Course Schedule
Classes Found
SMNR: Software/Video Game/Interactive Entertainment
- THU 2:30 – 4:20 pm JON 6.257
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This course will explore the legal issues raised by the business of video games and other software-based interactive entertainment. The course will consists of a series of class meetings that track the conception, development and commercialization of video game properties and focus on the way the law has developed and is evolving in each area. In addition, special issues related to virtual worlds/Metaverse, NFTs, user generated content and similar concerns will be covered.
SMNR: Software/Video Game/Interactive Entertainment
- TUE 2:15 – 4:05 pm JON 6.257
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This course will explore the legal issues raised by the business of video games and other software-based interactive entertainment. The course will consists of a series of class meetings that track the conception, development and commercialization of video game properties and focus on the way the law has developed and is evolving in each area. In addition, special issues related to virtual worlds/Metaverse, NFTs, user generated content and similar concerns will be covered.
SMNR: Software/Video Game/Interactive Entertainment
- TUE 3:45 – 5:35 pm JON 5.206
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This course will explore the legal issues raised by the business of video games and other software-based interactive entertainment. The course will consists of a series of class meetings that track the conception, development and commercialization of video game properties and focus on the way the law has developed and is evolving in each area. In addition, special issues related to virtual worlds, user generated content and similar concerns will be covered.
SMNR: Software/Video Game/Interactive Entertainment
- THU 2:40 – 4:38 pm ONLINE
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom.
This course will explore the legal issues raised by the business of video games and other software-based interactive entertainment. The course will consists of a series of class meetings that track the conception, development and commercialization of video game properties and focus on the way the law has developed and is evolving in each area. In addition, special issues related to virtual worlds, user generated content and similar concerns will be covered.
SMNR: Software/Video Game/Interactive Entertainment
- THU 2:15 – 4:05 pm TNH 3.142
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This course will explore the legal issues raised by the business of video games and other software-based interactive entertainment. The course will consists of a series of class meetings that track the conception, development and commercialization of video game properties and focus on the way the law has developed and is evolving in each area. In addition, special issues related to virtual worlds, user generated content and similar concerns will be covered.
SMNR: Sovereignty in Political Theory and Law
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
SMNR: Supreme Court
- MON 3:55 – 5:45 pm JON 5.206
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
- Cross-listed with:
- Other school
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This seminar will be divided into courts of nine students each. Each court will take up the same selection of important and interesting cases pending before the Supreme Court in this term. You will act as a justice of the Supreme Court, deliberate with your fellow justices on the basis of the actual briefs and records before the Court, and decide each case. In the course of the semester, you will be expected to write at least two major opinions (for the court, concurring, or dissenting), and two brief opinions (concurring or dissenting separately). You and your colleagues on your court will be the center of conversation and judgment. My role will be secondary, as a sounding board, gadfly and consultant on your work. This is an exciting and demanding seminar, at a moment of great stress within, and attention to, the Supreme Court and its cases.
SMNR: Supreme Court
- MON 3:45 – 5:35 pm JON 5.206
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This seminar will be divided into courts of nine students each. Each court will take up the same selection of important and interesting cases pending before the Supreme Court in this term. You will act as a justice of the Supreme Court, deliberate with your fellow justices on the basis of the actual briefs and records before the Court, and decide each case. In the course of the semester, you will be expected to write at least two major opinions (for the court, concurring, or dissenting), and two brief opinions (concurring or dissenting separately). You and your colleagues on your court will be the center of conversation and judgment. My role will be secondary, as a sounding board, gadfly and consultant on your work. This is an exciting and demanding seminar, at a moment of great stress within, and attention to, the Supreme Court and its cases.
SMNR: Supreme Court
- WED 3:45 – 5:35 pm JON 6.206
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This seminar will be divided into courts of nine students each. Each court will take up the same selection of important and interesting cases pending before the Supreme Court in this term. You will act as a justice of the Supreme Court, deliberate with your fellow justices on the basis of the actual briefs and records before the Court, and decide each case. In the course of the semester, you will be expected to write at least two major opinions (for the court, concurring, or dissenting), and two brief opinions (concurring or dissenting separately). You and your colleagues on your court will be the center of conversation and judgment. My role will be secondary, as a sounding board, gadfly and consultant on your work. This is an exciting and demanding seminar, at a moment of great stress within, and attention to, the Supreme Court and its cases.
