Course Schedule

This seminar examines how law constructs and polices the authority to practice medicine. It begins with a brief history of professional control over the practice of medicine then turns to the respective roles of state and federal government in regulating the healthcare profession and the conflicts that arise between them, incorporating the influence non-state actors such as medical associations. The seminar addresses the state’s power to govern licensure, scope of practice, medical education, professional discipline, among other issues. It references the regulation of telehealth as a recurring example through which to understand the seminar’s broader themes.

Remedies repair injuries to legal rights. This simple statement masks considerable doctrinal complexity and deep theoretical controversy. A trespasser occupies your land for a year and somehow earns a million dollars doing it. Your rental loss is fifty thousand dollars. What damages should you get? A jury finds that a state official violated your constitutional rights but that you suffered no measurable harm. What should the court order, if anything? A cement plant showers your neighborhood with dust for years on end. Should the plant be forced to close? Remedies law answers these questions, but not from a single premise. The answers to the questions turn on whether courts are restoring plaintiffs to their pre-injury position, stripping defendants of their wrongful gains, vindicating rights, expressing denunciation of wrongful behavior, or pricing unlawful conduct. We will examine the standard legal and equitable remedies—compensatory damages, injunctions, restitution, etc.—alongside more exceptional ones, such as nominal damages, exemplary damages, and disgorgement. Because remedies cut across doctrinal lines, our materials will range over tort, property, contract, corporations, and fiduciary law. The positive law is our launchpad for the theoretical questions implicated by remedies, including the overarching question of exactly what normative purpose remedies serve. 

The technology of constitution-making has evolved substantially since the writing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. A constitution enacted today almost anywhere in the world would look considerably different—unrecognizable in relation to rights and freedoms, for instance—from the U.S. Constitution. This contrast raises a fundamental question: can we learn anything useful from other constitutions to help us address the challenges of modern law and society here in the United States? Students in this seminar will learn primarily about the U.S. Constitution, with comparisons to constitutions in the 50 states and in every region of the world. Readings will be made freely-available on Canvas. Evaluation will be based on class participation, regular reading checks, and a final term project.

How did Elon Musk's tweet about taking Tesla private trigger an SEC fraud action? How do SEC lawyers build an insider trading case? This seminar goes inside that process: how investigations start, how charging decisions get made, how defense lawyers respond and how those forces shape the trajectory of the law. We will also examine the substantive law most influenced by enforcement decision making, including insider trading, accounting fraud, market manipulation and foreign bribery, and how the enforcement toolkit can strain against emerging challenges like crypto and meme-stock trading. Throughout the seminar we will ask a fundamental question: When does developing the law through individual enforcement actions provide effective investor protection, and at what cost to market participants?

The seminar is taught by a professor with 35 years of securities enforcement experience, including service as a senior SEC enforcement official and as a partner in a global law firm representing clients in major investigations. Drawing on experience from both sides of the table, the professor will offer students firsthand insight into the strategies, judgment calls and practical realities of securities enforcement.

What appears below is a fairly standard description of an admiralty and maritime law writing seminar. Regrettably, it does not convey the uniqueness and excitement of this intellectually challenging area of the law. It has been written that maritime law should be mandatory in the first year of law school since it will excite students about law and introduce them to every subject they will study at the law school. And a national humor magazine, in a pseudo law review article concerning the Law of the Jungle, declared that “nothing…begins to compare in complexity and sheer orneriness with aquatic law.” This writing seminar will examine selected topics of interest regarding all aspects of maritime law ranging from commercial law to "torts at sea." The field of maritime casualties and transactions involves issues ranging across much of the basic law school curriculum including civil procedure, comparative law, conflicts of law, constitutional law, contracts, creditors' rights, environmental law, federal courts, insurance, international law, legislation, products liability, property, remedies, torts and workers' compensation. In the early weeks of the semester students will be introduced to the broad legal background in this field. Thereafter emphasis will be placed on writing skills with maritime law as the subject matter. Guidance will be provided regarding topic selection - topics will be suggested, but students may select their own topic subject to approval. Subsequent sessions will consist largely of discussions of ongoing student research (regarding which use of AI is allowed), draft paper review and their presentations of the results of their original research. A traditional seminar paper will be required. This class is predicated on the importance of thinking and legal writing. Use of AI post-research is strictly prohibited. During the semester students will present rough drafts of the paper for discussion, analysis and feed back. Class presentation of the paper will be an important aspect of the learning experience. Students will be assigned a letter grade based on the quality of the paper and participation in class. Prior study or experience regarding maritime law will afford some advantage, but such is not a 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, 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.

