This course is an introduction to problems arising under the Constitution of the United States, including the nature of the judicial function, the operation of the federal system, the separation of powers, and the protection of individual rights. Both the development of constitutional doctrines and current problems are considered.

This course is an introduction to the law of contracts, dealing with consideration, offer and acceptance, techniques for policing the bargaining process, and an introduction to remedies. Although the course is essentially an introduction to the common law of contracts, there will be some attention to statutory materials, including the Uniform Commercial Code.

The major focus is on the law of contracts for the sale of goods, as embodied in Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Particular emphasis is placed on remedies for breach of contract and warranties as to quality. Throughout, comparison is made to the similar concepts developed at common law.

This course focuses on typical statutes proscribing criminal behavior as a means of studying legal concepts of responsibility and punishment. Selected topics include mens rea, mistake, attempt, conspiracy, accomplice liability, homicide, rape, insanity, and related constitutional doctrines.

This course offers the first-year law student an introduction to civil procedure. Emphasis is placed on the interrelationship between theories of jurisdiction and notions of federalism. The course also focuses on approaches to such matters as service of process, joinder, preliminary motions, multiple claims and parties, amendments, discovery, directed verdicts, summary judgment, res judicata, and collateral estoppel.

This course presents fundamental principles of the civil law as they relate to property; Louisiana Civil Code, Preliminary Title, Articles 1-15; Book II, Articles 448-532, 784-791; Book III, Articles 3412-3555. Topics include: introduction to the civil law system, things, ownership, possession, liberative and acquisitive prescription. The course emphasizes analysis of institutions in the light of civilian methodology, jurisprudence, and doctrine.

The course surveys the common law system of property rights. The focus is on voluntary and involuntary transfers of land including estates in land, landlord and tenant rights, eminent domain and servitudes and other rights in the land of another.

This course is designed to teach the fundamentals of legal writing and to acquaint the student with various research techniques utilizing the resources of the law library and computerized legal databases. Students are assigned to an instructor, and each instructor will be assisted by several third-year senior fellows. Students will be placed into small sections, which will meet on a regular basis. Over the course of two semesters, students will learn the techniques of legal problem-solving, and learn to research and draft legal memoranda and briefs through a series of progressively more complex writing assignments. The course is graded and ordinarily culminates with the drafting of an appellate brief and an oral argument before an appellate moot court. The course lasts the entire year and carries 2 credits in the fall and 2 credits in the spring. This course may be repeated 2 times for credit.

This series is designed to help first-year students identify professional goals and build critical academic and professional skills.

This is a basic course in Louisiana contract law with primary emphasis upon the Louisiana Civil Code as revised in 1985, and comparisons to the common law. It explores, comparatively, the general concept of a legal obligation, and more particularly the principles of civil law contracts. Matters dealt with include capacity, consent and cause, formation of contracts, effects of contracts, and remedies for nonperformance.

This course deals with problems of non-contractual wrongs for which private compensation is sought under the common law.  Topics include intentional wrongdoing, negligent wrongdoing, instances in which society imposes strict liability, accidents, and the ways in which the legal system shifts their social costs or attempts deterrence.

This four-credit course will cover the legal architecture of certain business enterprises (including partnerships, corporations, and limited liability companies), how business enterprises are financed, how control and managerial authority are allocated within a business enterprise, and the scope of the fiduciary duties owed to a business enterprise  and its owners in routine and fundamental transactions.  This course will also cover aspects of federal securities law affecting the governance of business enterprises, including antifraud rules and insider trading.

This course covers institutions of property law not covered in the first-year Civil Law Property course.  It includes analysis of the notion, function, and structure of real rights in civil law jurisdictions; actions for the protection of the ownership and possession of movables and immovables; boundary actions; dismemberments of ownership, such as personal servitudes (usufruct, habitation, rights of use), predial servitudes, and building restrictions in subdivision developments.

This is a constitutional law course focusing on those aspects of the Bill of Rights that apply to the rights of suspects and defendants in the investigative phases of the criminal justice system. Specifically, we will be studying United States Supreme Court case law interpreting the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. The course is recommended for the Juvenile Law Clinic and is one of the recommended courses for the Criminal Litigation Clinic.

The focus of this course is on the law and policy considerations surrounding the proof of facts (and law) in judicial proceedings. We will be studying the Federal Rules of Evidence, as most states have adopted these rules wholesale or in large part. We will cover issues of relevance and of reliability, the two main concerns of the Rules.

Practicing lawyers, regardless of their area of expertise, need a basic understanding of federal income tax because this tax affects so much of modern American life. This course covers the fundamentals of federal income taxation of individuals. It provides a basic understanding of the structure and vocabulary of the tax statute and of the relationship of the statute to regulations, other administrative pronouncements, and case law. The course introduces students to key concepts and issues in individual federal taxation such as the taxable unit, rate structure, the definition of income, capital recovery, the difference between a deduction and a credit, and the treatment of capital gains. Through the use of the problem method, the course develops the critical skills necessary to read and analyze any statutory language.

This is a continuation course building upon the general principles developed in Obligations I.  Its focus is a detailed study of sale and (to a lesser extent) lease, the most important nominate contracts in the Civil Code.  Where appropriate, comparisons are made between the UCC and the French and Louisiana Civil Codes.

This course introduces students to the roles of lawyers in society, the nature and structure of the legal profession, the rules of ethics, fundamental concerns and dilemmas of lawyers engaged in the practice of law. The course seeks to make students aware of their ethical responsibilities, both as members of society and members of the legal profession. This course must be taken prior to both as members of society and members of the legal graduation

This course covers issues of substantive and procedural law in their relationship to real estate transactions, and drafting, financing, and other problems encountered in sophisticated transactions.

This course will provide the student with a realistic understanding and appreciation of handling litigation matters in private or corporate practice and the type of work and situations they can expect to deal with on a daily basis.  The course will provide a practical application of how to take a lawsuit from the initial client contact through trial and appeal.  Students will discuss and prepare pleadings, including Complaints/Petitions, Discovery Requests and Responses, Motions, and Judgments, and will be provided with a practical understanding of what is expected of them by judges and how the rules of civil procedure are applied in the real world. The course will be taught by Robert L. Redfearn, Jr. a partner with Simon, Peragine, Smith & Redfearn, L.L.P. Because of the substantial overlap in content, students enrolled in Civil Litigation: Strategy & Practical Skills may not enroll in the Pre-trial Civil Litigation Winter Intersession.

This is a course in credit transactions under the civil law of Louisiana. Topics include suretyship and secured transactions as to movables and immovables. Article 9 of the Louisiana version of the Uniform Commercial Code is considered, together with mortgages on immovables, and codal and statutory privileges. Problems of ranking or priorities are studied.

This course will provide students with an immersive learning experience by teaching them the essential skills need when performing the role of a corporate associate on a merger transaction. Students will be provided with an in depth look at how transactions are initiated, effectuated and completed. Practical skills that will be taught include how to draft and edit key transaction documents such as non-disclosure agreements, letters of intent, purchase and sale agreements and related disclosure schedules, due diligence memos and closing documentation. Students will be assigned to work in groups for certain exercises. They will receive instruction how to draft contract clauses and feedback on their work throughout the course. Students will also participate in negotiating exercises (representing hypothetical buyers and sellers) where they will learn to advocate for their client’s positions in a persuasive but non-confrontational fashion. In class lectures will primarily provide the students with practical information from the real world of M&A transactions.

This course introduces students to the principles, processes and techniques for drafting business contracts. Students will learn how transactional lawyers translate a business deal into contract provisions. Students will draft commercial agreements with a focus on managing risk, minimizing ambiguity, drafting with clarity, using contemporary commercial drafting techniques, and solving problems through effective drafting. Students will also learn to read, review and analyze contracts with an eye toward both legal and business risk issues. The course is presented through a combination of lecture, drafting and editing assignments, and in-class exercises. Students draft sample contract provisions, draft contracts from scratch, analyze term sheets, and review and revise contracts. Grades will be based upon drafting and editing assignments, participation in in-class exercises, and good faith completion of ungraded assignments.

This course deals in depth with the creation and perfection of security interests in personal property, priority of claims, and remedies upon debtors’ default under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. In addition to full coverage of Article 9, the potential risks of the secured creditor under the Federal Bankruptcy Code are considered. Substantial consideration is given to the policies and commercial equities which underlie doctrine in this area of law.

After a brief study of individual debt collection under state law, this course will focus on federal bankruptcy law. It will provide an overview of fundamental aspects of consumer and business bankruptcy law and practice. It will also explore a number of current and ongoing policy debates related to bankruptcy law. Thus, the course should be of interest to students who expect to be involved in the practice of bankruptcy law as well as any students who wish to explore broader themes related to economics, financial markets, politics, legislative process, and public policy.

This course examines the law governing the transmission of property at the owner's death. Topics emphasized are intestate succession; the substantive and formal requirements for the validity of will; interpretation of wills; the creation of private trusts; the nature of the beneficiary's interest in a trust.

This course highlights the fact that large areas of national law are influenced (and sometimes even driven) by developments outside our country’s borders, and that ‘local’ legal practice will often require lawyers to engage with foreign and/or international law – or to apply comparative legal techniques – in their daily work. The focus is very much on the practical application of foreign/comparative/international law in areas such as contract law, torts, constitutional law, human rights protection, public international law, environmental law, development, employment law, criminal law, or economic regulation. The course is based on a background hypothetical involving a U.S. company which seeks to expand its operations – both in terms of production, distribution and administration – to various foreign markets across the globe and/or import to and sell foreign goods in the U.S. Week by week, different legal questions and difficulties arise. These will touch on, e.g., contractual issues, products liability, employment law, environmental regulation, taxation, health and safety (consumer protection), or conflicts of law. International treaties such as TRIPS might also come into play. In one of the two weekly classes the instructor will set out the (new) facts and discuss the core aspects of the relevant area of law. Students will then be asked to research the issues raised in the hypothetical (individually or in groups) and to present in the second weekly meeting their substantive findings as well as any practical difficulties they encountered in the course of their work (language barriers, access to foreign legal materials, or possible non-legal trade-offs between the advantages and problems that foreign jurisdictions might offer or pose in a particular field). The assignment will always require the production of a concise legal memorandum that sets out the issues and possible solutions, and suggests a way forward for the client company. Students should expect a few surprises (such as sudden changes of the situation 24 hours prior to the deadline for completion of the memorandum) and be prepared to present their work in a professional format (both orally and in writing). Successful completion of the course will require submission of the entire portfolio of assignments. Assessment is based on a three-hour final exam. The course will start off with an introduction to comparative methodology, research methods, and an explanation of the background hypothetical, cover 5 distinct problems in selected areas of the law, and close with a final debriefing/review. Students will receive a course package with selected texts about comparative methodology and, in preparation for each problem, substantive background reading that covers the relevant legal topic. The weekly handouts that set out the (developing) narrative of the hypothetical and research assignments may contain additional specific materials such as model contracts, newspaper clippings, or traditional references to cases, statutes, international treaties and legal articles or book chapters.

This course is a comparative study of marital property regimes that involve the distinction between the separate and community property of spouses. The course examines the law of the eight community property states and Wisconsin, which has a version of community property based on the Uniform Marital Property Act. Special attention will be given to Louisiana law.

This course explores how courts in the United States determine the governing rules and doctrines in cases that implicate the laws of more than one jurisdiction. Students will learn the various approaches courts take to resolving conflicts of law when they arise, including the historical and theoretical foundations for those approaches.

This course is a study of the formation, rights and obligations in formal and informal family relationships, and the breakdown of marriage and its incidents such as nullity of marriage, divorce, division of property, support, and custody. The course will treat the family law of both the civil law and common law jurisdictions of the United States.

The employment relationship serves an important role in structuring the lives of most adults in the United States. Employment provides wages, and often, a slew of benefits including health care and retirement pensions. It also provides a sense of stability and routine, and can even serve as the foundation of our identities. Legal disputes about the employment relationship occupy a significant segment of the legal market and consume a significant proportion of legal resources. This course offers students an overview of the important legal issues that are raised in the context of the employment relationship. It examines the law governing the employment relationship, including the establishment and termination of that relationship. The course will discuss employment issues, such as contractual employment agreements, wrongful discharge, regulation of wage and hour laws (FLSA), leave (e.g., FMLA), safety (OSHA and workers comp), unemployment insurance, privacy and freedom of speech, intellectual property issues (such as R&D ownership, trade secrets and noncompetition clauses), the developing concept of unjust discharge, and regulations providing protection of retirement benefits. Throughout the course, students will be able to deepen their study of contract law, torts, and statutory and regulatory processes through the context of the law of the work. The course does not cover either Employment Discrimination or Labor Law, both of which are offered as separate courses.

Modern discovery increasingly concerns the production and retrieval of information that is electronically stored in computer systems, email, text messages, social media, cloud applications, and varying other methods. This course will focus on the new issues, rules, and practices involving the application of e-discovery, digital evidence, and computer forensics. It will explore not only the application of the federal rules of civil procedure and evidence to electronic discovery but also the appropriate handling and treatment of electronically stored information in the litigation process. The course is taught by the Hon. Karen Wells Roby, Chief Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, and Lynn M. Luker, Of Counsel at Stanley, Reuter, Ross, Thornton & Alford.

The trial lawyer's craft lies in marshaling the evidence that enables the parties to weigh the risks and benefits of litigation and the court and jury to determine the facts and resolve disputes. Evidence is information; and, apart from testimony, nearly all information is created, collected, communicated and stored electronically. Thus, the ability to identify, preserve, interpret, asses, authenticate and challenge electronically stored information (ESI) is crucial advocacy skill. Students will explore information technology (IT) and digital evidence through the lens of trial practice. You will learn the language of IT and acquire hands-on-trading in the tools of ESI and computer forensics. We will explore information management and storage and the Maria forms ESI occupies as it bears on emerging standards of lawyer competency. You will cover challenges of acquisition, authenticity and admissibility unique to modern digital evidence. This course will be taught by Craig Ball, a trial attorney and consultant in computer forensics and e-discovery.

