New Academic Year Brings New Courses

From a deep dive into the 14th Amendment to a close examination of the Uniform Commercial Code, academic offerings for 2025-2026 include new seminars, lectures, and workshops on timely topics to deepen the intellectual experience available to Columbia Law students. 

Exterior of Jerome L. Greene Hall featuring the sculpture Bellerophon Taming Pegasus

Each year, Columbia Law School faculty design and teach new courses to offer students greater breadth and depth of study, respond to legal trends, and explore pressing issues in law and society. 

“We have added several courses that explore constitutional questions in the news, and the new faculty members joining Columbia Law this year are creating timely courses that include a focus on the regulation of gender and sexuality and a multidisciplinary examination of the interaction among corporations, law, and politics,” says Michael Heller, vice dean for academic affairs and Lawrence A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law. “In addition, faculty who are returning to the Law School from government service, including former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, will bring their perspective and experience to their course offerings.” 

A sampling, below, of new courses taught by Columbia Law’s full-time faculty members covers a wide range of areas of study, from transactional law to legal history to national security. 

Public Law

Abortion in America

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.

Empirical Analysis of Law

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?

Lawyering for Justice

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. 

 

National Security Law and Policy

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.

Public Economic Law: Law and Economic Governance

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.

Public Law Workshop

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. 

Regulation of Gender and Sexuality

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.

State Constitutional 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. 

Private Law

International Arbitration and EU Law

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. 

International Commercial Arbitration Practice

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.

Politics and the Corporation

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. 

Private Law Theory

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.

Sales Transactions: Domestic and International

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.

Technology Law

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. 

Legal History

The 14th Amendment

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.  

Legal Conflict and Change During the Civil War and Reconstruction

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.

View a complete list of Columbia Law School courses and explore more new offerings for 2025–2026.