"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.

What is a “tragic choice”?  In this course we will discuss the dilemmas surrounding the decisions by societies to distribute various goods and bads in different ways.  Among these allocations are: who gets expensive medical care and transplants; what protocols are put in place to stem a pandemic; who gets drafted; who is given the right to have children; priorities for immigration; the administration of the death penalty; distributing food in a famine or water in a drought; the ransom of hostages.  In every society, citizens hold competing and incommensurable values.  Tragic choices highlight---and sometime hide or suppress—the conflicts that such choices pit among these values. The principal text is Tragic Choices: the conflicts society confronts in the allocation of tragically scarce resources by Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbitt (Norton, 1978).

This two credit hour course provides an overview of practical school law (Kindergarten-Grade 12) with a focus on school district policy and governance, student and employee rights, and current issues facing public schools. Taught by a practicing school attorney, the course has no formal prerequisites, but will build on principles of federal civil procedure and constitutional law. School law cases frequently rely on these principles as courts strike a balance between the federal and state policy priorities, civil rights, and personal liberties colliding dailing in our public schools. Students will read leading education-related precedents from the U.S. Supreme Court and federal circuit courts, focusing on a different topic each week. At the start of each class session, a subset of students will prepare a briefing and lead the class in discussion of an assigned current event related to the week's topic. Our class discussions will most certainly be "ripped from the headlines." Grading will be a mix of class participation, current event briefings (written and oral), and a short, predictable traditional final exam.

Secured Credit is a key class for many types of students. It's essential for student heading into transactional careers or those in litigation in commercial law. It is also crucial for litigators, including public-interest attorneys, who win cases and want their clients to actually collect the money they've won. Debtor-creditor law has also become an important part of the legal-services lawyer's toolkit. Secured Credit is important for students generally because credit is one of the major systems underlying the U.S. and global economies. Top legal professionals - as Texas Law graduates will be - must have a familiarity with it.

This course covers a breadth of credit systems: consumer, business, secured, and unsecured – with a significant emphasis on commercial secured lending. This course also covers a fundamental question not addressed elsewhere in law school curriculum: once you win that big court case, how do you collect money from the other side? (Or, once you lose that big court case, how do you avoid paying?) Students will engage with real-world-based problems, financial current events, and practical strategies for addressing financial problems in consumer, small business and corporate contexts. The course's primary body of law is Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, but it also touches on bankruptcy topics and real estate law.

A secured loan is one in which the debtor and lender agree that if the debtor does not pay, the lender can take specific items of property from the debtor. You've probably heard of home loans and car loans, which are common examples of secured debts. The property can even be intangible, such as stocks and bonds or the debtor's right to collect from people who owe money to her. This Secured Credit course examines how secured transactions are structured and why they are structured that way. It covers the mechanics of making secured loans, the rules if the debtor doesn't pay, and what can happen to security interests if the debtor goes bankrupt. It also examines the priority rules that rank competing claims to the same property. Through the problem method, students will learn skills that can be applied to a variety of statutes in law school and many types of legal careers.

