Course Schedule

This course provides a basic introduction to public international law. It will survey the basic principles of international law including: the sources of international law; the law and interpretation of treaties; the relationship between international and domestic law; and jurisdictional competencies. It will also examine a number of specific subjects including: the use of force; human rights; humanitarian law; international criminal law; and terrorism.

Real Estate Finance for Lawyers covers real estate secured credit transactions.  The course does not require any mathematical calculations.  Students with some knowledge or experience in the industry, such as those who have completed Law 385T (Introduction to Real Estate Law and Practice), will be well prepared for this course. Completion of or concurrent enrollment in Secured Credit (Law 380D) is helpful, but not required. The course will begin with an introduction to the real estate finance industry, including various types of loans, lenders, vocabulary and law. From there, we will cover basic versions of the most common documents used in real estate secured financings, and progress to state of the art documents for large/complex transactions. The course will cover the case and statutory law central to some of the most important provisions. The relative interests of borrowers, lenders and other parties, and possible topics for negotiation, will be discussed throughout the course. Students will find that while this course concentrates on real estate secured lending, it has broad practical application to most business transactions, regardless of whether the client is the Borrower or Lender. Course materials will be supplied by the Professor in PDF format.  

This seminar-style course offers students the opportunity to examine more closely one or more issues affecting reentry for individuals who have a criminal history. Designed for students with a particular interest in criminal justice policy, readings will come from a variety of sources, including case law, book chapters, policy reports, academic journals, and investigative accounts. Outside speakers will help ground classroom discussion in practice. Weekly attendance and active class participation, including introducing readings and formulating questions for speakers, is expected and will count toward the final grade. Areas of focus include barriers to employment and housing, the role of substance use and behavioral health challenges, recidivism and public safety, probation and parole practices, and criminal background checks . The course is open to LBJ graduate students.

Prerequisites: Students should possess a basic understanding of the criminal justice system and the role of reentry. Relevant experience could include enrollment in the Criminal Defense, Civil Rights, or Immigration Clinics, other coursework, or prior work or volunteer experience. Interested students must submit an email to the professor indicating their interest and relevant background, as well as a copy of their (unofficial) law school transcript. Contact the professor with any questions.

Note that this course has been retitled but remains substantively the same and students who have already taken Criminal Justice: Reentry will not be allowed to enroll.

Accelerating technological innovation is dramatically altering the financial services landscape.  By disintermediating and disrupting existing relationships, it is enabling the emergence of new business models, products and market participants.   But what are the rules for this revolution?  Or are there rules?   How can lawyers counsel revolutionary entrepreneurs?  How do regulators grapple with the associated challenges?  This course will provide students a framework to consider these questions. We will use as our focal points two emerging and potentially transformational technologies: the development of blockchain distributed ledger technologies, and advances in the application of artificial intelligence to financial services.  We will begin with administrative models of regulation and use that framework to critically assess the way that regulators have utilized existing authorities to respond to the myriad developments in these fields.  Substantive issues will include anti-money laundering, securities and commodities regulation, consumer protection and data privacy.  A consistent theme will be the challenges of developing appropriate regulatory responses to applications of rapidly evolving technologies, and, from the other perspective, that of counseling change agents in an ambiguous regulatory environment.  This course is taught by a professor with a 35-year regulatory enforcement career that included positions as a senior SEC enforcement official and as a partner in a global law firm representing clients in defense of enforcement actions, and who has deep experience with these challenges from both perspectives.      