Federal courts occupy a strategic place at the crossroads of the foundational constitutional principles of separation of powers, federalism, and individual rights. This course examines the constitutional and statutory power of federal courts from that vantage point. Topics planned for the course include case-or- controversy and justiciability limitations on the federal judicial power (with an emphasis on standing doctrine), congressional power to control the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, the role of state courts in the enforcement of federal rights, state sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment, and abstention doctrine.

There are about 12 million people around the world who are de jure stateless or who are at risk of being stateless. A stateless person is defined as one "who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its laws." One of the consequences of statelessness is the lack of a place to belong and the loss of protection that comes with belonging. In a world of states where everyone is supposed to belong to one or another nation-state, the stateless becomes the "extra," the surplus product of the international order of states. This seminar focuses on the condition of the statelessness to explore the general issue of what it means to belong and the consequences of being denied the opportunity (or the right) to so belong. Using interdisciplinary material (law, political theory, geography and sociology) the seminar will provide the opportunity: to examine the conditions that lead to statelessness, to assess the existing national and international responses that are meant to deal with statelessness, and to explore alternative ways in which belonging could be conceived so that incidences of statelessness are minimized. The seminar will explore the dignity that membership provides through a close study of its opposite, the indignity of displacement and statelessness.

The course focuses on techniques for the transmission of wealth to a person’s successors with emphasis on methods of minimizing federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes under the Internal Revenue Code. Appropriate consideration is also given to the federal income tax consequences of wealth transfer transactions. Both inter vivos and testamentary planning techniques are covered, as is the use of trusts to meet estate-planning objectives. Other topics include the valuation of property included in the transfer tax base, transfers to minors, life insurance planning, planning for jointly-held property and community property, charitable gifts and bequests, retirement benefits planning, and deductions (particularly the marital deduction) from transfer taxes. The basic course in income tax is not required, but is a desirable preparation. The course is taught by Kenneth Weiss, a board certified specialist in both taxation and estate planning.

The objective of this course is to provide a basic and practical knowledge of the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure necessary to successfully pass the Louisiana Civil Procedure section of the Louisiana State Bar Exam, as well as to draft pleadings and litigate in Louisiana state trial and appellate courts. This course will emphasize practical skills training, in conjunction with theory, and when possible use examples of pleadings, memoranda, briefs and jurisprudential authorities that focus on Louisiana Civil Procedure Law. When practical, students will be exposed to the application of certain provisions of the Code through experiential learning, by viewing one or two rule days at Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans. Upon completion of this course, students will have a thorough working knowledge of Louisiana Civil Procedure, as well as be trained to handle all aspects of civil litigation. This course will be taught by the Hon. Regina Bartholomew Woods, Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal. (2 Credits)

This seminar will explore current issues in international monetary law and related legal topics. It will focus primarily on the International Monetary Fund and its evolving role in international monetary law, global governance domestic law reform and economic development. Among other things, the seminar will cover the history of the Fund, it internal governance, its surveillance of member states' obligations under the Fund's articles, its lending facilities and practices, and the technical assistance it provides sovereign states. Particular attention will be given to legal and practical issues related to the Fund's role in addressing the ongoing economic and financial fallout from the Covid pandemic and from Russia's attach on Ukraine.

Solo and small firm practice is the most common organizational form in the legal profession today. This course will focus on the essential elements of forming and operating a small firm or solo law practice. Although many of the topics covered in this course could be translated into law practice skills in general, the course will give particular emphasis to those issues that are frequently encountered by solo and small firm practitioners, including setting up a law practice; developing business; hiring, managing, and effectively using support staff; financial planning, billing, and fee management; issues of ethics and professionalism; leveling the playing field through practice skills and management; and many others. Students will be graded on a P/C/F basis and will be assessed on quality of their involvement and participation in both individual and group exercises. Students will also be evaluated on the quality of their critiques of fellow students’ performance. There will not be a final exam in this course. Attendance and participation are required. The course is primarily geared toward 3L students who will be given preference. 2L students may be accepted, with permission of the professor, provided they have taken or are enrolled in legal ethics.

A course in the Louisiana civil law governing the transfer of property by inheritance, testament or gift during life. Topics include rules of inheritance, rights of surviving spouses, acceptance and administration of successions; collation and partition; the making of wills, kinds of legacies, and forced heirship limitations on gratuitous dispositions. The course also considers the Louisiana Trust Code’s provisions concerning the creation, modification, and termination of trusts; limitations on dispositive provisions; and the powers and responsibilities of trustees.

This course covers the law relating to oil and gas exploration, development, and production. The class will largely focus on issues related to oil and gas leases but will also cover the nature and classification of other mineral rights and related issues. The course will include common law doctrines as well as certain Louisiana law concepts. The course will be taught by Aimee Hebert, a partner in the law firm Kelly, Hart & Pitre.

Notwithstanding the critical role cultural heritage plays in forming our national and ethnic identities, and in inspiring us as civilizations, protecting it has never been a legal priority. Through an examination of the legal history of cultural property, this seminar will attempt to explain why that has been the case, and what is now being done to change that historical trajectory. The seminar will focus on the relevant international conventions, and on significant actions by the European Union and Arab League, along with those federal laws of the United States that seek to preserve and protect different forms of cultural property. In addition, selected state and local laws and cases will be addressed, as part of a discussion of the efforts (and accompanying litigation) that have been made in New Orleans to protect the city's unique art, architecture, and traditions. Each student will be required to select a paper topic, one that directly relates to a cultural property issue arising from his or her location - e.g., a student located in New York City will be required to write about a "New York" cultural property issue. In addition to writing the paper required for 3 credits, students will be required to give a 15 minute in-class presentation regarding their paper. The course will be co-taught by Prof. Herbert Larson and Ms. Terressa Davis, who is the executive director of the Antiquities Coalition.

Statistics are playing an increasing role in court decisions, public policy regulations, and legal scholarship. This course provides and understanding of the most common statistical methods and examples of the use of those methods by courts, administrative agencies, and scholars. Students are not expected to come to class with any knowledge of these methods or mathematic expertise, but will leave with the understanding of them and their role in legal analysis.

The course will use a transactional approach to examine the corporate tax law issues associated with business operations and acquisitions. Major topics include spin-offs, taxable acquisitions, reorganizations, consolidated returns, tax attributes, contributions, distributions, redemptions, and liquidations. Some partnership, international, and tax procedure issues will also be discussed. There will be assigned readings for each class (generally cases, rulings, articles, and brief passages from the treatises). Class will consist of a short lecture followed by a discussion of problems. Students will be evaluated on the basis of class participation (in the form of a half-page to full-page memorandum on an assigned issue with a brief oral explanation to the class), two short writing assignments, and a final writing assignment. This course will be taught by Joseph Henderson, Senior Vice President and General Tax Counsel, Entergy Corporation.

The course covers federal income taxation of C corporations, S corporations, partnerships, and limited liability companies (“LLCs”) and the holders of ownership interests in such entities, including the federal income tax consequences of operations; contributions of capital to the entity; distributions by the entity; and acquisitions, dispositions, and rearrangements of the entity. The course also will address choice of entity considerations under the new tax law. Prerequisite or Co-requisite:  Federal Income Taxation.

This is a skills course focused on depositions. While the course centers on basic and advanced skills in preparing for, taking, and defending depositions, its focus is broader. It begins by placing depositions in the context of formal pretrial discovery and ends with the use of depositions in pre-trial motions, negotiation and at trial. Skills exercises will include both oral and written advocacy skills relevant to this important portion of civil litigation. While most civil cases filed in federal or state court are resolved before final adjudication, all practicing attorneys will have to take depositions in order to learn what evidence they must meet at trial, or alternatively use case evaluation for settlement negotiations or mediation. The information obtained in a deposition will allow an attorney to intelligently evaluate the case and competently advise their clients. The course begins with the role of depositions in the larger discovery process, preparation, developing a theme, and the mechanics of the deposition process and procedure, including questioning techniques. More advanced topics will include the expert deposition, use of expert depositions to make effective Daubert challenges, taking and defending corporate depositions, and the use of depositions in pretrial practice including Daubert challenges and summary judgment motions.

This course combines theory and practicality to cover advanced strategies in persuasive writing and build upon the instruction provided in Legal Research and Writing. The theoretical aspect of the course will focus on principles of persuasion drawn from several disciplines, such as classical rhetoric, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and literary theory. Topics studied may include the rhetorical foundations of legal persuasion and credibility; the role of stock structures, visual imagery, and literary or cultural allusions in legal analysis and argument; leveraging storytelling and narrative coherence; and using document design and other visual techniques persuasively. The practical aspect of the course will involve the application of the covered principles to litigation-oriented documents. Students will analyze the persuasiveness of various examples of attorney communications, such as briefs, letters, and judicial opinions, and create their own versions of these documents that incorporate the principles we discuss. Thus, students will learn a number of strategies and techniques, and practice implementing them, to become more persuasive writers. The course will involve a combination of lecture, discussion, in-class exercises and workshops, and individual student-teacher conferences outside of class. Grades will be based on several writing and editing assignments of various length, as well as students’ participation in class discussions and fulfillment of course requirements. There will be no final exam.

The course explores the history, present status and nature of administrative agencies. The main emphasis is placed on administrative procedure, contrasting it with the judicial process, as well as constitutional limits on administrative action and the due process rights of persons who are adversely affected by agency action. Topics covered include: delegation of powers, the law of judicial review of agency actions, and procedural requirements of administrative rulemaking and adjudication. (3 credits)

This course will look at all of the main issues surrounding art, cultural heritage, and current contemporary user-generated culture. We will look at Holocaust-era related art crimes; the life of the artist and legal issues; museums, dealers, and collectors; First Amendment issues related to art; moral rights; indigenous cultures and cultural preservation; who owns the past within an international context; and the creation of user-generated culture in our current Internet world. This class focuses on visual arts, but in many cases applies to all cultural works, particularly in our multi-media world. The seminar will produce a collection of essays that will be published as a book, (Il)Legal Art: A Handbook. Students will each write a chapter for the book. Because of the nature of the course, students must be good a deadlines and working with others. We will potentially be working with local artists as part of the experience. Students will be graded on their paper, but also should make a commitment to make revisions to their post-graded paper as part of the book as we get further in the process of publication, even if this occurs after graduation. This may be up to a year or more in the future. While this latter time commitment is not great, it still is an integral part of the experience. IP Survey is a required pre-requisite. If you have not taken IP Survey, but feel that you have other qualifications that might benefit the class, please indicate this on your seminar application. This seminar may be taken to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement.

The course is designed to further develop the skills learned in Legal Research and Writing and to provide 2Ls and 3Ls with the opportunity to draft an appellate brief and present an oral argument. The course focuses on appellate theory, standard of review, advanced appellate brief writing, and the art of appellate oral argument. Students will be assigned to act as either Appellants or Appellees and will write a brief from a shortened record. While focusing on the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, the course will also survey certain differences in Louisiana state appellate practice. Students will also prepare, practice and deliver a full oral argument. This course will be co-taught by James Garner, a co-managing member of Sher Garner Cahill Richter Klein & Hilber, L.L.C.; the Hon. Scott Cichton, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana; and Stuart Kottle, an associate with Sher Garner Cahill Richter Klein & Hilbert, L.L.C.

Arbitration is an increasingly popular method of resolving civil disputes, including employment, securities regulation, construction, and insurance disputes. Although arbitration is the result of an agreement between the parties, a developing legal regime governs the use of arbitration and the enforcement of arbitration awards. Federal and state laws such as the Federal Arbitration Act govern what disputes are covered by an arbitration agreement, when arbitration is prohibited, and whether a court can review the award. This course provides an overview of those laws and the court decisions interpreting them so that the students understand an area of law that they are likely to encounter early on in their varied careers.

This experiential course will focus on the knowledge and skills required to manage and execute written discovery. Effective discovery requires identifying and understanding the legal principles and detailed facts of a client's case; crafting a theme and trial plan; and using this information to conduct discovery in a manner that maximizes a case's strengths and accommodates its weaknesses. Students will participate in exercises designed to simulate the experience of an attorney charged with responsibility for written discovery. Topics will include preliminary cases assessment; articulation of a case's themes; initial disclosures; discovery conferences and scheduling orders; drafting and responding to requests for production, interrogatories, and requests for admission; privilege and work production protects; protective orders and common interest agreement; written expert discovery; meet-and-confer letter; and motions to compel. The course will be taught by Eva Dossier a member of the firm Stanley, Reuter, Ross, Thornton & Alford, L.L.C.

This is an advanced civil procedure course focusing on a number of important aspects of civil procedure which are only superficially considered in the first year. It is useful for anyone interested in litigation or practice involving multi-party transactions such as antitrust, securities, product liability, mass torts, consumer litigation and employment rights. The procedures considered include: joinder of parties and structure of law suits in complicated multi-party suits; duplicative litigation and use of stay orders, injunctions, consolidation, and transfer to the Multi District Panel; res judicata; class actions; discovery and trial in complex cases; settlement, and attorneys’ fees.

What is the relationship of how disciplines think about time and how understands time? Why are copyrights for the life of the author plus seventy years? Why are stature of limitations 2, 3, 4 years? time rewards. Time punishes. Time acts as a barrier for redress. Time signals an equitable solution. Lawyers are paid by their time. Think of industrial time, biological time, and legal time. What does law's relationship to time tell us about the laws themselves? how do we understand time and the law? This seminar will investigate the concept of time across disciplines, and then students will choose a part of the law to investigate and apply concepts of time, whether the area of law is overtly about time or an example of law that is missing a time component.

The course will examine constitutional procedural and litigation issues from the commencement of a criminal case through conviction (or acquittal), appeal, and post-conviction relief options. Students will be asked to think critically about the goals of criminal procedure and about whether our legal system effectively serves those goals. The course primarily addresses Sixth Amendment issues.