SMNR: Supreme Court
- TUE 4:15 – 6:13 pm ONLINE
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom...with the hope of a socially-distanced, voluntary get together at the end of the semester!
This seminar will be divided into courts of nine students each. Each court will take up the same selection of important and interesting cases pending before the Supreme Court in this term. You will act as a justice of the Supreme Court, deliberate with your fellow justices on the basis of the actual briefs and records before the Court, and decide each case. In the course of the semester, you will be expected to write at least two major opinions (for the court, concurring, or dissenting), and two brief opinions (concurring or dissenting separately). You and your colleagues on your court will be the center of conversation and judgment. My role will be secondary, as a sounding board, gadfly and consultant on your work. This is an exciting and demanding seminar, at a moment of great stress within, and attention to, the Supreme Court and its cases.
SMNR: Supreme Court Docket: Criminal Law & Procedure Cases
- THU 4:15 – 6:05 pm TNH 3.127
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This is a one-semester three-unit seminar that will review the cases the SCOTUS has accepted for certiorari in the 2022-2023 Term, which of course begins in Oct. of 2022. We will focus on those cases concerning criminal law and procedure and related civil topics, such as immigration and civil rights actions. We will meet once a week for two hours. The only prerequisite is first-year criminal law. However, it would no doubt be helpful to have taken one of our criminal procedure or upper-level criminal law-related courses or seminars, or one of the criminal law clinics or internships. Each week, for the first hour, two of you will argue a pending SCOTUS case representing the government or plaintiff and two will argue representing the defense. The class and I will act as the Justices and question you, the attorneys, from the bench. For the second hour, we will dissect the arguments we heard, and perhaps attempt to predict what the Court will do. Two or three students will write a majority, dissenting, and perhaps a concurring opinion, which they will submit to me the following week. You will not be required to draft more than two opinions each. You will rewrite one of your opinions (your choice) after receiving feedback from your fellow students and from me. Your roles will constantly shift. You may not select which side of an argument you are on, but you can request particular cases. If you don't see a case you are following on my list, please ask! I will be flexible based upon student interest.
There is no casebook. Please read the briefs of the parties posted posted on the SCOTUS blog for the assigned cases (or the cert. petition and opposition to cert., if that is all there is), and the opinion below. I will also post those on Canvas for your convenience. Reading the briefs of amici is not required. Please check Canvas every week for your written and oral assignments. I will try to get those sorted out and posted after the first week of class. There is no final exam. Your grade is based 50% on your oral arguments, questioning, and other class participation, and 50% on your written opinions. Obviously I cannot blind grade. However, this seminar is limited to 16 students, and therefore I will not grade on a curve.
SMNR: Surveillance, Liberty, and Privacy
- THU 2:30 – 4:20 pm JON 5.206
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
- Cross-listed with:
- Other school
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
- Prof. keeps own waitlist
Description
In this seminar, students will explore rapidly evolving debates around government surveillance, new technologies, civil liberties, and personal privacy. The course will cover surveillance by the U.S. intelligence community, police, and U.S. allies and adversaries abroad, examining key legal instruments and court decisions in light of broader policy debates. The class will also examine the interbranch allocation of responsibility for authorizing, implementing, and overseeing surveillance programs. At every stage, the course will highlight surveillance activities affecting new and emerging technologies and those technologies’ potential to shift the balance between citizen and state. Students will be evaluated based on class participation and a research paper fulfilling the Law School writing requirement.
SMNR: Surveillance, Liberty, and Privacy
- THU 2:30 – 4:20 pm TNH 3.127
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
- Cross-listed with:
- Other school
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
- Prof. keeps own waitlist
Description
In this seminar, students will explore rapidly evolving debates around government surveillance, new technologies, civil liberties, and personal privacy. The course will cover surveillance by the U.S. intelligence community, police, and U.S. allies and adversaries abroad, examining key legal instruments and court decisions in light of broader policy debates. The class will also examine the interbranch allocation of responsibility for authorizing, implementing, and overseeing surveillance programs. At every stage, the course will highlight surveillance activities affecting new and emerging technologies and those technologies’ potential to shift the balance between citizen and state. Students will be evaluated based on class participation and a research paper fulfilling the Law School writing requirement.