In this 1 credit, seminar-styled class, we will explore the various legal approaches used to hold network industries accountable for providing public services, such as energy, telecommunications, and drinking water services. Some of these service providers are government-owned, and some are private companies (including public utilities). We tend to think of many of them as providers of essential or critically important services. After discussing some of the conceptual and theoretical writings on institutional challenges relating to the regulation of these powerful actors, we will explore a number of different areas of regulation, including the regulatory oversight of drinking water supplies, chemical manufacture, electric utilities, oil and gas, telecommunications, and e-commerce companies like Amazon.  The structure of the seminar and readings will be established by the professor, but the fifty-minute hourly discussions will be led by student teams that rotate on a weekly basis.  The final grade will be based on the quality of the student’s participation throughout the semester; the quality of the specific classes led by the student; five short blog posts on the weekly readings; and a ten-page paper (double-spaced). 

Economic theory has had a large impact on legal thinking. Behavioral Economics seeks to identify predictable patterns of behavior that do not fit into the rational-choice paradigm; its ultimate goal is to improve the predictive capacities of social science. This seminar will explore Behavioral research on framing effects, loss aversion, risk compensation, mental accounting, time-inconsistent preferences, self-serving biases, perceptions of fairness, and happiness. Several of these behavioral patterns can be used to suggest that, in certain situations, peoples' autonomous choices may not result in outcomes that are best for them even under their own theories of "best." Accordingly, we will also discuss potential policy responses and the appropriate limits of paternalism.

Recent scientific studies show that the world is on the brink of a sixth mass extinction, comparable to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs millions of years ago. But as disheartening as that conclusion is, the data also suggest that it’s not too late to avoid the extinction event by addressing the threats faced by animals and plants around the globe. This course explores law and policy around the broad themes of biodiversity, wildlife and habitat. We will examine a range of international and U.S. laws in place to conserve biodiversity and the gaps in protection that exist. We will focus on international conventions, statutes, including the Endangered Species Act, case law, environmental ethics and several current controversies to explore legal, scientific, and political strategies for protecting at-risk species and their habitats in an increasingly complex, interconnected world.

Most of the students' grade will be based on a paper on an approved topic and a presentation on the paper topic given to the class during one of the last weeks of the semester.  

This workshop seminar will focus on cutting-edge research in business law and economics. Most weeks will feature a leading outside scholar presenting a work-in-progress relating to current issues in business law. 

The range of subject matter includes economically-oriented work on business law, securities regulation, tax, or commercial law.  Many of the papers presented will likely deal with normative questions of private ordering versus public regulation, and will examine problems that arise in both the private and public law spheres.  Similarly, it is expected that many of the papers will consider social welfare effects, such as the effect of law and regulation on entrepreneurship, innovation, capital formation, and financial markets.   

Students will be responsible for written assessments of the paper being presented, and will be evaluated based on their writings and their participation in the workshop. Students' critiques may be made available to the speaker.

This seminar will explore emergent legal, policy-based, social, political, and moral responses to present-day climate destabilization, known as a "threat multiplier" within and across institutions and fields. Rather than lean into the problematics of climate predictions and our obligations to affected future generations, we'll concentrate on understanding the challenges that climate change is beginning to wreak on a presently-affected generation: yours.

Our collective gaze is likely to focus on such arenas of concern as the state of climate science; health science, policy, and law and the human body's heat thresholds; climate mitigation under the lenses of climate diplomacy, climate politics, and the energy transition; legal and equitable theories of recovery for present damage, injury, and harm; green community planning and climate pledges and insurance-driven red-lining threats; and the hopes, promises, and pitches of climate tech and geoengineered solutions.

Learning will be enhanced by multi-disciplinary readings and other materials, by vigorous in-class discussion, and by expert guest-participants.

I welcome students from a diversity of fields and programs into the class! 

Class members will write one very brief paper, due early in the term, and a research-based paper,  format-appropriate to the student's field, at the end. The latter may be a collaborative work by two or more students and it may embody a creative design, a social

purpose, or a publication aim.

Reasonable attendance will be required and no AI-assistance will be allowed.

This is a colloquium-style writing seminar on cutting-edge research and issues involving complex litigation.  In most of the classes, we will host a workshop during which a leading scholar, typically from another University, will present a paper on which the speaker is currently working.  Students are required to write short critiques of each of the speakers’ papers, and the critiques typically will be provided to the speaker.  Students receive detailed comments from both professors on each of their papers. 