This survey course will provide an overview of the evolution of animal law and the breadth of issues encompassed by this rapidly developing field of law. At the same time, the course will afford the opportunity for in-depth deliberation of the salient issues in current animal law litigation, including in Louisiana. Because animal law necessarily implicates virtually every field of law, including constitutional law, property law, criminal law, and torts, students must develop and apply their knowledge of these other fields in class discussions. Students will also be expected to understand and apply basic principles of administrative law introduced in the course.

What do transactional lawyers do and how do they do it? The course focuses on the lawyer’s role as an advisor to a privately-owned start-up company and its owners. We will explore how legal issues and business objectives overlap, the role played by the transactional lawyer in the transaction and soft skills such as client relations/communications and co-worker relationships. This course will examine the life cycle of a hypothetical company, focusing on sample transactions from three major stages of the company’s life cycle: choice of entity, formation and obtaining capital; ongoing operations; and exiting or sale of the company. Much of the class work will involve working in teams simulating an actual transactional practice. Using hypothetical business scenarios and actual deal documents, students will represent the company, its owners, or third parties and will analyze, structure and negotiate selected deal components, and, on a limited basis, draft portions of the relevant deal documents. This capstone course is designed to broaden the student’s knowledge in a number of substantive areas, help students learn to focus on a client’s business objectives rather than just addressing legal issues, and to begin the process of bridging the gap between law school and practice. The course will be taught by John Herbert, outside general counsel of a Houston-based energy company and formerly a division general counsel of a Fortune 30 energy corporation. Business Enterprises is a prerequisite. Grades will be based on periodic written team and individual exercises, a personal journal, and a final written project. There will be no final exam.

This course will examine the basic antitrust statutes, Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, Sections 3 and 7 of the Clayton Act, Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the Robinson Patman Act. The course will focus on the objectives of antitrust law, the concepts of market power and market definition, monopolization, horizontal and vertical restraints, mergers, the use of the per se rule and the rule of reason, price discrimination, and commercial bribery. Professor Feldman plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism. Note: Antitrust may not be offered during the 2019-2020 academic year.

This course examines a number of the key legal issues facing college athletics today, including the battle over athlete compensation and the rapid development of name, image, and likeness rights for college athletes. This course focuses on the ways antitrust and labor laws have shaped many aspects of college sports and continue to play a significant role in the development and future of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and college athletics. The course will examine the impact of antitrust and labor law on television contracts, college athlete compensation, coaching salaries, eligibility restrictions, and a number of other facets of the collegiate model. The course will also feature a number of guest lectures from lawyers, executives, and administrators in the college sports industry. There are no prerequisites for this course. Students who have taken or plan to take Sports Law: Antitrust & Labor may enroll in this course. This course does not count toward the Sports Law certificate. The course will be graded on the basis of a take-home examination.

This Seminar covers selected civil law institutions with emphasis on the laws of property, obligations, community property, and successions. It also covers the subjects of civilian methodology, techniques of codification, and the modern history of the civil law. The Seminar is designed to sum up student experience in the civilian tradition. Louisiana law is studied in comparison with the common law of sister states and the laws of European countries. Doctrinal study is applied to the resolution of legal issues in contemporary practice. There is no final examination. Students are graded in light of class participation and their ability to produce an original research paper on a civil law topic. Students are required to have taken at least one civil law course (e.g., Property, Obligations I or II).

This course will focus primarily on Louisiana's unique tort law, utilizing the Louisiana Civil Code, current Louisiana cases and statutes.  Some of these concepts will be compared to common law torts.  Subjects likely to be covered during the semester are duty-risk, intentional torts, damages, defenses, wrongful death, contribution and indemnification, vicarious liability, absolute liability, strict liability, products liability, liability of owners/lessors and occupiers of land, and professional malpractice (medical and legal) and prescription. (2 Credits)

Through a lens examining the philosophy, principles, and policies underlying business reorganizations, this course will provide a practical look at the path a financially distressed enterprise can take, from filing to confirmation of a plan of reorganization under chapter 11, conversion to chapter 7, or dismissal. The following topics, among others, will be covered: good-faith filing and venue; retention and compensation of professionals; the extent of the court’s equitable powers; use, sale, and lease of the debtor’s property; successor liability; post-petition financing; the absolute priority rule; involuntary imposition of a reorganization upon creditors and shareholders; claims allowance; and the role of debtors, professionals, creditors, officers, directors, and trustees in the context of corporate restructuring. Grades will be basis on draft pleadings and mock arguments for hypothetical clients at each stage. This course will be taught by the Hon. Meredith Grabill (U.S. Bankruptcy Judge, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana) and Mark Mintz (Jones Walker LLP).

'This course treats the rising phenomenon of environmental law around the world, not through international accords (the subject of other courses) but through national approaches to common issues including:  impact assessment, judicial review, land use, toxins and wildlife species. The class will be graded on the basis of student participation (including TWEN), and on selected research projects leading to discussions and papers at the end of the course.  Introductory in nature, prior or concurrent classes in the field are useful but not required. (3 Credits)

This course provides a comparative survey of influential contemporary constitutions including those of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and South Africa. Following an introduction to comparative methodology and the functions of comparative law, especially in the legislative and judicial spheres, the class focuses on a shortlist of specific topics. These include the legislative process, bicameralism, the separation of powers, electoral systems, federalism, judicial review, and the protection of human rights. The concept of transnational constitutionalism, the potential and pitfalls of constitutional legal transplants, and the drafting of new constitutions in post-conflict societies such as Iraq, Tunisia or Kenya will also be considered. Students are invited to engage with foreign approaches to these issues through the lens of US case law and constitutional doctrine. The course will be based on a study pack of selected legal materials from the systems under review. Knowledge of foreign languages is not required.

This course is designed to cover issues of individual rights under the Fourteenth Amendment that are given only brief treatment in the introductory first-year course. Subjects include equal protection, substantive due process, state action, and Congress’s power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees.

This one-credit Seminar provides a unique view of two phenomena that have arisen at the same time around the globe: environmental protection and judicial review. We do this through a single book, Taking Back Eden, that describes cases from eight countries as different as the Philippines, Chile and Japan. The second part of the course consists of cases that you will identify, research and present orally to the class. There is no paper required. Grading will be pass-C-fail. The seminar counts as the graduate seminar required for students seeking the LLM in Energy & Environmental Law. Accordingly preference will be granted for students in the LLM program.

Decisions of the Supreme Court such as Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade have inspired extensive debate among academic scholars as to the role of the Supreme Court in our system of government and the proper way to interpret the Constitution. This seminar will provide an in-depth examination of the most important issues in constitutional theory. The main topics to be addressed will be the idea of constitutionalism in the U.S., the justification of judicial review in a representative democracy, and the various theories of constitutional interpretation proposed by scholars. The readings for the course will be extensive, and will represent the wide diversity of opinion present in contemporary theoretical debates.

This course will take an in-depth look at copyright law. Building upon the IP Survey, which is a prerequisite, the course will focus on the advanced and contemporary topics in copyright law, both in a domestic and international context.

The Copyright and Social Media course will cover the key advanced topics in copyright and social media. The course will be hands-on looking at questions that arise in the current climate, working with real-world problems. Students will be writing short papers on assigned topics. This course does not fulfill the writing requirement. Prerequisite: IP Survey.

This course provides both an introduction to financial economics – e.g., how companies are valued, how investment decisions are made – and advanced coverage of corporation and contract law related to the financing of modern business enterprises. The course will survey the rights and protections that exist for financial stakeholders in the corporate enterprise, including debtholders, preferred shareholders, holders of warrants and rights. Business Enterprises is a pre-requisite or permission of instructor required. Mergers & Acquisitions is also highly recommended.

This course will emphasize the practical aspects of advising the public corporation’s board of directors in the deal making context of takeovers, proxy contests, shareholder activism, and mergers and acquisitions. The course will introduce students to the laws, theories, and corporate governance systems that underpin the board’s decision-making process, as well as the roles and perspectives of other players, including corporate officers, investors, investment bankers, and regulators. Each topic will be addressed in a policy class taught by faculty and a practice class led by distinguished legal practitioners. Grades will be based on attendance, biweekly written analyses of a hypothetical transaction, and a final reflection paper. Business Enterprises is a prerequisite for 2L students and a prerequisite or co-requisite for 3L students. Some course content may overlap with that taught in Mergers & Acquisitions and the Corporate Governance mini-course.

This course explores major jurisdictional, procedural and substantive issues involved in the enforcement of federal criminal law. Included among the crimes on which the course focuses are mail and wire fraud, drug offenses, banking offenses and money laundering, perjury and obstruction of justice, and RICO. Professor Larson plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

This course explores the various stages of the criminal justice process, e.g. arrest, first appearance, bail hearing, charging process (district attorney, grand jury), arraignment, pre-trial discovery, plea negotiations, and post-trial motions.

The course attempts to examine the political and jurisprudential theories which underlie the rapidly-developing system of international criminal law, together with the actual structure of the system which now exists. The course will address both the “core crimes” of international criminal law, i.e., war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression, as well as those crimes that have become truly international in nature, such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and terrorism. During the semester, the course will cover both threshold issues, e.g., what is “international” criminal law, and general concepts, such as sovereignty and jurisdiction in international criminal matters. In addition, international enforcement and penal mechanisms will be studied, all within the context of those entities that create, implement or enforce international criminal laws, such as the United Nations, the European Union, and the federal courts of the United States. With regard to each such entity, consideration will be given to the political and economic implications of the international aspect of the system, and to the procedural problems created by its trans-national nature. Public International Law is recommended. Professor Larson plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

It is a given that law will lag behind the technology of the society in which both are situated. In no field is that more true than cyber crime. As computers moved out of research laboratories and into the houses and pockets of billions of people, that also moved into the hands of persons willing to exploit their unique features for criminal purposes. The speed, anonymity, and networking capabilities of computers, when coupled with the borderless nature of the Internet, make computers the most potent tool for crime ever invented. This course will examine, on a very basic level, the technological structure and operation of computers, the Internet, and the "dark web." It will show how these can be used to commit a wide variety of crimes. Among the offenses that will be studied in depth are: cyber hacking and cyber extortion/blackmail; sex trafficking, pornography, and child pornography; money laundering, and money laundering via cryptocurrencies; and cyber fraud and cyber theft, including theft of data. The substantive law that attempts to combat these offenses, both federal and state, will be reviewed, with particular emphases on the need to further develop that law in light of its manifest inadequacies. Procedural issues unique to cyber crimes, including 4th Amendment issues, will also be considered. The course will conclude by looking at computers as weapons of war, which has been described as the "ultimate crime." The principles of jus in bello will be reviewed in light of the crime of aggression, as adopted by the International Criminal Court (and defined by the Kampala Review Conference). These classes will focus on cyber aggression by states - which occurs on a daily basis in numerous forms - and its status as a crime under international law.

Election law is a fascinating topic not only in politically charged times; the rules surrounding elections determine the way constitutional principles play out in practice at any point in time and thus lie at the very heart of democracy. In combination with a few other key variables, such as the structure of the executive (presidential or parliamentary) and the vertical distribution of power (unitary or federal), election systems can shape the exercise and coherence of party influence over government, the stability of the executive, the breadth and legitimacy of representation, the capacity of a system to manage internal conflict, the extent of public participation, and the overall responsiveness of government. Several factors – in particular overall system design, state funding and private campaign financing, districting, or general party influence – impact on elections. The course covers these and many other core issues in the context of different voting systems and their respective political and constitutional dynamics. Most of the course deals with the United States; the increasing influence of proportional representation and variants of majoritarian election systems both in the U.S. and around the world, however, also invites some comparison with approaches found in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and South Africa. Due to overlap in content students may not enroll in both the Election Law and the Law of Democracy course.

This course concentrates on analyzing the statutory, constitutional, administrative, and judicial responses to discrimination on the basis of race, age, sex, religion, national origin, alienage and sexual orientation by private and public employers.

This seminar will present a national, state and local perspective on historic preservation in a broad sense, including protection of the urban environment and of archaeological, cultural and other historic resources.  It will examine laws dealing directly and indirectly with preservation, and the institutions that implement them.  The city of New Orleans provides rich material for this examination.  Students will be required to research selected topics and to present their findings orally to the class and in a substantial final paper.  Grade will be based on research paper, oral presentation of paper topic, class participation and attendance. (3 Credits)

This is a survey course in Internet law. It provides an introduction to how privacy, contracts, intellectual property, intermediary liability, jurisdiction, trespass, free speech, taxation, antitrust, and other legal doctrines may apply to activity on the Internet. Topics covered may vary based on recent events, with a focus on e-commerce, social media, and platforms.

This course will cover legal issues in representing clients within the entertainment industry, highlighting business and economic considerations. The focus will be on the nature of relationships and transactions, including implications on intellectual property rights arising from contractual and other legal matters, which arise among various players from the music, film, visual and performing arts sectors. These players will include recording artists, songwriters, producers, managers/agents, record labels, publishers, filmmakers, screenwriters, graphics artists, studios, etc. Emphasis will be placed on analyzing the initial development and evolution of these dynamic relationships as they are intertwined within a pragmatic fact-pattern involving common issues arising from entertainment legal matters. Throughout the course, consideration will be given to various revenue streams flowing from intellectual property through channels of commerce, such as tangible record sales, digital sales, performance rights, and licensing, including synchronization licensing for music placements against film. This course is taught by Ashlye M. Keaton, Esq.

This course will begin with an overview of the global energy situation in terms of supply and demand as well as balanced projections for the coming decades both here and abroad. It then will proceed to examine the primary sources of energy along with the multi-faceted role of electricity as the central source of secondary energy in our economy. This portion of the course will cover in some detail how these energy sources are used and regulated from economic, reliability, and environmental perspectives. There will therefore be a review of legal and regulatory principles governing fossil fuel extraction and use, the coal industry, nuclear power, a range of renewable energy sources, and finally the regulation of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. The course will conclude with a brief review of the growing role of conservation and climate change in energy markets here and to some extent abroad. There will be an essay-based final examination and class participation will certainly be encouraged.