SMNR: Surveillance, Liberty, and Privacy
- THU 2:15 – 4:05 pm TNH 2.137
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
- Cross-listed with:
- Other school
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
In this seminar, students will explore rapidly evolving debates around government surveillance, new technologies, civil liberties, and personal privacy. The course will cover surveillance by the U.S. intelligence community, police, and U.S. allies and adversaries abroad, examining key legal instruments and court decisions in light of broader policy debates. The class will also examine the interbranch allocation of responsibility for authorizing, implementing, and overseeing surveillance programs. At every stage, the course will highlight surveillance activities affecting new and emerging technologies and those technologies’ potential to shift the balance between citizen and state. Students will be evaluated based on class participation and a research paper fulfilling the Law School writing requirement.
SMNR: Surveillance, Liberty, and Privacy
- FRI 10:30 am – 12:20 pm TNH 3.129
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
In this seminar, students will explore rapidly evolving debates around government surveillance, new technologies, civil liberties, and personal privacy. The course will cover surveillance by the U.S. intelligence community, police, and U.S. allies and adversaries abroad, examining key legal instruments and court decisions in light of broader policy debates. The class will also examine the interbranch allocation of responsibility for authorizing, implementing, and overseeing surveillance programs. At every stage, the course will highlight surveillance activities affecting new and emerging technologies and those technologies’ potential to shift the balance between citizen and state. Students will be evaluated based on class participation and a research paper fulfilling the Law School writing requirement.
SMNR: Tax Credits
- TUE 3:55 – 5:45 pm TNH 3.115
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
Prerequisite: Federal Income Tax (LAW 393Q or 493Q).
Negotiations in Congress about tax policy increasingly focus on the dozens of credits in the federal income tax law. There are credits for parenting, education, home ownership, research and development, energy production, electric cars, and building affordable housing, just to name a few. There are three competing frameworks for evaluating tax credits: as instruments for resolving competing claims of tax jurisdiction, as tools of income measurement, and as tax expenditures equivalent to direct spending. This seminar will explore these frameworks and invite each student to write a paper evaluating a specific tax credit of their choice. Prerequisite: Federal Income Tax.
SMNR: Tax Policy
- MON 3:55 – 5:45 pm TNH 3.115
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
Federal Income Taxation (LAW 354J or 454J or 393Q or 493Q) is an absolute prerequisite for this seminar. The professor will not waive this prerequisite.
PREREQUISITE: Federal Income Tax (354J or 454J or 393Q or 493Q). This seminar will examine some fundamental features of the U.S. federal income tax system and will focus on various tax policy considerations including fairness, efficiency, complexity/simplicity, the Executive Branch and legislative processes, and taxpayer behavior. The assigned readings and class discussions will focus on several key topics, including the proper timing for taxing income, progressive versus flat tax rates, taxing the family unit, the income tax treatment of property transferred at death or by gift, tax expenditures, the taxation of corporate income, and capital gains and losses. You and I will need to agree on your paper topic during the first month of class or so, and thereafter you must complete an outline of your paper that you submit to me for review and comment, then you must do a substantial draft of the paper that you will present in class and that I will give you comments on, and, finally, you must submit your final paper to me approximately two or three days before the deadline for spring grades (the precise deadline for the final paper will be given to you during or before the first week of classes in the spring semester). Your grade will be based on the final paper submitted (approximately 85 percent of the final grade) and class participation (approximately 15 percent of the final grade), including discussion of the assigned readings for 6 or 7 weeks of the seminar class sessions, the PowerPoint presentation of your draft paper in class, and your discussion of other students' draft papers during their PowerPoint presentations of them.