The objective of this Writing Seminar is to give students the tools to produce their own publishable work in comparative constitutional law and politics. Students will be trained on how to identify and select an idea for a paper, how to write a paper, and how to make a paper presentation. Students will also have the opportunity to learn writing and research tips from, engage with the work of, and have dinner with leading scholars in the field, who will visit this Writing Seminar to present their works-in-progress. Evaluation will be based on class participation, two response papers (graded pass/fail), one class presentation, one annotated bibliography, one paper outline, and one final term paper.

This course surveys legal and economic analyses of the criminal legal system, exploring areas related to policing, prosecution, and incarceration. The topics of this course are structured in three parts. The first part, “How Did We Get Here,” will explore pre-1960s policies and examine how laws, policies, and institutions conditioned U.S. society for mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal legal system. Students will learn basic statistical concepts for quantitative reasoning and evaluation of statistical evidence. The second part of the course, “Domestic Wars and Racial Disparities,” focuses on the War on Crime and the policies and legal precedents that led to the War on Drugs. This includes legal precedent related to discretionary policing, collective bargaining and police protections, as well as the change from indeterminate to determinate sentencing guidelines, all of which have been linked to racial disparities in the criminal legal system. Lastly, we will examine several current equity-focused reforms to reduce racial disparities in the criminal legal system. This includes bail reform, algorithmic risk assessment, and community-oriented policing. Students should be prepared by reading all assigned materials and be willing to engage in active class discussion. Students will be asked to write short papers in response to readings and will be required to write a policy brief or create a proposal for criminal justice reform.

This seminar focuses on different types of environmental litigation, including: permit hearings and appeals; enforcement hearings and litigation; rule-making and appeals; citizen suits; Superfund litigation; commercial litigation involving environmental issues; and toxic tort litigation. The purpose of the course is to provide practical guidance on litigation aspects of a substantive environmental practice. The course will address procedural and administrative law issues as well as substantive issues. The course will discuss the use of expert witnesses and will touch on public policy and ethical considerations. Grading will be based primarily on a 30-page term paper on a topic selected by the student in consultation with the instructor. For the first ten weeks or so, there will be weekly reading assignments and class discussions based on that reading.  From time-to-time, there will be guest speakers representing agency and public interest perspectives; in the remaining sessions, students will present their draft papers. Prior experience or class work in environmental law is helpful, but is not a prerequisite.

This seminar explore the philosophical idea of equality within the liberal tradition as applied to law. We will discuss various concepts of equality and related central debates in modern political philosophy. The discussion of the application to law will focus on non-constitutional law and in particular various  private law fields. The grade will be based primarily on seminar papers written by students. 

SEMINAR: EXPLORATIONS IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW & POLITICS AROUND THE GLOBE Victor Ferreres Comella. This seminar will explore some of the most important constitutional issues around the globe today. We will start with fundamental questions of constitutional design. How should constitutions be enacted? Who should participate in the framing and ratification of the constitutional text? How difficult should it be to amend a constitution? One big challenge is the creation of a durable framework for liberal democracy in the context of nations emerging from tyranny and/or violent ethno-racial conflict. Constitution-framers have debated and sometimes adopted direct forms of ethno-racial group representation in national legislatures, as well as federalism arrangements that give rival groups their “own” territorial based states or provinces. What are the pros and cons of such devices for overcoming deep conflicts? Not every effort to constitutionally weld together different ethno-racial groups or “nations” succeeds. The fragility of some efforts gives rise to the recurrent problem of secession. Should constitution-framers make any provision for it? And whether they do or not, how should courts address the issue when it arises – as it has in the recent past, in Canada and in parts of Europe?