This course introduces the basic pollution control statutes, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and hazardous waste laws.  It examines and contrasts their objectives, their regulatory schemes and their relative successes.  Special emphasis is given to comparing and critiquing the major regulatory approaches to pollution control:  command and control regulation according to health-based or technology-based standards and economic incentive schemes, as well as statutory interpretation. Professor will invoke the rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

This course examines the basic international legal setting for the protection and management of the environment. It discusses how international law is made and applied, the role of international environmental regimes or institutions, transboundary liability and compensation, enforcement strategies and compliance control mechanisms. Major themes of the course include human rights and the environment, free trade and environmental protection, the financing of global environmental protection measures, the protection of biodiversity, North-South issues generally, as well as various regulatory regimes for the protection of the global commons and internationally sensitive natural resources, including the Climate Change Convention. Public International Law is highly recommended. Professor Handl plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

This seminar provides an examination of the factual, legal, and policy framework that has developed regarding issues of coastal land-loss, with a focus primarily on the quickly disappearing wetlands in Louisiana, but also with an examination of similar land-loss issues in other communities. The seminar will examine the background of the importance of wetlands, the crisis of coastal land loss, the causes of that loss, and the legal and policy responses in the search for remedies for wetland and coastal harm. The seminar will be co-taught by Christopher Dalbom (Senior Research Fellow and Assistant Director of the Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy at Tulane Law School) and Bessie Antin Daschbach and Tad Bartlett (both members of Jones, Swanson, Huddell & Garrison LLC).

This course will cover the role and influence of the legal system on the use, allocation, and stewardship of water resources in the United States and Louisiana.  Since the field of water resources management is rapidly evolving to accommodate storm protection, ecosystem restoration and sea level rise an understanding of the policies that underlay our current laws and the factors that are influencing current policy and law-making will be an important part of the course’s focus. Course materials will include law cases and related materials which must be read before class. The course will be lecture oriented with occasional guest lecturers with specific experience in development of water resources law and policy. Students will be asked to participate in one group project in which they will be asked to develop, present and defend a position paper on some aspect of the water resources management challenges arising in coastal Louisiana.

This course covers the legal and political development of the European Union. It highlights the gradual functional and organizational changes that have taken place in this system over the past six decades and deals with its present-day constitutional structures including: Parliament, the Commission, the Council, the European Court of Justice, and the European Central Bank. Emphasis will also be placed on human rights protection and judicial review in the European context, the concept of a European constitution, the ongoing expansion process, Brexit, and challenges connected to the concept of a common European currency. The course also focuses on the tensions between an increasingly influential supranational Union and its 27 sovereign Member States, and will introduce the most important principles of business-related EU law such as the free movement of goods, workers, services and capital. Students are invited to draw comparisons between the European Union and the United States throughout the course.

Feminist legal theory can pose a significant epistemological challenge to traditional schools of jurisprudence, questioning some of the very premises of what constitutes justice and equality in a liberal democracy. At the same time, it seeks to explore how gender shapes the law and how the law shapes gender. This course will examine the principle tenets, methodologies, and controversies in feminist legal theory including the meaning of equality, the intersection of race and law, the public/private divide, concepts of objectivity and neutrality, and how law reproduces hierarchies while also having the ability to participate in significant social change. We will look at how feminist theory has used, incorporated, modified and critiqued other schools of jurisprudence and theoretical paradigms including Marxism, critical legal studies, critical race theory, and postmodernism. We will also analyze debates between feminist theorists regarding essentialism, women’s sexual agency, and how feminist theory itself is a product of a particular society. The goal of the course is to think broadly and critically regarding the interaction of law, society, and gender while exploring the potential and limitations of our legal system.

The financial system is the infrastructure on which all economic activity takes place with enormous political and distributive stakes. The law of financial institutions is thus of central concern to students of diverse interests: aspiring private practitioners, regulators, and public interest lawyers concerned with social justice. A decade now since the Global Financial Crisis, the legal reforms put into place are profoundly trans-forming all three areas and their interrelationships. We will study these transformations, focusing on the law of commercial banks and the Federal Reserve (Part 1); broker-dealers, hedge funds, and registered investment companies (Part 2); and central clearing counterparties (Part 3).

With U.S. HUD suspending and reissuing a number of regulations governing proof standards and its affirmative duty to promote housing choice and opportunity, a study of fair housing law and litigation is particularly timely. This course will examine Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, as amended in 1988; classes protected; transactions covered (rental, sales, lending, insurance); and the fair housing obligations of states, municipalities, and public and affordable housing programs. Stu-dents will be challenged to consider the strengths and weaknesses of litigation as a tool for creating an equal housing market and eradicating residential segregation. This course will incorporate doctrine, theory, and practice and will be assessed using a mid-term exam and several writing assignments.

This seminar explores current issues in Environmental and Energy law through faculty and LLM candidate presentations and discussion.  This seminar is open to graduate Energy & Environment students only. 

This course focuses on the Supreme Court’s opinions on freedoms of speech and press issues in First Amendment jurisprudence. The topics of study may include: advocacy of illegal action, defamation, commercial speech, obscenity, offensive speech, hate speech, symbolic speech, regulation of the public forum, prior restraint, and other topics. The First Amendment topic of freedom of religion is the subject of a separate course, entitled The Constitution & Religion.

The focus of the course will be on the U.S. constitutional structure and how that affects the role the United States plays in the international domain. We will inquire into how the Constitution enables and constrains the manner in which the United States government participates in lawmaking internationally and how that in turn affects private rights within the United States. An international lawyer working in this country will surely need to be familiar with constitutional and other legal constraints that govern our relationship with the outside world. And a domestic lawyer to be effective in this day of global interdependence will need to be familiar with the international process that continuously shapes the nature of the constitutional order in this country and our very understanding of the Constitution itself. Some of the areas that will be covered in the course are: foreign relations and the separation of powers doctrine; the scope of and limitation on the treaty power; presidential power to conclude international agreements outside Article II treaty power; constitutional and domestic status of customary international law; foreign sovereign immunity and the act of state doctrine; congressional and presidential war-making powers; constitutional rights and the war on terrorism; extraterritorial application of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. laws; and the power of states in relation to foreign affairs.

The course begins with an overview of the U.S. health care industry and then addresses the law that affects major portions of that industry and those it serves. Relationships among individual health care providers (e.g., physicians), institutional providers (e.g., hospitals, nursing homes, clinics), and patients of those providers are explored, as are various statutory entitlements (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, EMTALA), medical malpractice concepts, preemption effects of ERISA, patient privacy/consent issues including HIPAA mandates, and the policing of fraud and abuse. The class will examine the health law that resulted from the health reform legislation signed in 2010 and modern changes to health law resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the course will review how the antitrust laws impact the structure and conduct of health care providers.

This course provides students with an overview of the laws of war which, for the purposes of this course, will include the various areas of international law applicable to situations of armed conflict. It will largely cover: a) the jus ad bellum, or the law on the use of force; and b) the jus in bello, or international humanitarian law (IHL), also referred to as the law of armed conflict (LOAC). For the jus in bello, this includes: the classification of armed conflicts; duties and responsibilities of parties to an armed conflict; the principles of humanity/necessity, distinction, proportionality, and precautions; and other IHL rules. It will also look at contemporary issues in IHL such as cyber warfare and autonomous weapons, as well as gaps and challenges in IHL including compliance and enforcement. In addition to the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello, the course will cover the interrelationships between IHL and international human rights law (IHRL), international criminal law (ICL), and the rules on state responsibility in war.

The course examines the immigration and naturalization processes of the United States with a focus on practical application, procedures, and statutory construction. Topics will include citizenship and naturalization, the admission and removal of immigrants and nonimmigrants, and the issues of undocumented immigration and national security. We will also address the intersection of immigration with other practice areas including employment, criminal, and family law.

Information Privacy is a course that explores privacy law with a special focus on its history, technological advancements, and the tort aspects of privacy in the United States, including misappropriation, intrusion, publication of private facts, and false light. Students will be expected to come to class having done the readings and ready for discussion. Professor Gajda plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

Insurance plays a critical role in all areas of law practice. This course will introduce you to the basic concepts and terminology; survey numerous types of insurance such as general liability, property, life, automobile, construction, professional liability, employment, environmental, homeowners, product liability, including litigation issues such as the duty to defend, the duty to indemnify, subrogation, fraud, bad faith, defenses, damages, procedure; and address governmental regulation.

This survey course introduces students to the basic state and federal laws relating to inventions and cultural works. The class will cover topics that include patents, trademarks, copyright, right of publicity, and trade secrets. The course will look at the moral, cultural, economic and theoretical underpinnings to our current controversies in intellectual property law. This course is a prerequisite for nearly every advanced course in Intellectual Property.

The objective of this course is to provide students with an introduction to a number of areas of international business law and to provide an opportunity to study some of those areas in more detail. The course looks at the supranational and U.S.-domestic law that serves as backdrop to any international business transaction connected to this country. It focuses particularly on how to finance both sales and direct investment and how to structure direct investment of various tangible and intangible assets.  The course is focused on the law as it affects individual business entities rather than on the relationships between States.  However, this course does deal with the way that certain treaties have an impact on domestic law in relevant areas, such as international dispute settlement. This course also covers the World Trade Organization treaties to a limited extent as relevant to international business transactions.

In this course we will explore the place of human rights in United States and international law. More broadly, we will closely examine and evaluate the entire human rights "regime," that is to say the norms, principles, rules, and decision-making institutions that occupy and organize this issue area within the broad sphere of international relations. The course is designed to provide students with a confident grasp of: the substantive norms of human rights; the philosophic basis for the concept of rights and the leading points of controversy about the existence or character of certain rights that appear in conventional enumerations; the diverse procedures available at the global, regional, and national level for defense and promotion of human rights; the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which ideological and material interests influence the definition and enforcement of rights; the ways in which policy makers attempt to reconcile the demand for human rights enforcement with more traditional foreign policy objectives.

This is the basic introductory course in international law and as such focuses initially on how international law is made and applied as well the various theoretical justifications for and explanation of international law and international institutions. The course then explores other issues such as the proper subjects of international law—states, international organizations, individuals, etc; allocation of legal authority among states; the forums for and the methods of international dispute resolutions, etc. Special attention is paid to the use of force in international relations and the UN-based collective security system.  Using the United States as an example, the course will also explore the interrelationship of domestic law and international law—the domestic effect of treaties and customary international law, the role of federalism in the adoption and enforcement of international obligations, and the role of municipal courts in the enforcement of international obligations.

This offering is intended to introduce students to the problems of dispute resolution in the international transactional context. Most international commercial disputes and contract claims are resolved through arbitration. The course will address the primary substantive law issues in the field, consider in detail comparative and transborder aspects of the subject area, and provide students with a simulation exercise in a contemporary practice problem.

This course will address the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (the “Vienna Convention”). The rules of the Convention, to which more than eighty States adhere (including the U.S.), govern a great number of export/import transactions involving American parties. The course is designed to familiarize students with these rules and their application to specific aspects of international sales contracts, such as contract formation, remedies and allocation of risk. The discussion also will address the broader ramifications of the Vienna Convention. Topics of this nature include an assessment of fundamental problems, such as uniform interpretation, that are inherent in every effort to unify or harmonize legal rules. The course will also familiarize students with INCOTERMS 2010 that govern the transportation and insurance aspects of sales transactions and UCP 600 that provides the standard mechanisms for international payments, including letters of credit and documentary collections. Professor Davies plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

This seminar examines international institutions – both formal organizations and informal arrangements – as increasingly important elements of a rapidly changing international governance system. These institutions range from traditional treaty-based organizations, such as the United Nations and its subsidiary organs, to understandings among states lacking formal structural organization which govern some aspects of international economic relations, human rights and arms control. Apart from the topics of formation, membership and participation, as well as of (applicable) privileges and immunities, the seminar will pay special attention to international institutions’ role in developing international law. It will also canvass the extent to which international institutions are accountable pursuant to international law. The seminar will thus highlight political-legal phenomena of the transition to an international legal order in which international institutions have taken on indispensable governance functions that both compliment and threaten states’ traditional, dominant position in the international legal system. Professor Handl plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for failure to be prepared and/or excessive absenteeism.

Analyzes competing trade and industrial policies, GATT-WTO, NAFTA, unfair trade practices, dumping and subsidy controversies, trade imbalance problems, foreign investment, safeguards, expropriation and remedies, international banking and lending, debt overloads, IMF policies, global financial crisis, remedies, and adjustment mechanisms.

This course is designed to help international law students pursuing an LL.M. in the United States prepare for the demands of graduate education in an American law school. Because of its location in a state with a civil law heritage (which is unique in the United States), Tulane has long been known for its expertise in comparative and international law. This expertise allows the school and its faculty to better understand and meet the needs of students who come from a wide variety of legal systems. By utilizing tenured faculty, and by focusing on the basic principles of the American Legal system, with particular emphasis on constitutional law, the orientation program ensures that international students are given the best possible grounding for their subsequent studies. Classes meet four days a week, for 220 class minutes per day, in the three weeks before regular fall classes begin. The specific courses taught are as follows: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, the U.S. Legal system, Constitutional Criminal Procedure, and Civil Procedure. Students who pass the written examination at the end of the course will earn two credits for their work, based upon American Bar Association guidelines. In addition to regular classes, students are offered free tutoring in English, with particular emphasis on legal terms and phrases, a speaker series, and an introduction to legal education in the U.S. Students will also be invited to attend a variety of social events and dinners, and will be given the opportunity to visit local courts and observe judicial proceedings.

