understand this rapidly evolving area of law.

This seminar, taught by Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Betts Professor of Law, examines the structure of state government, the state constitutional commitment to democracy, individual and collective rights, intrastate relations, and the place of state constitutions in the federal system. Students will have the opportunity to engage in more depth with a particular state constitutional issue of their choice. 

The addition of this new seminar arises from the emerging conflict between the international arbitral regime and the European Union. Taught by George A. Bermann, Walter Gellhorn Professor of Law and Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law, the course explores the dramatic set of clashes between international regimes, and how the positions taken by each regime reflect the most basic and contradictory assumptions underlying those regimes. 

This seminar, taught by Professor of Professional Practice Robert Smit, explores, via role-playing and class discussion, the procedural life-cycle of an international commercial arbitration, from preparation of the substantive pleadings through the final award.

Drawing on both theoretical and empirical scholarship in law, political science, economics, and history, this seminar, taught by Associate Professor of Law Reilly S. Steel ’17, examines how corporate actors shape, and are shaped by, law and politics in the United States, and provides a robust understanding of how corporate power operates in American politics and how legal and institutional structures mediate that power. 

The modern legal landscape routinely deploys ideas and principles from private law, a term that encompasses traditional common law subjects (property, contracts, and torts), as well as more specialized and statutory areas such as intellectual property and commercial law. This seminar, taught by Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Sol Goldman Professor of Law, examines theories that engage the common architectural structure of these subjects and their connections to one another.

This advanced course, which builds on the 1L contracts class, focuses on the regulation and planning of sales transactions under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Taught by Avery W. Katz, Milton Handler Professor of Law and Reuben Mark Professor of Organizational Character, the course enables students to develop their skills in statutory analysis, in understanding and planning business transactions, and in applying economics to legal problems.

In this seminar exploring cutting-edge debates in technology law, taught by Professor of Law Rebecca Wexler, students develop expertise in the law of technology, examine the work of a wide range of scholars, and develop their ability to evaluate and comment on legal scholarship. 

This course, taught by Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus, George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History, explores the history, doctrine, and conceptual and popular understandings of the 14th Amendment, with a focus on birthright citizenship, the state action doctrine, equal protection, due process, incorporation, and disqualification. Students examine constitutional developments leading to the 14th Amendment’s adoption, its drafting history, and the different ways of interpreting it, with attention given to the role of the political process, the Supreme Court, and social movements.  

Taught by Kerrel Murray, Associate Professor of Law and Milton Handler Fellow, this seminar explores a variety of legal issues, conflicts, and changes emerging during the Civil War, Reconstruction, and its aftermath, via a mix of primary and secondary sources. In tracking legal development during a critical period of American history, it provides an opportunity to deepen understanding of the context generating and explaining the Reconstruction Amendments.