We will also take up a variety of cutting-edge issues in the domain of constitutional rights and their interpretation and enforcement by courts. Here we will discuss different ways of structuring the judiciary in a number of countries. We will also examine such topics as the ways constitutional systems treat “hate speech,” the ways they address lawmakers’ efforts to outlaw various forms of public religious observance like the wearing of the veil or burka, and the ways that courts seek to enforce so-called “positive” or “social” rights like the rights to health, housing, welfare and education. A further topic concerns the mechanisms democracy can use to protect itself against erosion caused by internal forces. How tolerant should democracy be towards anti-democratic groups? We will also discuss how globalization has affected the ability of national governments to pursue domestic policies for the common good. How should international organizations be structured, and how should they interact with national authorities, to better serve the interests of the people?    

Note: This seminar will be taught during the first half of the Spring Semester.

This seminar will address issues of free speech and academic freedom at universities.  Students will do original research on a subject chosen in consultation with the instructor, write a paper of 25-40 pages due about a month before the end of classes, present and receive reactions to their papers in class, and submit a revised paper at the end of the semester. 

In our time, the nation state has been under pressure from above, where the forces of globalization are leading to the creation of transnational structures of governance and allegiance, and from below, where the forces of secession in the name of self-determination may threaten to break up once durable national structures. The forces of Balkanization have been most prominent in the UK, with Brexit creating internal pressures of secession by Scotland, North Ireland and Wales, and serious complications on the border between North Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In Spain, meanwhile, the Catalan independence movement continues to fester. Once a progenitor of much of the modern trend towards multinational cooperation, the United States has in recent years been a force of resistance and disruption to global arrangements. There is a rich landscape of legal and extralegal questions raised by these events. In this seminar, we will explore that landscape. Among other topics, we will discuss the tension between democracy and globalization; the role of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and the World Bank; the legitimacy of international courts and arbitration; the rise of English as the lingua franca around the world; the relevance of comparative law in constitutional adjudication; and the political and legal issues involving secession.      

This class will focus on a variety of subjects relating to the delivery of health care services, including patient safety and health care quality, regulation of health care providers, and the payment system. Readings will be of diverse types, including articles published in law reviews, medical journals, and other outlets; empirical studies; popular writings; and even news articles and blog columns. Because students are required to make in-class presentations and submit short papers, space is limited and attendance is required.

You will be required to read Overcharged: Why Americans Pay Too Much For Health Care by Professor Silver and David Hyman, a professor at the Georgetown Law Center.  Professor Silver receives no royalties on sales of the book, the price of which is extremely low.  Americans are overcharged for health care, but students will not be overcharged for taking this course.

Disclosure:  

In this class, we will debate issues of health care policy robustly.  Students who have strong opinions on these issues, whether because of their religious faith, culture, personal experiences, or other reasons, are hereby informed that all beliefs may be challenged on all available grounds, including lack of scientific support, excessive cost, and immorality.  Examples of practices that may be discussed, criticized, and debated openly in class include female genital mutilation, male circumcision, faith-based healing of children with treatable diseases, honor killings, abortion, prohibitions on contraception and sex outside of marriage, drug laws, policies requiring rape victims to marry their abusers, and mask and vaccine mandates.  If you have strong beliefs on these or other health care matters that you do not wish to have questioned or criticized, you should not take this class.

This seminar, “Inside Texas Government: How It Really Works,” furthers the public service mission of The University of Texas School of Law by endeavoring to help law students who aspire to become lawyers who practice law in and around Texas state government, or enhancing the understanding of those students who are just interested in politics and government. The School of Law already offers courses that deal with the legislative branch of the Texas state government and how to navigate it, and virtually every class at the School of Law studies the judicial branch and decisions made by it and their impact. However, there is no course offering that specifically focuses on the executive branch and its interaction with the other two branches of Texas state government, especially the legislative branch. This seminar seeks to provide such a focus.