This constitutional law course concerns voting rights and elections, topics not covered in upper-level classes on the Fourteenth Amendment and First Amendment. We will address a variety of topics related to the proper legal functioning of our democratic system, including the law of voter participation, reapportionment and redistricting, election administration, racial discrimination and the Voting Rights Act, racial gerrymandering, and direct democracy. Campaign finance will be covered if there is time.

After a brief introduction to the history and evolution of the labor movement and labor legislation, the course covers in depth the legal framework dealing with union organization and collective bargaining. The material is considered from the beginning of the relationship between the employer and union, the organizational phase, through collective bargaining and enforcement of the contract once it is in place. Professor Friedman plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

This course reviews the public order of the oceans, i.e., the basic principles of international law, both customary and treaty-based, that apply to maritime spaces, such as the territorial sea, the high seas, continental shelf, seabed, and ocean floor. The course analyzes the allocation of jurisdictional powers among individual states and the international community at large over the various maritime zones involved; the use and management of ocean resources, such as regional and global fisheries regimes and seabed mining; marine environmental protection and pollution control; military uses of the ocean; and freedom of navigation. Special consideration will be given to enforcement issues related to drug trafficking and violations of marine environmental protection or fisheries regulations.

This interdisciplinary seminar will use various works from the canon of Western literature-Homer, Shakespeare, Kafka, and others-as well as American film to explore jurisprudential concerns such as the distinction between justice and revenge, law and illegality, and the limits and purposes of punishment. We will explore the differences and similarities between legal and literary narrative, the origin and nature of law, how law reflects (and whether it should reflect) community norms and moral views. Students will be required to prepare a research paper which they may use to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement, make one or more class presentations, and participate in class discussion. Reading assignments will consist of literary works and commentaries of these works.

This seminar explores the legal issues raised by the integration of emerging technologies in finance and the regulatory regimes applied to fintech platforms. The class will explore several major themes and current trends governing the complex interrelationship between law and technology. Grades will be based on the following: (a) Class Participation, Proposal, First Draft and Presentation: 40%; (b) Final Seminar Paper: 60%. This course will satisfy the upper-class writing requirement. Corequisite(s): NCLS 9110.

This course examines the use of law to advance social, economic, or political goals. After a brief exploration of the theoretical framework and historical background of “cause lawyering,” students will consider the role of law and lawyering in various change-seeking applications, such as social movements and impact litigation, and in various practice settings. Throughout the semester, students will meet with practitioners involved in prominent cases or organizations to discuss their objectives, strategies, and challenges—and whether they achieved their goals. Students will prepare for those meetings by reading relevant material and generating specific questions for the speakers. Grades will be based on several short papers, a final paper, and class participation. This course is not subject to a curve and includes an option for students to satisfy the upper-level writing requirement.

This course traces the history of private law in Europe from approximately 1750 to 1950.  It will begin with the pre-codified law and custom found in the European ius commune, the legal situation during the Ancien Régime of France, revolutionary age leading out to the first great codifications, and proceed to the rise of the historical school and Romanist legal science in Germany, the national debates over codification in Germany, the nature and background of the German Civil Code, the Austrian, Swiss, Spanish and Italian codification experience, and the diffusion of European codifications in countries of Latin America and Asia.  Readings will be assigned for discussion and participation in class.  Professor Palmer plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for failure to be prepared and/or excessive absenteeism.

This course is an introduction to the legal methodologies of practicing attorneys in the United States. Because the course is limited to foreign students seeking their LLM, it emphasizes the development of legal reasoning and writing skills in an adversarial legal system, while simultaneously acquainting students with the legal resources readily available to attorneys in the United States, such as Westlaw, and Lexis. The first half of the course is devoted to short writing projects, e.g., motions, and memoranda, as might be created and used by a U.S. law firm. The second portion of the course, which immediately follows the first, is devoted to the creation of a brief on a current issue. In addition, the students are required to orally argue at least three times. Professor Larson plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

Building on the research techniques presented in Legal Research and Writing, Advanced Legal Research focuses on the effective use of electronic and print legal research tools and examines existing electronic sources for both legal and non-legal information of interest to lawyers. After reviewing research concepts taught during Tulane’s first year Research and Writing course, this advanced course will provide coverage of selected additional research subjects, including statutory research, legislative history, administrative and regulatory research, practice aids, research strategies, and various specialized areas, including an introduction to treaty research and international/foreign research sources. The course also offers advanced training on comprehensive proprietary online research systems such as Westlaw and LexisNexis and introduces specialized proprietary online systems such as Bloomberg Law and BNA. It will focus on using the Internet to locate legal and non-legal resources, covering such topics as search engines, legal portal sites, websites for federal and state law, government information, and no/low cost information sources (commercial and noncommercial). This course will not be subject to the curve. The professor plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

The subject of this seminar is commercial fraud.  The goal is to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of what parties should consider, what they should anticipate, and how they might respond in litigating and arbitrating commercial fraud cases.  The topics to be covered include (1) the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, (2) the federal securities laws, and (3) various state law claims.  Class will focus on the problems confronted daily by the practicing attorney.

This seminar will focus principally upon the so-called ‘classical’ Mixed Jurisdictions of which there are about 15 or so in the world. Prominent among these are South Africa, Scotland, Quebec, Puerto Rico, Israel, The Philippines and Louisiana. There is debate about the countries belonging to this group and our research interest may extend beyond this circle in order to deal with classification issues. Each student in the seminar will select a topic dealing with some aspect of the Mixed Jurisdictions and write a research paper that will be presented and discussed in class. A paper topic may relate to any micro or macro aspect of such systems and should make use of the comparative method. Before topics are chosen, the opening classes will discuss the defining characteristics and traits of the mixed jurisdictions and students will be introduced to the literature on the subject. The principal text in the course will be V.V. Palmer (ed), Mixed Jurisdictions Worldwide: The Third Legal Family (2001).

This course will cover U.S. legislation, administrative regulations, state legislation, and case law in the area of marine pollution. This course counts as credit for both the Environmental and Maritime certificates.

In modern times, media is more ubiquitous than ever and the law is developing quickly in response. This class will examine the law that impacts media in its broadest sense—everything from a student’s social media posts to a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s news story in The New York Times—and explore how those laws have developed over time. Topics will include access and who gets what from government when government is determined to keep things out of public hands; defamation protections that appear to be changing rapidly from New York Times v. Sullivan days; invasion of privacy and what deeply personal information journalists or Twitter posters are allowed to reveal; special rules for the internet; media liability for emotional harm and fakery; FCC regulations; and more.

This is an advanced corporate law course covering federal law aspects of tender offers, mergers (including forward and reverse triangular), leveraged buyouts, asset purchases, and other acquisition techniques, as well as selected defensive tactics (poison pills, recapitalization, white knights, etc.), due diligence, and drafting merger and acquisition deal documents. Business Enterprises is a pre-requisite or permission of instructor required.

This course is one of the two foundation courses in environmental law and presents a survey of programs that govern the use and protection of natural resource systems, including energy, mining, timber, grazing, transportation and water resource development. Special attention is given to the National Environmental Policy Act, and to management statutes for public lands, forests, parks, refuges, wilderness areas, and endangered species.

The purpose of this course is to expose students to the process of negotiation as a pervasive lawyering activity; to increase awareness of the technical, interdisciplinary, and ethical dimensions of that process; to introduce the concept of the lawyer’s role as problem-solver; to enable students to experiment with and consider thoughtfully the various theories, forms, and techniques of negotiation and mediation advocacy; and to provide students an opportunity to assess their own capabilities within those contexts. 75% of the course will focus on negotiation and 25% on mediation advocacy. (Please note that the mediation advocacy portion of the course is not training students to be mediators but rather to enhance their understanding of the lawyer’s role in a mediation.) A number of negotiation exercises are completed outside of class at times that are mutually agreed upon by the negotiators. Flexibility by students in this regard is expected. Students will be graded on a “Pass/C/Fail” basis. There is no curve in this course. The professors plan to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparedness and/or excessive absenteeism. Students who have taken Intercultural Negotiation & Mediation in Berlin may not take Negotiation & Mediation Advocacy due to course overlap.

This course presents an introduction to the basic history and legal framework of the European Union (EU) and then concentrates on several key areas of practice. While the course will touch on the role of key EU institutions in the integration process, a central area of emphasis will be EU law in the fields of energy -- principally electricity, gas, and nuclear -- and the environment. Throughout the course, recurring overall themes will be sovereignty, federalism, subsidiarity and power sharing.

This course concentrates on U.S. patent laws, U.S. patent regulations, and procedures involved in obtaining patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.  Students will learn how to write patent claims, patent applications, and responses to office actions from the USPTO.  Some aspects of foreign and international law will be discussed.  The grade will be based on several written assignments and a final exam. 

This is a 3-credit course that covers patent law in greater depth than the intellectual property survey course. Topics to be covered include: patentability requirements, infringement, defenses, remedies, litigation, appellate issues, administrative revocation, and special topics. A technical background is NOT required for this course.

This course focuses on questions that arise in new social ventures, start-ups, non-profits and other early-stage projects. This will be a hands-on course where students will be introduced to the practice of IP and entrepreneurship through a variety of means, including a standard casebook, guest attorneys and entrepreneurs, and individualized research assignments. This course is recommended for students interested in the following areas: business, IP, non-profits, and solo practice. The grade is based project based work (individual research assignments each week) that will be graded. Students turn in a portfolio of their work at the end of the course which will be graded on completeness and thoroughness. This is a rigorous class that takes dedication. Students are expected to dedicate 3 hours preparation per class (6 hours a week) to the individual research assignments. Attendance is also key.

The course will focus on the legal principles and skills involved in interviewing clients and witnesses and counseling clients in the course of litigation, dispute resolution, and decision making. Establishing an effective lawyer-client relationship requires gathering information relevant to client decisions and assisting clients in analyzing the legal and non-legal consequences of various options in order to make the decision most likely to achieve client objectives. Additional topics include addressing political polarization and cultural differences; interviewing and counseling clients experiencing trauma or disability; and representing children, criminal defendants, and organizational clients. Students will be assessed based on in-class role plays, recorded interviewing and counseling simulations, written plans, and self-evaluations.

This seminar provides a forum in which students can deepen their understanding of what property is, debate the merits of property law, and contemplate future issues that property law will face. In doing so, this seminar strives to enhance students’ analytical, research, writing, and presenting skills. The seminar is divided into three main parts. The first part focuses on developing a greater understanding of how the law views property. We will read fundamental property scholarship that has helped developed the modern concepts of what property is and how ownership is established and protected. The second part applies the traditional theories of property rights in more modern context. Through a variety of readings, the class will contemplate whether property rights should extend to things like the body, outer space, and virtual worlds. The third part allows students to develop their own thoughts on property rights through the writing and presenting of a seminar paper.

This course will compare common and civil law approaches to the law of property, contracts, and torts. The common law originated in England and is judge made. The civil law developed from Roman law and, in most jurisdictions today, it is codified. We will look at how England, the United States, France, and Germany deal with some concrete legal problems, and ask whether the differences are due to history, codification, culture or to the problems themselves. The topics chosen will be familiar to the students from their first year. NOTE: Students who previously completed Professor Palmer’s European Legal Systems course may not enroll in this course.

This seminar provides students to learn and engage with the rules of professional conduct and the law as it relates to the differing roles of the prosecutor and the criminal defense lawyer. Students will gain knowledge of constitutional rights and principles that affect the conduct of counsel and the intersection of the law with the rules that govern lawyers. On a fundamental level, students will gain an understanding of the historical and public policy considerations underlying the law and rules governing the conduct of prosecutors and defense lawyers.

The course focuses upon the founding and evolution of American products liability law, including the latest formulation in the third Restatement of Torts as well as state "reform" statutes. Emphasis is placed upon the inter-relationship between con-tract and tor remedies; the rise of the doctrine of strict liability; and the theory of enterprise liability. Professor Palmer will invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

This course will explore the role of lawyers' ethics in the American legal system and the conceptual models that currently frame the ethical rules and regulate lawyer behavior.  It also will explore those areas in which ethical regulation deviates from practice, and further examine through the use of practical in-class exercises how ethical rules can be developed to improve advocacy and truth-finding in the legal process.  The grade will be based on a non-anonymous paper.  Professor Stanley plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation or excessive absences.  Note:  This course does not satisfy the requirement to take Legal Profession. The grade will be based on a non-anonymous paper. Professor plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation or excessive absences. This course does not satisfy the requirement to take Legal Profession. This seminar may be taken to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement with permission of the Professor and meeting all of the requirements; the course does not automatically satisfy the upper-level writing requirement.

This course will be an overview of military and military-related law as practiced in the United States.  The course will be divided into three thematic blocks:   1) the military justice system as it applies to service members, 2) the military legal system as it interacts with veterans, civilians, and civilian institutions, and 3) the military legal system as it acts internationally.  

This seminar will explore the relationship between critical understandings of the significance of race and legal interpretation. Of particular importance will be the examination of how societal values and customs, expressed in legal rules purporting to address racial issues, inhibit critical approaches to the concerns of justice for the disadvantaged groups. Students must take any one of the following courses as a co-requisite for this seminar: Constitutional Law: 14th Amendment, Gender Law & Public Policy, Law & Sexuality Seminar, or Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Race Relations Seminar. This seminar may be taken to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement.

International energy law is an important part of the required knowledge base of an “energy lawyer”. There is no single body of law or a treaty on “energy law” or “international energy law”. Instead, it is a combination of various rules of international, regional and national laws. After providing insights into what “energy law” is and who are the main players in the field, this course will cover the entire energy value chain and introduce students to legal and contractual issues relating to each segment.  The course covers all forms of energy from oil and gas to reviewable energy. It also provides an overview of typical national policies and policy drivers for various energy activities.

This course examines the impact of legal regulation in the United States on such areas as sexuality and sexual preference as intimate association, marriage, family structure, workplace discrimination, and civil rights. It also covers law relevant to transgender persons, intersex persons, and queer sexualities. No attendance policy; however participation aspect of the grade may suffer due to poor attendance. This seminar may be taken to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement.

