Course Schedule

Overview:  A nationally known, plaintiff’s commercial trial lawyer will provide students with an introduction to complex financial litigation, including claims arising out of financial fraud, Ponzi schemes, business mismanagement, and fiduciary self-dealing. Students will study the common types of financial litigation that are pursued by equity holders, creditors, and other victims of financial wrongdoing as well as litigation professionals, such as bankruptcy trustees, receivers, and foreign liquidators against fiduciaries (e.g., directors and officers), professional services firms (e.g., law firms and accounting firms), banks, and other participants in financial transactions.

Although the course will focus on the plaintiff’s side of financial litigation, it will also cover common defenses and the strategies that defendants often utilize in such litigation. Students will review actual complaints and study real cases.  Students will have to think strategically through real-world fact patterns, consider potential claims and defenses, develop litigation strategies, and learn how to think like practicing lawyers. In doing so, students will draw on the knowledge they have learned in a variety of other classes, including contracts, torts, civil procedure, business associations, bankruptcy, and remedies.

Grading: Each student will be graded their written work product, which will include claims analysis.

Course Materials: Course materials will be provided via Canvas.  There is no textbook.

Overview:  A nationally known, plaintiff’s commercial trial lawyer will provide students with an introduction to complex financial litigation, including claims arising out of financial fraud, Ponzi schemes, business mismanagement, and fiduciary self-dealing. Students will study the common types of financial litigation that are pursued by equity holders, creditors, and other victims of financial wrongdoing as well as litigation professionals, such as bankruptcy trustees, receivers, and foreign liquidators against fiduciaries (e.g., directors and officers), professional services firms (e.g., law firms and accounting firms), banks, and other participants in financial transactions.

Although the course will focus on the plaintiff’s side of financial litigation, it will also cover common defenses and the strategies that defendants often utilize in such litigation. Students will review actual complaints and study real cases.  Students will have to think strategically through real-world fact patterns, consider potential claims and defenses, develop litigation strategies, and learn how to think like practicing lawyers. In doing so, students will draw on the knowledge they have learned in a variety of other classes, including contracts, torts, civil procedure, business associations, bankruptcy, and remedies.

Grading: Each student will be graded their written work product, which will include claims analysis.

Course Materials: Course materials will be provided via Canvas.  There is no textbook.

Overview:  A nationally known, plaintiff’s commercial trial lawyer will provide students with an introduction to complex financial litigation, including claims arising out of financial fraud, Ponzi schemes, business mismanagement, and fiduciary self-dealing. Students will study the common types of financial litigation that are pursued by equity holders, creditors, and other victims of financial wrongdoing as well as litigation professionals, such as bankruptcy trustees, receivers, and foreign liquidators against fiduciaries (e.g., directors and officers), professional services firms (e.g., law firms and accounting firms), banks, and other participants in financial transactions.

Although the course will focus on the plaintiff’s side of financial litigation, it will also cover common defenses and the strategies that defendants often utilize in such litigation. Students will review actual complaints and study real cases.  Students will have to think strategically through real-world fact patterns, consider potential claims and defenses, develop litigation strategies, and learn how to think like practicing lawyers. In doing so, students will draw on the knowledge they have learned in a variety of other classes, including contracts, torts, civil procedure, business associations, bankruptcy, and remedies.

Grading: Each student will be graded their written work product, which will include claims analysis.

Course Materials: Course materials will be provided via Canvas.  There is no textbook.

Overview:  A nationally known, plaintiff’s commercial trial lawyer will provide students with an introduction to complex financial litigation, including claims arising out of financial fraud, Ponzi schemes, business mismanagement, and fiduciary self-dealing. Students will study the common types of financial litigation that are pursued by equity holders, creditors, and other victims of financial wrongdoing as well as litigation professionals, such as bankruptcy trustees, receivers, and foreign liquidators against fiduciaries (e.g., directors and officers), professional services firms (e.g., law firms and accounting firms), banks, and other participants in financial transactions.