The course teacher, Adjunct Professor Randy Erben, possesses unique expertise, experience, and perspectives into state government. He served as Gov. Abbott’s first legislative director, has run two state agencies, was a registered lobbyist with a broad variety of clients for over 20 years, and currently serves as a commissioner on the Texas Ethics Commission.

The course will study the constitutional and statutory powers of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller, and other officials and agencies. Class topics include legislation (including legislative procedure, special sessions, emergency proclamations, and vetoes); separation of powers; the state budget; state agency regulations; appointments to boards and commissions; litigation; orders, proclamations, and opinions; and other topics.

This seminar reviews and analyzes the powers and duties of the various executive branch offices and applies them to real-life situations.

The seminar consists of fourteen classroom seminar sessions, covering the specific mechanisms the various executive branch agencies utilize to project power within the constitutional, statutory, and regulatory limitations constraining them.

This writing seminar examines resolution of disputes arising from transnational business transactions. Participants will be introduced to the development and operation of arbitration as a mechanism for resolving disputes and applicable U.S., international, and foreign laws, rules, and conventions relating to institution of arbitration, arbitration procedures, and enforcement of awards. Also considered are national jurisdiction over parties, the obtaining of evidence, and the enforcement of judgments internationally, as well as dispute resolution in dealings with foreign governments. Multiple cross-border lawsuits over the same dispute, forum shopping, and forum non conveniens are among the other subjects addressed. In addition to procedural matters, we may discuss the extraterritorial applicability of U.S. regulatory laws (antitrust, securities, RICO, etc.) and their role in transnational litigation. Students who have already taken Professor Westbrook's International Business Litigation or another International Litigation course may not take this seminar.

This seminar surveys international humanitarian law, also known as the international law of armed conflict. We will study such topics as the regulation of various means and methods of warfare, the treatment of war victims (such as POWs and civilians), the application of the law of war to non-state actors (such as terrorist organizations and corporations), and various enforcement mechanisms (such as international criminal tribunals and US military commissions).

Sports, whether mere individual physical exercise, simple competitive games, or national/international competition, often intersect with human rights law. Owing to sport’s long tradition of independence and autonomy, national and international jurisdictions only intervene in a limited way in sporting affairs.  This does not mean, however, that there are not questions to be asked, particularly when it comes to protecting international human rights. In fact, sport relies on a rules-based system in all its facets, including athletes, fans, workers, volunteers and local communities, as well as governments, businesses large and small, the media and sports bodies. This seminar examines and unpacks human rights standards and legal commitments to show how human rights are impacted by sporting events or sport activity. The class will address issues such as the human rights of athletes, the basic right to participate in sport and physical activity, remedies for victims of human rights abuses tied to major global sporting events; discrimination against women, LGBT people and persons with disabilities in sport; campaigns against racism and apartheid in sports; the existence of disciplinary systems in the sports movement and the growing number of situations and cases of potential or actual clashes between the running of competitions and human rights standards (e.g. individuals rights in the context of anti-doping, corruption, and match-fixing). In particular, the seminar will discuss cases decided by human rights courts, such as the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights (ECHR), and specialized sports arbitration mechanisms, notably the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Various sports can be seen as comprising distinct legal systems. Each sport, after all, has its own set of rules, many of which are written and some of which are unwritten. Sports thus present an array of issues that are worthy subjects for legal analysis. And since each sport has its own set of rules, sports are a ripe subject for comparative law analysis. We can look at how similar issues are addressed across different sports. 

Some issues present questions that are readily identifiable as legal in nature. The writing of a particular rule (say, what is a “catch” in football?  in baseball?) requires legal skills. More generally, how should the rule makers decide whether a standard be used (e.g., unnecessary delay) as opposed to a more objective measure (e.g., 25 seconds to serve in tennis); or whether a rule should include a state of mind requirement? What should the standard of review be for replay officials? Should replay even be allowed? If so, when? Should officials be given discretion (like prosecutors) in whether to call a penalty? Should the rules be applied at the end of the game the same as at the beginning?