This course provides a broad overview of U.S. Federal securities law, including statutes and regulations governing the underwriting and offering process, exemptions from registration, the operation of securities markets, and the activities of securities intermediaries, such as stock exchanges and broker-dealers. The course focuses on theoretical issues, such as the philosophy of regulating disclosure; the classification of professional and retail investors; the allocation of authority among the SEC, self-regulatory organizations and other federal and state regulators with respect to financial instruments; and the scope of and limitations on private securities litigation and the SEC’s enforcement authority. Business Enterprises is required.

This course is designed to give students an introduction to the real world experience of the deal making process, from the first contact between the parties to drafting and negotiating the documents that govern transformational corporate transactions. Over the course of the semester, we will break down the main agreements involved in a hypothetical deal with a view to developing a fundamental understanding of how those components interact with the overall business arrangement and deal dynamics. You will analyze and learn to understand how the key provisions of these transaction agreements are negotiated with the goal of maximizing value for the client and appropriately allocating risk among the parties to a deal. We will also discuss the less tangible aspects of deal making that take place outside of the four corners of the transaction agreements but are no less important. Specifically, we plan to discuss the economic and personal motivations of the various parties involved and the psychology and group dynamics of a deal process. As the deal world is an ever changing environment, we’ll look to bring current real world examples into the classroom. Students will participate out-of-class group and individual practice assignments, including drafting (or “marking up”) transaction documents and negotiating key issues in the context of a prepared fact pattern. Students will also participate in an off-campus mock negotiation of a deal term sheet at Jones Walker, LLP’s office downtown. The course is taught by Britton Seal and Daniella Silberstein, who are both partners in the Corporate Practice Group at Jones Walker LLP in New Orleans. Because of the substantial overlap in content, students enrolled in Negotiating M&A Agreements may not enroll in the Transactional Winter Intersession.

This course examines how the antitrust and labor laws apply to the unique relationships in the sports industry. The course focuses on the ways the antitrust and labor laws have shaped virtually every aspect of professional and amateur sports – ranging from salary caps and age restrictions to television deals and team relocations.

This course examines the application of a variety of different areas of law—including intellectual property, contracts, torts, and constitutional law— to the sports industry. The course emphasizes intellectual property law and issues relating to the ownership of “data” produced by sports leagues, teams, and athletes. In particular, the course focuses on right of publicity and trademark law. This course will also examine a variety of legal issues that arise in collegiate, amateur, and international sports.

This course focuses on environmental sustainability in the energy sector from a legal perspective. Given that we all share the common problem, and try to come up with the best possible solution to answer the challenge of combatting climate change, understanding different tools adopted in different jurisdictions is central in developing — and improving — the policies and implementing measures given the diversity of experiences across the globe. Therefore, the course adopts a comparative approach to examine different regulatory alternatives that can be introduced to reduce the harmful greenhouse gas emissions in particular in the energy supply side in order to enable a more sustainable energy future. While the emphasis will be placed on the power sector given its overall contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions, building, transport and end-use sectors are also examined to a lesser extent.

The course explores the federal income tax concepts of “pass through” or conduit taxation. Partnership tax topics include choice of entity decisions, partnership formations, asset contributions, liability assumption, distributions, operations, transfer of partners’ interests, special allocations of tax attributes, partnership interests received for services, special basis adjustments, and analysis of the entity and aggregate approaches found in the law. Also included is an introduction to the study of the law of S-Corporations and how it compares to the taxation of partnerships. (3 Credits)

The Tax Policy Seminar takes a multidisciplinary approach to tax policy. It explores the political economy of tax policy from different perspectives: efficiency vs. equity; tradeoffs in taxation, key elements and weaknesses of U.S. tax law; the philosophical and psychological foundations of taxation; historical and comparative perspectives on taxation; taxation of income from owning capital; recent proposals to tax the very wealthy.

The course provides a basic overview of regular "C" corporations. Using a transactional approach, the course traces the life of a corporation from formation through distributions to liquidation. Income Tax is a prerequisite for this class.

Tax research consists of the examination of tax questions through the following process: (1) identification of pertinent issues; (2) determination of proper authorities; (3) evaluation of the strength of the authorities; and (4) application of these authorities to the specific fact situation.  Through the use of a series of assigned research projects, students will be given an opportunity to survey significant areas of the Internal Revenue Code, gain an awareness of developing tax issues, and develop a capability in tax research.  Based on the cases presented, the student will be asked to analyze the facts, identify the tax issues, locate appropriate authorities, evaluate those authorities, develop conclusions and recommendations, and communicate the findings in the form of an opinion letter, a protest, or a memorandum.  A final research paper on a tax topic chosen by each student will be combined with the assigned research projects and credit for class attendance to determine the final grade.  Each weekly class session is dedicated to tax research techniques and a survey lecture of the general area of tax law covered by the specific case then under consideration. The course is a Business School course, cross-listed with the Law School.  Income Tax is a prerequisite.

This course explores the state and local taxation of entities and individuals, focusing on multi-state taxation and overall tax planning strategies to minimize or eliminate multi-state tax liability. In this course, we will examine the concept of “nexus” (when a taxpayer or transaction is subject to the taxing jurisdiction of a state or locality), both as it has been understood historically, and in light of technological advances that have made remote business operations increasingly practical.  We will also address the unique state and local tax issues created by the growth of “e-commerce” and the financial impact on state and local tax jurisdictions administering tax laws developed in the context of local business operations.  Finally, we will discuss and analyze business activity taxes and sales and use taxation in detail, and will also cover very generally franchise, capital stock and gross receipts taxes, and property taxation, as time permits. Students will have an opportunity to practice handling or deciding a current significant SALT issue in a "moot court" exercise. The course will be taught by Jaye A. Calhoun, a member of the Business Tax Section of Kean Miller, L.L.P.

International investment protection is particularly important for energy activities. This is true for all segments of the energy value chain from upstream to downstream energy. It is a national and an international issue. Looking at various treaties and agreements as well as real disputes from around the world, this course covers all the main elements of energy investment protection. The objective of the course is to introduce the students to various investment protection methods. The classes examine both treaty and contract based investment protection. It will also cover both investment treaties and Host Government Contracts and Inter-Governmental Agreements used for upstream, pipeline and downstream investments. In addition to the theoretical and more abstract parts, the course will also use several case studies as learning material. The students will be exposed to real contracts and real treaties. This course could meet the upper-class writing requirement.

This course picks up where IP Survey left off. Advanced topics in trademark are covered, along with key concepts related to the use of those trademarks in advertising law. Topics include foreign trademarks, false advertising, deception, omissions and disclosures in advertising, brand protection, and many others. IP survey is required for all participants (no waiver). Students who previously took copyright/trademark may enroll in trademark and advertising law.

The rapidly growing number of disputes involving foreign parties and transactions present distinct problems that do not arise in purely domestic litigation or arbitration.  The course will address these problems and the emerging solutions as developed by American courts, and it will compare these developments with approaches that prevail in other legal systems.  Areas that will be covered include the extraterritorial application of U.S. laws, taking evidence abroad, personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants, and the enforcement of foreign judgments.

This is a theory and practice course covering the major components of an environmental case up to trial including: substantive and procedural law, investigations, claims/defenses, discovery and depositions, experts and science, and motions . Grading will be based on written and oral exercises; no examination. It is taught by William Goodell a sole practitioner specializing in environmental and toxic damage litigation. Mr. Goodell is principal of the Goodell Law Firm, was formerly Louisiana Assistant Attorney General for Environmental Enforcement, and also taught the Environmental Trial Advocacy and Deepwater Horizon Seminar courses at Tulane. This course is the former Toxic Tort Litigation Practice.

This seminar explores the fundamentals of international trade practice in the World Trade Organization (WTO).  After reviewing the economic foundations for international trade and the historical underpinnings of the WTO system, our primary focus will be on the texts of the WTO agreements and the international legal practice surrounding the WTO dispute settlement system. This course is taught by Edward T. Hayes, a partner at Leake & Andersson, LLP. This seminar may be taken to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement with permission of the Professor and meeting all of the requirements; the course does not automatically satisfy the upper-level writing requirement.

Using gender as a paradigm for thinking about law, this course examines sex-based discrimination from a variety of perspectives in substantive areas of law that influence the lives of women and men. It covers issues of formal equality in employment, equal opportunity in education, substantive equality through affirmative action and pay equity, pregnancy, parenting, sexual orientation, sexual harassment, family law, domestic violence, pornography, prostitution, rape, and reproductive choice among others.

The Race and International Law Seminar provides a forum for studying race and racial hierarchies in international law, and the use of international law to produce, reproduce, and justify those hierarchies. Throughout the semester, the seminar will discuss the theoretical underpinnings of early postcolonial critiques and what connections they have to critical race theory approaches to international law.

This seminar allows students to learn and engage with the rules of professional conduct and the law as it relates to the differing roles of the prosecutor and the criminal defense lawyer. Students will gain knowledge of constitutional rights and principles that affect the conduct of counsel and the intersection of that law with the rules that govern lawyers. On a fundamental level, students will gain an understanding of the historical and public policy considerations underlying the law and rules governing the conduct of prosecutors and defense lawyers.

This course will begin with an overview of global energy systems and introduce global energy value chains for the dominant energy paradigms and their reach into the real economy. It will then introduce the legal regime governing the extraction of raw materials needed for energy value chains. It will do so by focusing on the exploration, development and production of oil and gas resources in the U.S. covering core aspects of the oil and gas lease (property), joint operating agreements (contracts), and conservation (environmental regulation) and will place the U.S. experience in an international context. The next portion of the course will introduce the regulation of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. It will focus in particular on the challenges for energy regulation by an increased focus on renewables in the U.S. energy mix. It will again place these developments in a global perspective. The course will use simulations as a means to introduce the many complexities of energy law in a realistic fashion.

The course is a survey course covering the law relating to international trade in goods, covering both private commercial transactions relating to trade in goods and the international legal instruments and organizations regulating international trade. The course will deal with international sales and payments and also longer-term “framework” agreements relating to marketing and licensing and the issues that they raise, such as antitrust regulation and parallel importing. It will also deal with trade regulation by GATT, the WTO, and regional trade agreements between countries, and will show how the private commercial relationships between parties are related to the public law relationships between countries in relation to trade. The course will consider only trade in goods. It will not consider trade in services or foreign direct investment or taxation as it relates to the planning of import/export transactions.

This course will consider the mechanisms of control over the modern business corporation in American society. What are the roles played by directors, shareholders, regulators, and other groups? Who should owe fiduciary duties to the corporation, what are the content of those duties, and how should they be enforced? How should boards of directors manage the claims of various constituencies affected by corporations?

The seminar will provide students with an in-depth examination into the legal arena of medical malpractice with a concentration on the policies behind the various State statutes governing these claims. We will pay special attention to the caps on damages in each State, if the cap changed in each State, and which States have abolished a cap; the burden of proof; pertinent cases; large jury verdicts; States where a pre-litigation panel is required; collateral source; and other interesting aspects of medical malpractice claims which may be governed by various States. While there will be some focus on medical malpractice laws in Louisiana specifically, the seminar will mostly be a survey of medical malpractice in other States, with a small section dedicated to medical malpractice internationally, for comparison. We will also have a brief introduction of the history of medical malpractice lawsuits.

This course examines the legal history of reproductive justice in the United States from the colonial era to the present. It traces ideas about gender, family, sexuality, bodily autonomy, and consent as they have developed over time, using the theory of “preservation through transformation” to analyze change and continuity. The class will situate the development of various reproductive justice doctrines in political, social, and economic context and examine the impact of shifting ideologies about sex, gender, and race on these doctrines. The course will take an interdisciplinary approach, examining the intersections of reproductive justice with, inter alia, race, class, labor, immigration, environmental justice, and international law. This is a reading-heavy course that requires significant preparation and class participation. Assignments will include weekly discussion questions, a paper draft, and a 35-page final paper.

The course will examine U.S. asylum law in three parts. First, students will understand how the legal framework for today’s asylum law has been built on treaty law, domestic implementing legislation, agency regulation, judicial interpretation, and subregulatory activity. Second, the course will examine the judicial interpretation phase that was for decades the principal way that U.S. asylum law developed, sometimes as a means of immigration control and sometimes as a means of innovation in refugee protection. Third, the course will examine the shift to procedural limitations and access to asylum that have become more decisive of the extent to which the United States fulfills both its protection and control imperatives. The course will focus on the dramatic policy shifts that have come with changes of Administrations, especially in an era of more pronounced exercises of executive authority than legislative. It will also focus on the allocation of authority among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, with the aim of providing students with lessons that will have value in areas of practice or thought beyond immigration and asylum.

The course is specifically designed to provide students with a uniquely focused perspective from which to gain a deep understanding of the varied legal issues that arise at the intersection of law and aging. More specifically, "Elder Law" is the legal practice of counseling and representing older persons and their representatives about the legal aspects of health and long-term care planning, public benefits, surrogate decision-making, older persons' legal capacity, the conservation, disposition and administration of older persons' estates, and the implementation of their decisions concerning such matters. Additional issues covered include retirement planning, discrimination in employment, elder abuse, and assisted suicide. This course will inform the growing number of students who may work with or represent the elderly, family members of the elderly, legal service agencies or legislative advocacy groups.

This course examines the tax law relevant to capital formation, dividends, redemptions, and liquidations. The exercises are designed to 1) improve students’ ability to interpret a statute and apply it to the facts, 2) gain confidence in the application of major corporate tax doctrines, 3) improve writing skills, and 4) learn the tax law applicable to common corporate transactions. Several problems and a short writing assignment are designed to allow students to practice boiling down complex issues into a concise summary suitable for their deal team colleagues, clients, the IRS, or a judge. Grades are based on the daily problem assignments, a short (three to five page) writing assignment, and a short take-home exam.