Although the course will focus on the plaintiff’s side of financial litigation, it will also cover common defenses and the strategies that defendants often utilize in such litigation. Students will review actual complaints and study real cases.  Students will have to think strategically through real-world fact patterns, consider potential claims and defenses, develop litigation strategies, and learn how to think like practicing lawyers. In doing so, students will draw on the knowledge they have learned in a variety of other classes, including contracts, torts, civil procedure, business associations, bankruptcy, and remedies.

Grading: Each student will be graded their written work product, which will include claims analysis.

Course Materials: Course materials will be provided via Canvas.  There is no textbook.

This course will focus on the legal and policy issues relevant to conducting complex civil litigation, and in particular on the problem of adjudicating large numbers of closely related cases. One of the most important and controversial issues in civil procedure today is how to achieve the efficient and fair adjudication of large numbers of cases that arise from a common set of events or transactions and exhibit overlapping factual and legal issues. A number of procedural devices have been used for this purpose, including joinder, consolidation, the class action, multidistrict litigation, bellwether trials, and case sampling. We will study all these devices, but we'll spend much of our time on the class action. Class action topics to be covered include the requirements for class certification, judicial and attorney responsibilities in class litigation, techniques for coordinating multiple class action filings (especially between federal and state courts), approaches to regulating class action settlements, and rules for determining class counsel fees. We will also examine the effect of recent Supreme Court decisions on the future of the class action and on the availability of other procedural devices for adjudicating large-scale case aggregations. 

This course will focus on the legal and policy issues relevant to conducting complex civil litigation, and in particular on the problem of adjudicating large numbers of closely related cases. One of the most important and controversial issues in civil procedure today is how to achieve the efficient and fair adjudication of large numbers of cases that arise from a common set of events or transactions and exhibit overlapping factual and legal issues. A number of procedural devices have been used for this purpose, including joinder, consolidation, the class action, multidistrict litigation, bellwether trials, and case sampling. We will study all these devices, but we'll spend much of our time on the class action. Class action topics to be covered include the requirements for class certification, judicial and attorney responsibilities in class litigation, techniques for coordinating multiple class action filings (especially between federal and state courts), approaches to regulating class action settlements, and rules for determining class counsel fees. We will also examine the effect of recent Supreme Court decisions on the future of the class action and on the availability of other procedural devices for adjudicating large-scale case aggregations. 

Many of the laws that govern criminal activity on the internet were written long before the internet developed into the complex ecosystem we see today. This gap creates challenges for law enforcement attempts to prohibit, investigate, and prosecute cyber crimes. At times, the laws are outdated and frustrate attempts to hold bad actors accountable. Other times, the laws are interpreted in ways that have unintended effects when applied to novel circumstances and emerging technologies. We will study these challenges and understand how courts and legislators are responding to them. The course will cover the law of computer hacking, Internet threats and harassment, criminal data theft, Internet gambling, encryption, online undercover operations and entrapment, the Fourth Amendment online, the law of executing search warrants for digital evidence, CSAM offenses, applying the Wiretap Act to the Internet, the Stored Communications Act, the Cloud Act, the role of federalism in the investigation of digital crimes, and international cooperation in the enforcement of computer crime laws around the world.

No background technological knowledge or experience required. The course does not have any prerequisites. 

Conflict of Laws addresses issues that may arise when a dispute or transaction has connections with more than one state or country. The subject is generally divided into three interrelated topics: (1) territorial jurisdiction (and related doctrines), (2) choice of law, and (3) recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. This course focuses exclusively on choice of law. Most of the course focuses on the sources from which state courts draw in choosing the applicable law. But the course also covers (1) constitutional limits on state choice of law, (2) the rules governing the choice of state law in federal court, and (3) the principles that determine whether and when a federal statute may be given extraterritorial effect. By the end of the course, students should have developed a sound understanding of the methodologies that influence choice of law in the United States and the policy considerations that will shape further development of the law in this area. The first and third topics in Conflict of Laws are covered in a separate course entitled “Jurisdiction & Judgments.”