Securities law is important, not only for litigators and transactional lawyers at law firms and in in-house positions, but also for regulators, policymakers, enforcement lawyers, and others in government service. Securities Regulation is one of the most fundamental courses that students interested in careers at a law firm with corporate and other commercial clients or at a financial regulator should take. Corporations, be they small start-ups or long-established entities, raise capital in public and private offerings of securities. The offerings are subject to securities statutes and Securities and Exchange Commission rules and policies. Moreover, whether or not they are raising capital, all publicly held companies must observe a variety of disclosure and related requirements flowing in large part from securities statutes, rules, and policies. Failures to comply can result in highly consequential private litigation and public enforcement. Broadly speaking, federal securities regulation is displacing state corporate law as the primary legal influence on how publicly held corporations function and is also a focal point for the governance of financial markets. Topics will include the preparation of disclosure documents (including for initial public offerings), exemptions from disclosure requirements, and liability under anti-fraud rules. This course will also consider such related matters as how market forces influence corporate governance and how financial advances (such as the efficient markets hypothesis) and financial innovation are affecting corporations, investors, and capital markets. No prior business or financial background whatsoever is required. The only prerequisite is: Business Associations or Business Associations (Enriched).

Virtually any raising of capital implicates the securities laws. The goal of this course, then, is for students to learn the mechanics of public and private offerings of securities, and to understand the reporting and disclosure requirements that issuing securities entails. This course is particularly important for students who expect to work either in business litigation or transactional law. Topics include public offerings, exempt (i.e., private) offerings, public company regulation and exemption, and, to the extent time permits, secondary market issues such as securities fraud, insider trading, and the regulation of financial intermediaries (such as broker-dealers and investment advisers). Please be aware that this course makes use of economics and math (this is not an arbitrary imposition: courts deciding securities cases make use of economics and math, such as net present valuation and the Efficient Capital Markets Hypothesis). No prior background, beyond a reasonable high school education, in these areas is required -- concepts will be introduced as needed -- although a willingness to engage economics and math is absolutely necessary. Absent special circumstances, students are strongly encouraged to have completed “Business Associations” or “Business Associations (Enriched)” before taking this course.

This course is intended for students in their third years at the School of Law.  Although not a requirement to register for the course, it would be ideal for students taking the course to have completed the basic Oil and Gas Law course.  Students taking the course will also likely find it helpful to have completed the Business Associations and Federal Income Taxation courses.   

This course will offer students detailed practical exposure to the manner in which complex acquisition and disposition (“A&D”) transactions are structured, documented, and consummated.  Since the instructor’s practice has focused, for more than 48 years, on energy-related transactions, the template transaction for the course will be the sale of a substantial package of upstream oil and gas assets.  During the 14 class sessions, we will cover a diverse array of topics, including: (a) basic contract drafting principles; (b) transaction structuring; (c) the structure and content of common agreements preliminary to the sale transaction, such as confidentiality agreements and letters of intent; and (d)  a deeper dive into various aspects of the asset purchase and sale agreement (“PSA”), including (i) identifying and describing the assets to be sold, (ii) determining and adjusting the purchase price, (iii) the obligations ordinarily assumed by the buyer and those retained by the seller, (iv) common representations, warranties, and covenants, (v) the different types of fraud and how parties try to insulate themselves from resulting liability, (vi) termination of the PSA for failure to satisfy the conditions precedent, (vii) post-closing indemnity obligations, and (viii) categories of damages and proper structuring of damages limitations provisions.

This course will concentrate primarily on the legal regulation of major professional team sports in the United States. Topics will include contract enforcement, player movement and restraints, team movements and restraints, the powers of the commissioner, and the (limited) regulation of agents. To a much lesser extent the course will deal with NCAA regulation (especially eligibility and gender equity) and individual sports. Labor Law and Antitrust are helpful, but not required. This is a course best taken in the student's third year. A knowledge of (and enthusiasm for) sports will be assumed.

The Startup Consulting Practicum (formerly known as the TVL Practicum) is an intensive lecture, case study and project-based course that focuses on developing skills for researching business idea viability and delivering compelling presentations. Students in this course are divided into cross-disciplinary teams that are matched with Texas-based startup companies to help tackle their business challenges. Students participate in semester-long consulting projects solving important problems alongside the company’s founders in a hands-on approach using the academic foundations of entrepreneurship and business modeling. Students learn valuable skills such as project management, client relations, team collaboration, market validation, competitive research, price modeling and business analysis.