SMNR: Tax Policy
- MON 3:45 – 5:35 pm TNH 3.126
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
PREREQUISITE: Federal Income Tax (354J or 454J). This seminar will examine some fundamental features of the U.S. federal income tax system and will focus on various tax policy considerations including fairness, efficiency, complexity/simplicity, the Executive Branch and legislative processes, and taxpayer behavior. The assigned readings and class discussions will focus on several key topics, including the proper timing for taxing income, progressive versus flat tax rates, taxing the family unit, the income tax treatment of property transferred at death or by gift, tax expenditures, the taxation of corporate income, capital gains and losses, and the proper income tax treatment of price level changes. You and I will need to agree on your paper topic during the first month of class or so, and thereafter you must complete an outline of your paper that you submit to me for review and comment, then you must do a substantial draft of the paper that you will present in class, and that I will give you comments on, and, finally, you must submit your final paper to mw two days before the deadline for spring grades. Your grade will be based on the final paper submitted (approximately 85 percent of the final grade) and class participation (approximately 15 percent of the final grade), including discussion of the assigned readings for 6 or 7 weeks of the seminar class sessions, the presentation of your draft paper in class, and your discussion of other students' draft papers during their presentations of them.
SMNR: Tax Policy
- WED 4:15 – 6:13 pm ONLINE
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
- Prof. keeps own waitlist
Description
This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom.
PREREQUISITE: Federal Income Tax (354J or 454J). This seminar will examine some fundamental features of the U.S. federal income tax system and will focus on various tax policy considerations including fairness, efficiency, complexity/simplicity, the Executive Branch and legislative processes, and taxpayer behavior. The assigned readings and class discussions will focus on several key topics, including the proper timing for taxing income, progressive versus flat tax rates, taxing the family unit, the income tax treatment of property transferred at death or by gift, tax expenditures, the taxation of corporate income, capital gains and losses, and the proper income tax treatment of price level changes. You and I will need to agree on your paper topic during the first month of class or so, and thereafter you must complete an outline of your paper that you submit to me for review and comment, then you must do a substantial draft of the paper that you will present in class, and that I will give you comments on, and, finally, you must submit your final paper to mw two days before the deadline for spring grades. Your grade will be based on the final paper submitted (approximately 85 percent of the final grade) and class participation (approximately 15 percent of the final grade), including discussion of the assigned readings for 6 or 7 weeks of the seminar class sessions, the presentation of your draft paper in class, and your discussion of other students' draft papers during their presentations of them.
SMNR: Technology and National Security: Domestic and International Challenges
- J. Schneider
- WED 5:30 – 7:30 pm ONLINE
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
- Cross-listed with:
- Other school
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom.
The purpose of this course is to explore emerging technologies and national security, focusing on information and data including cyber, autonomy, and artificial intelligence. The course will begin with an introduction to data and national security and then move to networks and their implications for national security. The rest of the course is organized by domestic and international challenges. Students will receive a critical overview of US organizational politics and information, explore public-private relationships and national security, examine cyber threats to critical infrastructure, and learn about information warfare and domestic security. The capstone event for the first half of the semester is a simulation that asks students to respond to cyber and information threats to the homeland. The second half of the course covers international challenges, starting with data and war as well as threats to data and war, cyber strategy, unmanned and autonomous weapons, and finally artificial intelligence and national security. The semester ends with the International Crisis War Game in which students must form a national security cabinet to use and respond to emerging technology within a strategic crisis.
SMNR: Texas v. United States
- THU 2:30 – 4:20 pm TNH 3.114
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
"I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and I go home.” — Greg Abbott, Texas Attorney General, April 30, 2013. Everything is bigger in Texas, including the state’s impact on Constitutional Law. Seminal decisions originating in Texas have shaped every area of constitutional doctrine from abortion to voting rights. This class will explore the role that the state of Texas and localities within Texas have played in instigating constitutional change in our federal system. It will engage in in-depth analysis of landmark Supreme Court cases that came out of Texas, including inquiries into how the case developed, why the Supreme Court granted certiorari, and the impact of the eventual decision on Texas and the nation.
SMNR: The Constitution, Inequality, and Political Economy
- WED 4:15 – 6:13 pm ONLINE
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
- Cross-listed with:
- Other school
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom. It will feature visits from several of the authors and activists whose work we will study.
Our focus will be on the Constitution and its relationship to questions of political economy. We will explore how the Constitution and constitutional doctrine have contributed to the problem of economic inequality, including its racial and gender dimensions. And we will examine how the Constitution has empowered government to remedy problems of economic inequality and poverty, and how, on many occasions in the past, it has been understood to require such action. More fundamentally, we will ask how we might reimagine and construct a constitutional order that distributes social and economic resources and power more equitably and in ways that promote the political equality on which constitutional democracy depends. Our approach will be historical, doctrinal, and theoretical; readings will be a mix of caselaw and academic writing.