Conflict of Laws addresses issues that may arise when a dispute or transaction has connections with more than one state or country. The subject is generally divided into three interrelated topics: (1) territorial jurisdiction (and related doctrines), (2) choice of law, and (3) recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. This course focuses exclusively on choice of law. Most of the course focuses on the sources from which state courts draw in choosing the applicable law. But the course also covers (1) constitutional limits on state choice of law, (2) the rules governing the choice of state law in federal court, and (3) the principles that determine whether and when a federal statute may be given extraterritorial effect. By the end of the course, students should have developed a sound understanding of the methodologies that influence choice of law in the United States and the policy considerations that will shape further development of the law in this area. The first and third topics in Conflict of Laws are covered in a separate course entitled “Jurisdiction & Judgments.”

Conflict of Laws addresses issues that may arise when a dispute or transaction has connections with more than one state or country. The subject is generally divided into three interrelated parts: (1) territorial jurisdiction, (2) choice of law, and (3) recognition of foreign judgments. This short course will focus on choice of law.

Conflict of Laws addresses issues that may arise when a dispute or transaction has connections with more than one state or country. The subject is generally divided into three interrelated parts: (1) territorial jurisdiction, (2) choice of law, and (3) recognition of foreign judgments. This short course will focus on choice of law.

Conflict of Laws addresses issues that may arise when a dispute or transaction has connections with more than one state or country. The subject is generally divided into three interrelated parts: (1) territorial jurisdiction, (2) choice of law, and (3) recognition of foreign judgments. This short course will focus on choice of law.

The course will focus on constitutional interpretation involving the Religion Clauses, the Expression Clauses, and the Right to Bear Arms. Both interpretive and substantive issues will be addressed to question what the scope of each constitutional provision should be and whether that scope should be interrelated with the scope of other provisions. Specific topics will include: gun control, dollars to religion, school, prayer, criminal advocacy, pornography, hate speech, and new communications technologies.

The course will focus on constitutional interpretation involving the Religion Clauses, the Expression Clauses, and the Right to Bear Arms. Both interpretive and substantive issues will be addressed to question what the scope of each constitutional provision should be and whether that scope should be interrelated with the scope of other provisions. Specific topics will include: gun control, dollars to religion, school, prayer, criminal advocacy, pornography, hate speech, and new communications technologies.

The course will focus on constitutional interpretation involving the Religion Clauses, the Expression Clauses, and the Right to Bear Arms. Both interpretive and substantive issues will be addressed to question what the scope of each constitutional provision should be and whether that scope should be interrelated with the scope of other provisions. Specific topics will include: gun control, dollars to religion, school, prayer, criminal advocacy, pornography, hate speech, and new communications technologies.

This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom.

The course will focus on constitutional interpretation involving the Religion Clauses, the Expression Clauses, and the Right to Bear Arms. Both interpretive and substantive issues will be addressed to question what the scope of each constitutional provision should be and whether that scope should be interrelated with the scope of other provisions. Specific topics will include: gun control, dollars to religion, school, prayer, criminal advocacy, pornography, hate speech, and new communications technologies.

This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom.

This course will be taught synchronously as a web-based course.

This course will concentrate on the 1st and 14th amendments. Topics to be covered include: (1) free exercise of religion and establishment of religion; (2) freedom of speech; (3) privacy, including issues relating to abortion and sexual orientation; and (4) racial and sex discrimination, including issues related to affirmative action. Emphasis will be placed on the political theory or theories that best explain and justify constitutional doctrines.

This course will focus on the design, history, practice, and theory of constitutional amendment in the United States. Students will explore key questions, including: (1) What does the US Constitution require for a constitutional amendment?; (2) Are there limitations on what may be amended into or out of the US Constitution?; (3) What is (or should be) the role of courts in constitutional amendment?; (4) What values are reflected in the architecture of the country's constitutional amendment procedures?; and (5) Why doesn't the US Constitution make anything unamendable, in contrast to many other countries in the world which protect human dignity, civil rights, and fundamental freedoms against amendment? Readings will be complemented by class visitors, including a Justice of a Constitutional Court and authors of some of the scholarly publications we will read and discuss. Evaluation will be based on a take-home examination inviting students to answer their choice of open-ended essay questions relating to the central themes in this course.