Only about 2% of all federal criminal defendants go to trial, and only about 6% of state criminal defendants do so. Yet the vast majority of the training received by prosecutors and defense attorneys, both in law school and after, focuses on trials. This mini-course will instead address the mechanism(s) by which most criminal cases are actually resolved, (with a particular emphasis on the federal courts) and will attempt to provide future criminal lawyers with some of the tools needed to achieve just and fair resolutions in those cases. For the last class, students will be put into pairs (prosecutor-defense attorney), and required to conduct plea negotiations in a hypothetical case, and ultimately reach a resolution that does not involve a trial. The roles of the participants will then be reversed, and the exercise will be conducted again.

This course will prepare students to be productive members of a deal team. Combined, they cover the commonly encountered major corporate transactions, such as stock issuances, distributions, redemptions, and liquidations. The exercises are designed to improve a student’s confidence in interpreting a statute and applying it to the facts. Several writing assignments and problems are designed to allow the students to practice boiling down complex issues into a concise summary for their deal team colleagues, clients, the IRS, or a judge.

This course examines the tax law relevant to taxable acquisitions, spin-offs, reorganizations, the carryover of corporate attributes in connection with acquisitions, and anti-abuse provisions. The exercises are designed to 1) improve students’ ability to interpret a statute and apply it to the facts, 2) gain confidence in the application of major corporate tax doctrines, 3) improve writing skills, and 4) learn the tax law applicable to common corporate transactions. Several problems and a short writing assignment are designed to allow the students to practice boiling down complex issues into a concise summary suitable for their deal team colleagues, clients, the IRS, or a judge. Grades are based on the daily problem assignments, a short (three to five page) writing assignment, and a short take-home exam.

This course will begin with an overview of general issues in healthcare law but will focus primarily on practical legal issues physicians face in the current healthcare world and how lawyers can be prepared to counsel the physicians facing those issues. This course will address issues as diverse as anti-trust and ERISA to medical staff and peer review, from the viewpoint of a practitioner who specializes in representing physicians. Tulane medical students will also attend several of the classes. The course is taught by Richard Levenstein, a Shareholder at Nason Yeager. There will also be several attorney and physician guest instructors.

This course will survey substantive matters, including carriage of goods by sea; charter parties; personal injury and death; collision; towage, pilotage, and salvage. Admiralty I is not a prerequisite for the course in Admiralty II; however, both Admiralty I and II are required for J.D. students prior to enrollment in any other Admiralty courses that are regularly offered. Advanced Admiralty courses may not be taken by J.D. students simultaneously with either Admiralty I or II.

This course deals mostly with jurisdictional and procedural matters, including jurisdiction over maritime claims, considerations of federalism, forum non conveniens, choice of law, special procedures in admiralty cases, limitation of liability, and maritime liens. Admiralty II may be taken prior to Admiralty I. Both courses must be taken by J.D. students as prerequisites to any other regularly offered admiralty courses.

The Seminar will have one or more common themes to be selected by the class with some suggestions from the professor. Two possible themes are: (1) the shipping industry’s decarbonization efforts and (2) the problem of abandoned seafarers and mistreatment of seafarers, particularly in the fishing industry. Students attending the first class should have given some thought as to what they would like to see the Seminar cover. Admiralty I is a prerequisite. This seminar may be taken to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement.

This course involves the legal problems arising out of damage to cargoes transported between the United States and foreign ports and focusing on the Carriage of Goods by Sea and Harter Acts, as well as under the Rotterdam Rules. There is an emphasis placed on the actual practice of maritime law. Students must participate in an ungraded mock cargo negotiation. Admiralty I and II are prerequisites. The course is taught by Raymond Waid who is a Shareholder in the New Orleans office of Liskow & Lewis, APLC.

An advanced course in admiralty law concentrating on rights and liabilities arising out of the personal injury and death of seamen, longshoremen, harbor-workers, and third parties under both federal and state law. Admiralty I an II are prerequisites. The course is taught by Stevan Dittman, Of Counsel with the firm of Gainsburgh, Benjamin, David, Meunier & Warshauer, L.L.C.

This course presents the general principles of maritime collision law, including causation, legal presumptions, the effect of statutory violations, apportionment of fault, damages, special evidentiary rules and an overview of navigation Rules of the Road and their interpretation. This course then provides an in-depth study of limitation of liability from a practical point of view. After study of the theory of limitation of liability and governing law, the procedural aspects of asserting this right will be considered in detail, as well as the content of the limitation fund and how it is distributed. This course also covers a basic comparative analysis of limitation of liability laws in the United States against the limitation of liability laws in other areas of the world.

An advanced admiralty course that focuses on the legal problems involved in insurance against physical loss or damage to maritime property (builder's risk and hull), against maritime liabilities (protection and indemnity), and for damage to cargo. JD students must have taken Admiralty I and II. JD students must write the exam, but LLM candidates may write an advanced level paper if they so choose. This course will be taught by Brandon Thibodeaux, an associate with Frilot LLC.

Marine Insurance II is an advanced admiralty course that focuses on the legal problems arising out of marine insurance policies. The course examines hull, cargo, P&I, commercial marine property and liability policies including the liability of agents, brokers, and underwriters, the effect of the insolvency of an insurance company, excess and surplus lines coverage, the duty of defend, reinsurance, and current problems in the law of marine insurance coverage. Admiralty I and II are prerequisites. The course is taught by Richard Cozad who is a Partner at Schouest, Bamdas, Soshea & BenMaier P.L.L.C.

An advanced course in admiralty law concentrating on rights and liabilities arising out of the personal injury and death of seamen, longshoremen, harbor-workers, and third parties under both federal and state law. J.D. students must have taken Admiralty I and II. The course is taught by Stevan Dittman, Of Counsel with the firm of Gainsburgh, Benjamin, David, Meunier & Warshauer, L.L.C.

This survey course addresses the regulation of domestic shipping and foreign shipping calling at United States ports. Primary emphasis is on the various governmental agencies that regulate shipping and maritime commerce with secondary emphasis on the role of international treaties and conventions. Specifically examined are the activities of agencies such as the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers, The Federal Maritime Commission, the Maritime Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and various state agencies. Areas addressed include vessel inspections, pollution regulation, navigation rules, marine casualty investigations, vessel and waterfront facility security, merchant mariner licensing and license revocation, pilotage and ocean shipping regulation. This course is taught by Brian K. McNamara, a Commander and judge advocate with the United States Coast Guard. J.D. Students must have taken Adm. I and II. (2)

Tugboats, barges, offshore support vessels, and offshore petroleum and renewable energy installations like offshore wind farms provide crucial services in today’s global economy, all of which impact towage and offshore services in the admiralty context. This course examines the history, development, and current state of laws – some familiar, some quite specialized – that apply in the context of towage and offshore services. Both casualties and contracts are studied. The course focus is on U.S. law, but the laws of other countries like the U.K. are compared and contrasted when relevant, and internationally recognized contract forms are analyzed. Admiralty I and II are prerequisites. This course is taught by David B. Sharpe who is a Partner at Lugenbuhl, Wheaton, Peck, Rankin & Hubbard.

Students in this course work with materials concerning the documentation of vessels and financing from initial decision to construct to permanent financing. A knowledge of maritime law, commercial law and security rights is recommended. The course is conceived of as a practical course, with emphasis on the financial decisions of vessel operators and financiers. Attention is also given to maritime insurance issues affecting financiers. Admiralty I and II are prerequisites.

This seminar is the co-requisite course for the Civil Rights and Federal Practice Clinic and examines the practice, procedure, and ethics of pre-trial advocacy in the area of civil litigation. Topics include client interviewing, case planning, drafting pleadings and discovery requests, taking and defending depositions, motion practice, expert witnesses, and jury selection.

This course is the civil advocacy component in which students, under supervision, represent clients primarily in the areas of fair housing, equal employment opportunity, and civil rights/liberties. Students may draft motions, pleadings, discovery requests, and briefs; conduct depositions; argue motions; negotiate settlements and/or try cases in state and federal court. Student attorneys have professional responsibility for clients and handle all aspects of the case from the initial client interview through fact investigation and discovery, then to trial, adjudication, or settlement. To be taken in conjunction with Federal Pretrial Practice. Students are selected on the basis of an application and personal interview. Full year only, 3 credits in the fall and 3 credits in the spring. Course may be repeated 2 times for credit.

Students in the Immigrants' Rights Law Clinic represent detainees, migrant workers, children and other immigrants with critical legal needs working through the U.S. Immigration system. Working alongside licensed attorneys, students work on behalf of clients and community groups in a variety of settings--immigration agencies and courts, state and federal courts, as well as work-shops in detention centers and/or community centers.

The course is an experiential, yearlong law clinic integrating lawyering theory, skills and doctrine in the context of representing noncitizens, including detainees, migrant workers, and children. Students will be assigned to work in pairs and groups, under Professor Yanik (yearlong) and Prof. Hlass (Fall semester), completing work on behalf of clients and community groups in a variety of settings—immigration agencies and courts, state and federal courts, as well as workshops in detention centers and/or community centers. Students will learn the substantive immigration and federal practice law, as well as ethics and professionalism, as they develop lawyering skills including: critical interviewing, investigating facts, researching and analyzing relevant law, case planning, developing a theory of the case, creative problem-solving, strategic decision-making, collaborating, legal storytelling, critical lawyering and consequences of bias in legal systems, legal writing, oral advocacy, and motion practice.

The course will examine domestic violence in the criminal justice system and in family law, with a special focus on practical legal skills. Topics include domestic violence as a violation of law, civil rights, international human rights and as a tort, and the role of domestic violence in divorce law and custody. While examining the issue systematically, students will also learn important practice skills through simulated role plays and demonstrations. Students will take a mock deposition, perform cross-examinations, and oral arguments.

The Domestic Violence Clinic provides legal services to victims of domestic abuse, relationship violence, stalking, or sexual assault. Legal services will address the variety of legal problems which may arise as a consequence of domestic violence, including emergency assistance in obtaining protective orders, and extending to representation in family law cases; including child custody and support; problems with housing, unemployment, or denial of access to financial resources such as bank accounts or other community property. The Domestic Violence Clinic is offered in the fall for three credits and in the spring for three credits. Enrollment is limited to twelve students. Students are selected on the basis of an application and personal interview. Students must meet all eligibility requirements of the Louisiana student practice rule. Prerequisites: Legal Profession and Evidence. Co-requisite: Litigation Skills for DV Clinic Students. Course may be repeated 2 times for credit.

This seminar is an in-depth study of selected aspects of criminal practice, both skills and substantive. Topics covered include: client counseling, investigation and discovery, drafting and arguing motions, competency to stand trial, the insanity defense, expert witnesses, case strategy, state and federal post-conviction proceedings. This course is geared towards those considering careers in criminal law, whether as prosecutors or defense attorneys. Enrollment is limited to students participating in the Criminal Justice Clinic. A rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism will be invoked. Fall semester only.

This course is the criminal litigation and advocacy component in which students, under supervision, represent indigent criminal defendants in all phases of a criminal case: pretrial motions and trials; parole hearings; state post-conviction relief; appeals to the LA Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal and the LA Supreme Court; and federal habeas corpus petitions in the federal district court, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, and United States Supreme Court. Additionally, students engage in non-litigation advocacy on behalf of clinic clients such as testifying before the state legislature, meeting with community organizations, and partaking in community legal education. This course is geared towards those considering careers in criminal law, either as prosecutors or defense attorneys. To be taken in conjunction with Criminal Practice Seminar. Students are selected on the basis of an application and personal interview. Full year only, 3 credits in the fall and 3 credits in the spring. A rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism will be invoked. Course may be repeated 2 times for credit.

The Tulane Environmental Law Clinic (TELC) provides legal services to local, regional, and national groups, as well as individuals, on a wide range of environmental and public participation issues. Under the supervision of the Clinic’s staff attorneys, students in the Clinic take the lead in representing clients in pleadings and oral arguments before local governmental bodies, state and federal agencies, and state and federal courts. Among the issues TELC student attorneys address are issues faced by fence line environmental justice communities impacted by facilities which pollute their land, air and water and pose risks from accidental releases; Atchafalaya Basin residents and fishermen who seek to preserve their way of life and the wetlands they rely on; clients concerned with preserving fish and wildlife, including threatened and endangered species; and regional and national groups addressing local environmental issues which reverberate nationwide. TELC is open to 3Ls, 2Ls (during the spring semester only), and LLMs with JD degrees from U.S. law schools. 2L and 3L students are required to enroll for two semesters; LLMs are limited to one semester in TELC. Under student-practice rules, 3Ls and LLMs may sign pleadings and appear in court under the guidance of TELC’s supervising attorneys. Professor Jordan plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for excessive absenteeism. 3 credits each semester. Course may be repeated 2 times for credit.

This seminar studies the special problems involved in the representation of children and their parents.  Topics reviewed include discovery practices in criminal and civil cases, evidence, constitutional criminal procedure, expert witnesses, child custody and child support, and pre-trial motions appropriate for litigation in juvenile court. Enrollment is limited to students participating in the Juvenile Litigation Clinic. Professor Katner plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

In the Juvenile Clinic 10 students represent indigent clients in juvenile delinquency cases, and children in need of care cases.  Students work under the direction of the supervising attorney, but the students are primarily responsible for all client and witness interviews, pre-trial hearings, trials and appeals.  The course must be taken in conjunction with the Juvenile Advocacy Seminar. The course lasts the entire year and carries 3 credits in the fall and 3 credits in the spring. Students are selected during the spring of their second year based upon written applications and personal interviews with the supervising attorney. Professor Katner plans to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism. Course may be repeated 2 times for credit.

This clinical course is dedicated to protecting freedom of expression, increasing government transparency, and supporting the essential work of news gatherers. The work includes impact litigation and direct legal services. Student attorneys have professional responsibility for clients and handle all aspects of their cases. To be taken in conjunction with the First Amendment Advocacy Seminar. Students are select on the basis of an application and personal interview. Full year only, 3 credits in the fall and 3 credits in the spring.