Topics will include some theoretical work on the role of law in the construction of capitalist or “market society” and the vexed relationship between capitalism – and its characteristic forms of economic inequality - and democracy; the contemporary Supreme Court’s “neo-liberal” or “Lochner revival”; slavery and reparations; the intersections of racial and economic inequality; labor rights, including the right to strike, form unions and bargain collectively; work and income guarantees; and labor participation in governance; the economic dimensions of gender inequality; fundamental welfare rights, such as education and housing; the relationship of economic inequality to democracy; judicial review, departmentalism, and popular constitutionalism; the desirability of structural constitutional reforms; and whether constitutionalizing problems of economic inequality is actually counterproductive. We will also consider how other countries’ constitutions deal with these issues.
SMNR: The Election of 1864
- THU 2:30 – 4:20 pm TNH 3.129
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective
Description
Because of its lopsided outcome, the Election of 1864 gets short shrift in popular and scholarly discussions of the most important elections in American history. Compared to 1800, 1876, or 2000, it barely makes a dent. Insofar as most people know anything about the election, they probably know only that Lincoln won—and maybe that it wasn’t especially close. The assumption baked into that desultory treatment is that there’s nothing for us to learn from the proceedings. This seminar is premised on the idea that that’s a mistake. A compelling case can be made not only that the Election of 1864 was the most important election in American history, but that, 160 years later, it still has some remarkably important lessons to teach us today. First, the election quite literally saved the Union. Had Lincoln lost (as he thought he would as late as the end of August), the odds are exceptionally high that the war would have been lost alongside the election—with Confederate independence as the inevitable, if not inexorable, result. But the Election of 1864 also brought with it a confluence of remarkable (and underappreciated) historical, political, and legal developments that helped to move the needle from Lincoln’s expected defeat in August to his landslide victory in November—and that we’ll study in this class.
It was in 1864 that northern states first adopted absentee voting on a widespread basis—an effort on the part of Republican-controlled state legislatures, in particular, to make it possible for soldiers fighting away from home to vote. That precedent had immediate short-term implications, as well: as many as 70% of the soldiers who voted in 1864 would vote for Lincoln. And it inaugurated a practice that has become a lightning rod in contemporary American politics—in a context that illuminates, and largely responds to, present-day objections to remote voting. 1864 also saw the only mixed presidential ticket in American history, with Lincoln unceremoniously dumping incumbent Vice President Hannibal Hamlin in favor of the Democratic military governor of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson—a move that would have profound political and historical ramifications of its own following Lincoln’s assassination and Johnson’s succession to the presidency, and from which contemporary political parties have taken all of the wrong lessons about cross-party tickets. Relatedly, 1864 saw one of the largest national unity votes in American history, with countless War Democrats voting for the Republican Lincoln on the “National Union” ticket—literally opting for their country over their party. That ticket included a commitment not just to an unconditional Confederate surrender (the central point of contention between War Democrats and Peace Democrats), but to adoption of a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery—which would pass both chambers of Congress in January 1865, and be ratified by the states 11 months later. And all of this happened while the Union army and navy continued to advance against their Confederate foes—one of the more remarkable alignments of political and military decisionmaking during wartime, with consequences for the division of civil and military governmental functions that persist to the present.
But the most remarkable thing about the Election of 1864 is that it happened at all. It remains the only example in recorded history of a democracy holding a national election during a civil war. Despite calls from some members of his party to consider postponement, Lincoln never wavered from his conviction that holding the election on schedule was absolutely essential—even, if not especially, when he became convinced that he was going to lose. Lincoln desperately wanted to win the war, but only to save the very democracy that he was willing to let vote him out of office to stop him. The Election of 1864 thus is not just a story about the election that saved the Union; it is a story about presidential leadership; it is a story about adapting the franchise to the circumstances of the moment; it is a story about elevating country over party; and it is, at its core, a story about the simultaneous fragility and resiliency of our democracy—one that ought to be shouted from the rooftops, especially today. Our goal in this seminar is to learn—and figure out how to tell—that story.
Course Information
- Course ID:
- 397S
Registration Information
- Upperclass-only elective