This course will focus on the design, history, practice, and theory of constitutional amendment in the United States. Students will explore key questions, including: (1) What does the US Constitution require for a constitutional amendment?; (2) Are there limitations on what may be amended into or out of the US Constitution?; (3) What is (or should be) the role of courts in constitutional amendment?; (4) What values are reflected in the architecture of the country's constitutional amendment procedures?; and (5) Why doesn't the US Constitution make anything unamendable, in contrast to many other countries in the world which protect human dignity, civil rights, and fundamental freedoms against amendment? Readings will be complemented by class visitors, including a Justice of a Constitutional Court and authors of some of the scholarly publications we will read and discuss. Evaluation will be based on a floating examination inviting students to answer their choice of open-ended essay questions relating to the central themes in this course.

*This course may be taken on a Pass/Fail basis by students who have fulfilled Constitutional Law II requirement. Any student wishing to take this option should seek approval by email to registration@law.utexas.edu.

Do you believe the US Constitution should be amended? How would you amend it? Is it even possible to amend the Constitution in today's sharply divided political environment? Students in this course will examine and contextualize the design, history, practice, and theory of constitutional amendment in the United States. Students will explore several key questions, including: (1) Is the US Constitution the world's most difficult to amend?; (2) What values are reflected in the architecture of the country's constitutional amendment procedures?; and (3) Why doesn't the US Constitution make anything unamendable, unlike other countries in the world, which protect human dignity, federalism, and secularism against amendment? Students in this course will learn why no part of a constitution is more important than the procedures we use to change it. Evaluation will be based on a single-question, broadly-phrased, word-limited take-home examination inviting students to reflect on the central themes in this course. 

This course is taught entirely online via Zoom.

No part of a constitution is more important than the procedures we use to change it. Constitutional amendment procedures open a window into the soul of a constitution, exposing its deepest vulnerabilities and revealing its greatest strengths. This course will explore constitutional amendment procedures in the United States Constitution as the basis for our comparative study of constitutional amendment procedures around the world. Is the United States Constitution the world's most difficult to amend? Why doesn't the United States Constitution make anything unamendable, unlike other countries in the world, which protect human dignity, federalism, and secularism against amendment? What does the amendment process in the United States suggest about the most important constitutional values in this country? We will learn about amendment practices in many countries, including Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Honduras, India, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, among several others. Evaluation will be based on a term paper.

This course will address the process by which constitutions are designed and the implications of the design choices made.  The former raises extremely important issues of political theory (as well as practical politics). That is, how is that that some discreet set of people claim the authority to draft a constitution for the society at large.  This is an especially pressing issue for anyone who takes the theory of "popular sovereignty" seriously.  Who can legitimately claim to speak for "We the People"?  As we will see, actual constitutions have been drafted by a myriad of different processes.  Does process matter?  For example, how important is popular "ratification, a very common part of the overall process in the contempoary world (but absent, notably, with regard to the United States Constitution proposed in 1787)?  But then there is the second question of the actual importance of the design choices made by "framers," whoever they may have been.  This part of the course will involve looking at materials drawn from political scientists as well as lawyeers.  How important, if at all, is the choice of a "presidentialist" system insead of a "parliamentary" one?  Are Bills of Rights ultimately the "parchment barriers" that Madison suggested they would be?

The couse will compare a variety of constitutions to one another.  These will include looking at a number of other national constitutions, but also frequent reference to American state constitutions, which differ from one another and from the United States Constitution in a number of important and interesting ways.  All students will be expected to become especially knowledgeable about a foreign constitution and about the constitution of their own state (that being Texas for anyone who is a foreign national).  