Other issues are not so obvious. Rule violations have consequences (e.g., runner advances a base, five-yard penalty, free throw). Is it helpful to think of these as the cost of an infraction (think, breach of contract) or a sanction (think, criminal law)? What turns on this? Should a sport employ a no-harm, no-consequence regime or impose a cost/sanction regardless of whether there is any harm (e.g., free throw after a made shot in basketball)? How do/should we think about gamesmanship, cheating, and sportsmanship? Should there be rules about the use of performance-enhancing drugs? If so, what is a performance-enhancing drug? And there’s lots more.

Grades for the seminar will be based on class presentations, participation in class discussion, and a substantial written paper.

This seminar explores the ways in which American constitutional and statutory law constructs and regulates sexuality and gender. Topics covered will include the appropriate level of judicial review for sexual orientation and gender identity classifications and (2) the extent to which discrimination on either basis constitutes discrimination “because of sex” under the Equal Protection Clause and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We will also explore discrimination in healthcare, education, and public accommodations. We will evaluate the invocation of first amendment protections in the struggle for and against LGBTQ equality. Students are expected to participate actively in each week’s discussion, to submit periodic reading questions, and to complete original research which may take the form of a law story in the model of the Law Stories Series from West Academic Press or a traditional research paper.

The germline editing of the human genome will permanently alter our species biologically, in ways large and small. From the standpoint of political, legal, and human rights theory, our seminar asks: How might a liberal democratic community today — marked by value pluralism and aspiring to tolerance for different normative cultures — best regulate the confluence of rapid developments in genetic science and  biotechnology? Our seminar focuses on both the promise of gene manipulation to improve human health and reduce human suffering, and on the dangers that gene manipulation poses to various notions of human dignity and various theories of human nature. In modern secular societies such as the USA, traditional theological or metaphysical conceptions of human nature and human dignity compete with contemporary alternatives: with natural scientific accounts of what our species is, and with social scientific accounts of the individual and social importance of treating members with respect and dignity. These contemporary alternatives deploy post-metaphysical notions of human nature (for example, as a social construct) and with post-theological notions of human dignity (for example, as the decisional autonomy of future persons, held in trust by the current generation). Our seminar asks: How might the American legal system (with inputs from expert medical and bioethical opinion as well as from informed public opinion) plausibly configure decisional autonomy of future persons at the point of genetic manipulation? To answer this question, we will identify resources in in state and federal law (and perhaps in human rights theory as well), toward identifying plausible normative standards for the regulation of human gene editing, for today and in the future.

EXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES

The student will enhance her research skills; improve her writing skills in the scholarly genre; refine her analytic skills through careful reading, analysis, and discursive argumentation in defense of an original thesis in each of her papers; and cultivate her capacity to engage in small group discussion: in developing and conducting one in-class presentation, and in classroom participation more generally. And she will learn a great deal about cutting-edge thinking on the moral and legal challenges of regulating biotechnologies in general and, in particular, the future possible germline editing of our species —— surely one of the most significant challenges for legal thought in the twenty-first century.

GRADING POLICY

Requirements: one 12-page to 16-page paper (based on directed and supervised research in the course materials, addressing one or more issues of legal regulation, either current or proposed) and one in-class power-point presentation of the student's paper-in-progress. The paper itself is due at the end of the semester; the power-point presentation is due in the course of the semester. Presentation will generate thoughtful, critical feedback from the entire class and should be useful to the student's development of her paper. During the semester, the instructor will closely review two rough-drafts of the paper (not graded) and provide written and oral suggestions for improvements in substance and style. Student will submit one final paper, for a grade, revised in light of the instructor’s comments on the first two drafts.

Course grade: 80% of course grade: evaluation of paper; 20% of course grade: one in-class power-point presentation; course grade adjusted for quality of weekly classroom participation.