Students must submit a complete application, attend an information session and be selected to participate in the Consulting Startup Practicum. Full course requirements and qualifications will be reviewed with students during information sessions offered before the registration period for each semester.

This is a full semester course that can only be taken for a grade. The course requires meeting during the scheduled class time and work to be conducted in between classes. For more information and details on this course, visit the website (https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/centers-initiatives/brumley-institute/startup-practicum/).

This course introduces the basic statistical concepts economists and social scientists use to analyze data to provide statistical evidence. The course is intended to provide a sound foundation of introductory-level quantitative reasoning while using real-world examples to illustrate concepts and applications. With the emergence of big data and advances in algorithmic computing, lawyers are being asked more often to understand empirical methods, whether they are preparing a motion or brief, cross-examining experts in the courtroom, or evaluating the effect of a law in a legal or policy setting. In this course, students will learn how to deal with conflicting statistical evidence, use statistical evidence to evaluate the application of laws or policies, and how to deal with expert witnesses providing statistical evidence. The goal of this course is to equip future practicing lawyers with the skills necessary to be an informed consumer of statistics. The course does not require any background in math or statistics; however, students may feel better suited with a basic understanding of algebra.

In Taking Depositions and Handling Expert Witnesses, students will learn how to prepare for, take and defend depositions of lay and expert witnesses. This is a skills-based course where students will actually take depositions and work with experts. This is a short course and will move quickly and have strict attendance policies.

Three key components of the class are:

• Prepare and evaluate expert reports;
• Preparing and presenting expert witnesses in hearings, depositions, and trial
• Taking depositions of “real” expert witnesses (psychiatric residents at Dell Medical School; non-law students)

Suggested prerequisites or concurrent: Evidence, Advocacy Survey, ADR courses.

This class will include both academic introductions to technology law and hands-on, practical exercises that will accustom students to typical work handled by (or for) in-house counsel at technology companies. Areas of focus include: (1) Intellectual property principles and clauses arising in technology transactions, (2) Types of licensing and commercial agreements common in technology, (3) Drafting and negotiating technology agreements with a focus on key terms and conditions, (4) Mergers & acquisitions (an introduction and basics), and (5) Privacy, cybersecurity, social media, and other current topics in technology law. Class instruction will involve: (1) analysis and discussion of intellectual property and commercial issues, (2) analysis and discussion of example technology agreements, and (3) workshop exercises involving drafting and negotiating key clauses within technology agreements. A primary goal of this class is to expand the substantive business and legal knowledge of the students while providing practical deal-making skills easily transferrable to attorneys who support technology companies.

Cross-Listing The course is divided into three segments. The first segment introduces the “idea” of a war against terror, a notion that is widely thought to be nonsense. This idea is examined by focusing on developments in terrorism; in warfare; and in the changing nature of what counts as victory---that is, the objective of warfare. The second segment of the course is devoted to the discussion of the relationship between law and strategy in the domestic context. This discussion includes treatments of the US constitutional issues; developments in the practice of intelligence collection and analysis; a discussion of the ends and means justly available to governments; and an discussion of various approaches by which we might meet the challenge posed by 21st century, global terrorism. The third segment of the course explores the relationship between strategy and law in the international context. This segment discusses various US strategic doctrines; the idea of sovereignty in international law; proposals for global governance; and the difficult task of waging war in the three conflicting but related theatres of terror: the struggles to prevent market state terrorism, protect against gross diminution of humane conditions, and preclude the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The outcome of these struggles---the wars against terror-- will determine whether the new, emerging constitutional order of the market state will be composed of states of consent or states of terror.