The final grade will be based on two papers written during the course of the semester (one before the spring break, the other afterward) responding to the assigned materials for a given class and subject, which will count for half the final grade, and then a two-hour in-room final examination at the end of the courses.  If a student is at the cusp between two grades, then class participation will be used to decide whether to boost the final grade.  A student can write a seminar paper in lieu of the final examination, though only with advance approval of the teachers.  

This course will address the process by which constitutions are designed and the implications of the design choices made.  The former raises extremely important issues of political theory (as well as practical politics). That is, how is that that some discreet set of people claim the authority to draft a constitution for the society at large.  This is an especially pressing issue for anyone who takes the theory of "popular sovereignty" seriously.  Who can legitimately claim to speak for "We the People"?  As we will see, actual constitutions have been drafted by a myriad of different processes.  Does process matter?  For example, how important is popular "ratification, a very common part of the overall process in the contempoary world (but absent, notably, with regard to the United States Constitution proposed in 1787)?  But then there is the second question of the actual importance of the design choices made by "framers," whoever they may have been.  This part of the course will involve looking at materials drawn from political scientists as well as lawyeers.  How important, if at all, is the choice of a "presidentialist" system insead of a "parliamentary" one?  Are Bills of Rights ultimately the "parchment barriers" that Madison suggested they would be?

The couse will compare a variety of constitutions to one another.  These will include looking at a number of other national constitutions, but also frequent reference to American state constitutions, which differ from one another and from the United States Constitution in a number of important and interesting ways.  All students will be expected to become especially knowledgeable about a foreign constitution and about the constitution of their own state (that being Texas for anyone who is a foreign national).  

The final grade will be based on two papers written during the course of the semester (one before the spring break, the other afterward) responding to the assigned materials for a given class and subject, which will count for half the final grade, and then a two-hour in-room final examination at the end of the courses.  If a student is at the cusp between two grades, then class participation will be used to decide whether to boost the final grade.  A student can write a seminar paper in lieu of the final examination, though only with advance approval of the teachers.  

Constitutions are about power, what it is to be used for, by whom, and according to what understandings and justifications. Constitutional conflicts concern the reach and limits of government power: state and local power versus federal power; legislative versus judicial power; public governmental power versus private liberty. Constitutional conflicts, at the same time, concern questions of interpretive authority. Who has the right to say what the Constitution means and demands? The courts? The federal or state lawmakers? The people themselves? Constitutions, also, are about political community. Who belongs, in the U.S. Constitution's words, to "We, the People"? Who counts as a full, rights-bearing citizen? And what are his or her rights?

These are the main issues of constitutional history; no wonder its currents and conflicts have involved more than the courts. This course will weave together U.S. constitutional history in the courts with the history of constitutional conflicts in American politics, culture and society. At the same time, we will explore the uses of history in constitutional interpretation. What kind of authority should past generations’ constitutional understandings and commitments enjoy in today’s constitutional contests? What does it mean to be “faithful” to the Constitution as a centuries-old text and a centuries-long experiment in self-government? In what ways are we bound by the words and deeds of the past? In what we ways are we free to construct new constitutional meanings and principles? And what can we learn from the ways that past generations addressed these questions?

This year, we will focus chiefly on the first century of American constitutional experience. We’ll examine the founding of the republic and the framing and Antebellum history of the Constitution as a great experiment in self-government. We’ll also study the same period as a great constitutional experiment in federalism - in creating and managing a union of states with profoundly different social orders, values and interests. One main theme will be the protracted conflicts and accommodations between North and South. The coming of the Civil War repays careful attention because it remains the most important constitutional crisis in our history. The War and its aftermath, the period known as Reconstruction, and the Civil War and Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments), constituted a Second Founding, no less significant than the first. The authority of the national government over the states was transformed, and with it, the meaning of American democracy. From a slaveholding, racially exclusive republic, America reconstituted itself into a racially inclusive republic of equal citizens. We’ll study this Second Founding, then its unraveling in the constitutional law and politics of the late 19th century, and then its revival in the Civil Rights era of the mid-20th century.

Prerequisite: U.S. Constitutional Law I.