This practice-oriented course involves the preparation of a hypothetical civil case for trial in Texas State Court, from initial pleading and motion practice, through written discovery, to taking fact and expert depositions, drafting motions for summary judgment and trial preparation, among other things. Professors Incerto and Oakes will be assisted by seasoned lawyers and state court judges, most of whom have decades of trial experience. Each class will cover one or more case development topics progressing towards trial, and will offer advice, observations and suggestions on case preparation requirements and strategy. The course is taught on a pass/fail basis. There is no final examination. Class attendance is mandatory, and a satisfactory level of performance on written assignments is required to pass the course. This course is best suited for 2nd and 3rd year students interested in state court litigation. Having completed state court procedure and evidence courses is a plus, but not a prerequisite.

Texas Civil Procedure is an advanced litigation course focusing on the Texas Rules of Civil and Appellate Procedure. The course covers pretrial, trial, and appellate procedure in Texas state courts. Unlike first-year Civil Procedure, which focuses on the federal rules and basic concepts, Texas Civil Procedure studies the distinctive Texas rules from an advanced perspective. If you are planning a litigation practice in Texas, this course is essential. The course also helps you prepare for the civil procedure portions of the Texas bar exam. Students may find it helpful to take the course during their second year, before their summer work experience and before they take advanced advocacy courses.

This course divides the semester into roughly four parts.  In the first quarter of the semester, we examine oil production, globally, within OPEC and OPEC+, the US, and particularly in Texas.  We will discuss the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC), its constitutional and statutory underpinnings, along with noteworthy Texas Supreme Ct. cases involving the RRC.  We finish this section by examination of interesting RRC rules and orders, including those related to disposal wells, production sharing agreements/allocation wells, spacing rules, and the Mineral Interest Pooling Act. 

The second quarter of the semester explores energy delivery in Texas, particularly regulated transmission and distribution (TDU) electric utilities and natural gas local distribution companies (LDCs). We examine the elements of a successful rate case and review numerous cases examining Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and RRC treatment of various elements of a rate case. We'll also examine the competitive electric market in ERCOT and discuss several court cases arising from the events of Winter Storm Uri.

In the third quarter, we will discuss energy infrastructure development in Texas, and examine major transmission development, such as Docket No. 38354, the "Hill Country CREZ line," and the "Permian Basin Reliability Plan" 765 KV transmission backbone.

The final quarter of the semester will focus on federal cases related to energy and the environment, including an examination of 'Chevron deference,' as interpreted recently by the U.S. Supreme Court.  

We may have a guest lecturer or two from the RRC, PUCT, or ERCOT. 

Your performance in this course will be evaluated on the basis of a four-hour (maximum), open book, open note (but no access to the internet) mid-term exam administered either the Friday before Spring Break or the Monday after Spring Break; a closed book, closed note (no access to the internet), four-hour (maximum) final exam administered during finals weeks; and in-class active participation. The percentages that comprise your overall grade in the class are 30%, 60% and 10%, respectively.  There is no textbook for this class.  Reading assignments and discussion material will be posted on Canvas in advance of the pertinent class. You should assume that the reading requirement is moderate.  No more than two absences will be allowed (without express prior approval of the instructor.)  

This course provides an overview of Texas Marital Property Law with a focus on practical aspects of representation during a divorce. Substantive topics include characterization, valuation, and division of the marital estate at the time of divorce, along with marital property agreements such as Premarital Agreements, Partition or Exchange Agreements, and Separate Property Conversion Agreements.

The course is a 14-week survey covering league structure, antitrust, collective bargaining, franchise relocation, player contracts, salary cap and luxury tax, media rights, relocation and arena financing, two weeks on the WNBA, NBA Europe, international player movement, draft pathways, and sports betting.

This course is designed to provide future public servants with an in-depth understanding of the organization, capabilities, and purpose of the Department of War (DoW).  Students will understand the history and context in which the DoW was purpose built, how it is regulated by the Executive and Legislative branches, as well as the applicable laws governing it.  They will also gain an understanding of terms, policy and strategy development and how the DoW works with other elements of the Executive branch to carry out National Security priorities.  Through a series of case studies, students will gain an understanding of the implications of Defense strategy execution and how it shapes the future national security environment.