This seminar is the co-requisite course for the First Amendment Clinic and examines the practice, procedure and ethics of pre-trial advocacy in the area of First Amendment. 3 credits.

Legislative and Administrative Advocacy examines how bills become law and how agency rules are promulgated. Each student will research and draft a proposed bill or agency regulation on behalf of a client group, present it in a mock hearing, and write a research paper. Grades are based in equal proportions on the draft of an instrument, mock hearing, and research paper; there is no examination. Class meetings will cover legislative and administrative enactment and promulgation procedures, research methodologies, drafting techniques, constitutional restrictions, and public access to information. This clinical course is open for enrollment by second and third year students. Professors plane to invoke a rule penalizing students for lack of preparation and/or excessive absenteeism.

Students will work on multiple legislative and administrative instruments at various stages of development, including bills appropriate for introduction into the spring legislative session, rules intended for promulgation by agencies, city ordinances, research memoranda, one-page informational sheets, proposed amendments, fiscal notes, and fiscal and economic impact statements. Classroom meetings will include presentations by faculty and by personnel from collateral agencies with expertise in legislative and administrative advocacy. Direct faculty instruction will also be provided through meetings and tutorials, individually and in small groups, where drafts of instruments will be reviewed and critiqued, feedback will be provided on written memoranda, strategic considerations will be discussed, and students will engage in critical reflection on their field experiences. Students will devise implementation strategies based on economic analysis and feasibility of proposed instruments. They will attend meetings of selected public bodies and prepare a written reflection on what they observed. Grades will be based on written memoranda and drafts, timeliness of the work, supervisory and client feedback, and diligence. In order to apply for entry into the clinic, students must have taken the fall semester course in Legislative & Administrative Advocacy; enrollment is subject to professor approval.

This course is intended to prepare and train students in advocacy skills for litigation. It is graded on a pass/D/fail basis, with top 10% of class receiving “honors” designation. The principal method of instruction is “Learning By Doing.” The students participate in intensive role playing of simulated trial problems and receive feedback from faculty members. Subjects covered during the course are: opening statements; direct and cross examination; exhibits and demonstrative evidence; impeachment and rehabilitation; examination of expert witnesses; closing arguments; and trial notebook. Asynchronous lectures on the skill of the week are provided, and members of the faculty give demonstration performances. Each student performance is recorded at least once as part of the weekly faculty feedback and self-evaluation component. The faculty includes experienced trial lawyers and judges, who rotate through each section so that students will be exposed to a variety of views and ideas. Each student tries a trial at the conclusion of the course. The course has a limited enrollment. It is strongly recommended that you take Evidence prior to enrolling in Trial Advocacy, but co-enrollment is permitted.

This course aims to promote the academic and professional success of 3L students transitioning into their post-graduation bar exam preparation. The course will focus on exam strategies and study skills; it will not explicitly teach content tested on the bar exam and is not designed or intended to be a substitute for a commercial bar review course. The course will be held jointly, with two class sessions split by jurisdiction to provide exam-specific instruction and targeted skills practice. Both sections will begin with an overview of the structure of the Uniform Bar Exam and Louisiana Bar Exam and the processes for admission to state bar associations. Following this initial lecture-based session, students are expected to be active participants in the course, which will require out of class assignments, in-class assignments, skills practice, mock exams, and other formative graded exercises. Students will receive hands-on studying and writing practice, peer evaluation, and individual feedback. Students will take at least one civil law bar course or one upper-class bar course in the same semester (unless the student has successfully completed three civil law or upper-class bar courses). The proposed course is in line with the overwhelming majority of our peer and aspirational schools. Of the twenty-four schools ranked between 60 and 80 by the U.S. News and World Report in 2023, nineteen have a bar preparation program. Of the ninety-one schools ranked between 1 and 80, only twenty-nine have no bar course or commercial partnership.

The course will introduce key concepts including international tax policy and the taxation of inbound and outbound business operations, cross-border financing, foreign currency transactions, cash repatriation and acquisitions and divestitures. The course will leverage real-life examples to illustrate the taxation of common cross-border business transactions and provide students with an appreciation of the critical role tax plays in structuring multinational business operations. Course grades will be based on individual written assignments designed to assess students’ ability to identify and effectively communicate basic international tax concepts.

Wind is a major source of renewable electricity in use around the world. This course will focus on legal and policy factors that arise with this technology, using case studies, legal materials, scientific data, and other sources from the U.S. The course provides an in-depth study of most aspects of wind law in the US, with a focus on selected states, including the history of wind energy, the major elements of the wind energy lease, permitting, land law issues, the contractual framework for the sale of wind energy, offshore wind projects, government tax incentives, transmission issues and litigation.

The course explores the impact of digitalization on the application of competition law. On the one hand, competition has been tremendously intensified by the reduction of transaction costs, greater transparency and geographic market expansion. On the other hand, unprecedented economies of scale, network effects and control over big data create considerable barriers to entry and increase market power. Moreover, algorithms and artificial intelligence allow for new methods of coordinating market conduct with other players. Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that new competition law cases have emerged, including but not limited to the GAFAM platforms (Google-Alphabet, Apple, Facebook-Meta, Amazon and Microsoft). While the focus of the course is on European Union (EU) competition law, developments in US antitrust law will be considered comparatively. It will be shown that competition law – when adequately applied – does not stand in the way of innovation but has become indispensable for keeping markets dynamic, fair and open.

Emissions of greenhouse gases are known to cause widespread ecological, economic, and social consequences at a global scale. For over three decades, states have engaged in intense international negotiations and national efforts to address this issue, in particular by limiting and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This course will consider what has been done, what is being done, and what could be done to address climate change through law and policy at the international, national, and local scales.

The intersection of sports with human rights law is a complex and multifaceted realm, encompassing individual physical exercise, competitive games, global competitions, and mega sporting events such as the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup. Despite sports' historical autonomy and the court’s traditional deference to sport’s governing bodies, national and international human rights regimes are increasingly paying attention to abuses taking place in the sports field. 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 the diverse actors involved in sports business and/or governance and their human rights responsibilities and obligations. Understanding the diverse actors involved in sport business and/or governance and their human rights responsibilities and obligations. how human rights are impacted by sporting events or sports activities. Sports operate within a meticulously structured system, involving athletes, fans, workers, volunteers, communities, governments, businesses, media, and sports bodies, all bound by rules. The seminar will address issues such as the human rights of athletes, the basic right to participate in sports and physical activity, remedies for victims of human rights abuses tied to major global sporting events; discrimination against women, LGBTQI+ 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 IACtHR), and specialized sports arbitration mechanisms, notably the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

This one-credit course aims to provide an overview of the legal implications and consequences of one of humankind’s most pressing existential challenges – climate change – and thereby to expose Tulane Law students to a fundamental theme of modern life that will increasingly influence, if not shape their future professional activities. The course consists of ten substantive sessions, eight of which address distinct topical issues and will be taught by different members of the Tulane law faculty as well as by two or three guest lecturers, specialists on the topics concerned – either on-site, in person or by Zoom. Both introductory and concluding classes will be taught collectively by Tulane’s in-house faculty.

Socio-economic rights play an important role in many societies. Demands for jobs, food, water, housing/shelter, education, health care or – more generally – dignified living conditions are as important as classical liberal (‘first generation’) rights to equality, free speech, assembly, political participation or religion in countries like South Africa or India and continue to influence the human rights debate across large parts of South America. The Arab Spring is the most recent battleground over constitutionally entrenched socio-economic demands and greatly expanded the scope of such entitlements in systems like Iraq or Egypt. Other societies, including the United States and many countries in Europe, provide assistance for citizens in need but take a much more cautious stance on the constitutional protection of the socio-economic sphere. This course identifies different approaches to the protection of socio-economic entitlements. Drawing on the origins of social welfare states, including the German and French models, students will be alerted to the tensions that exist between the desire to provide a constitutional basis for the most fundamental needs of citizens and the limited resources available to most societies when it comes to the creation of job opportunities or the provision of social welfare benefits. Options range from ordinary social welfare legislation without a constitutional safety net, constitutional principles that direct public policy and resources towards the development of socio-economic safeguards, constitutional provisions that guarantee a minimum standard of life, to the constitutional entrenchment of ambitious individual rights to socio-economic benefits. Students will explore these options on the basis of selected academic writings, socio-economic data from national sources and international organizations, court decisions, and constitutional texts from a variety of systems including Ecuador, South Africa, India, Egypt, Germany and the United States. Particular emphasis will be placed on the role that constitutional law can play in socio-economic development and the distribution of limited resources between competing societal needs. This will include the difficult question of judicial enforcement and the implications of constitutionally entrenched rights for the separation of powers in democratic systems of government.

This “workshop” will feature presentations by four or five visiting authors of their works-in-progress on regulation of economic activity, broadly construed.  Students formally enrolled in the workshop will meet with one or more of the faculty conveners the week before each author’s presentation to discuss the paper. Students will prepare brief (one-page) response papers for each paper for discussion in the prior meeting; those response papers will be shared with the authors. In addition, students will be expected to attend two additional approved lectures at the law school or elsewhere on campus and submit a brief (one-page) response paper.  The workshop is designed for students who are interested in legal scholarship in general and for those with particular interest in issues related to regulation, economic regulation, and international coordination of economic policies. The author presentations will be open to students who are not formally enrolled in the workshop. The faculty conveners are: Adam Feibelman (Tulane, Law) Blair Druhan Bullock (Tulane, Law), and Steve Sheffrin (Tulane, Murphy Institute). 1 credit, pass/fail.

Continuation of Legal Scholarship Workshop.

This course will examine the role of intermediaries with respect to the negotiation and conclusion, or “fixing” of contracts for the carriage of goods by sea. The course will specifically examine the procedure for negotiating contracts including charter parties, the applicable chartering terms, the relationship between the intermediaries and the merchants, charterers, carriers and owners, and the relevancy of agency law. The course will explore multimodal transportation and liability regimes in EU and US. The course will be taught by Andrei Kharchanka, Manager of Risk, Claims and Litigation for BBC Chartering GmbH of Leer, Germany. BBC specializes in project cargo and is the world’s largest operator of heavy lift multipurpose vessels.

In this course, the student will become familiar with the different types of charter parties utilized by the shipping industry for chartering both cargoes and vessels.  The main focus of the course will be on the duties of the owners and charterers under time and voyage charter parties, and the legal basis for disputes under both U.S. and English law. The course will be taught by Jason P. Waguespack (L'91) of the firm Galloway, Johnson, Tompkins, Burr & Smith.

This mini-course carries one semester hour of credit and meets for six two-hour sessions. It is graded on the “P, D, F” basis. It considers selected topics in corporate governance and cases in which governance failures contribute to business failures. Because a significant portion of the course is current events, which are not predictable, newspapers are part of the assigned reading. Please choose either The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Editorial content will not be assigned. The course outline may change with little or no notice. Adjunct Professor Fishman is of counsel to Fishman Haygood, LLP, a New Orleans boutique law firm. Adjunct Professor Gershanik is a partner of Fishman Haygood, LLP. A student’s background in corporation and securities law will be useful, but not prerequisite. The course is most appropriate for 3Ls, but 2Ls are also welcomed.

The course will consider a critical area of European Union business law: competition/antitrust law. It begins with a sketch of European Union law with specific reference to how the Union regulates trade, corporate establishment and the institutions that enforce these policies. It then turns to the two relevant European Union treaty articles: Article 101, which governs multi-firm conduct (agreements between business entities), and Article 102, which observes single firm conduct (abuse of dominant position). It is not necessary to have taken either Antitrust or European Business Law to enroll in the course.

This course will explore key themes of human rights protection through the lens of U.S. and foreign court decisions.

Amidst the twin pandemics of corona virus and longstanding structural racism, this mini course will immerse students in readings, analysis and conversation about how law is frequently used to perpetuate anti-black racial harms and hierarchies and how students might use their legal education to disrupt those hierarchies. In a series of workshops, leading scholars, practitioners, organizers, and community members will address both historical civil rights barriers as well as current proposals for eliminating structural racism across the criminal justice, voting, education, housing, health/environmental and other sectors. Students will be assigned a series of prompts for preparation of reflection papers and essays.

Peace, liberty guaranteed by clear-cut rules, social interaction guided by value-laden principles-it is by these ethical and rational contents, deeply grounded and diligently elaborated in its religious, philosophical, and political history, that Roman Law has become part of the common heritage of the world's jurisprudence. As the course will illustrate in telling detail and general overview, Roman Law is in fact inspired from its beginning by the humanly valid idea that human life has to realize and to reconcile two seemingly contradictory ends, individual freedom an the reliable cooperativeness. Notably, slavery, omnipresent in its day, was branded by Roman lawyers an institution against human nature, thus paving the way for its abolition in modern times.

This course will cover the basics of international anti-corruption laws such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.K. Bribery Act, international conventions against corruption, and similar anti-bribery laws of other countries.  These anti-corruption laws generally prohibit direct and indirect corrupt payments to foreign officials.  Enforcement has increased significantly in the last few years and will continue to be a major factor to any organization operating globally.  The course will use recent SEC and DOJ investigations (such as the case against former U.S. congressman from New Orleans, William Jefferson) to illustrate the basics of these anti-corruption laws. The course will also cover other areas in the international trade regulatory regime such as export controls, anti-boycott, anti-money laundering, and fraud prevention. Other areas addressed by the course include the scope of international anti-corruption laws, identifying a government official, identifying red flags in business partners, conducting due diligence, exceptions to the laws, assessing third party risk, and other areas that play an integral role in counseling clients doing business abroad. We will review the elements of a comprehensive corporate compliance program and mechanisms used to implement compliance procedures and internal controls in an organization. The course will also address the cultural challenges presented by certain countries and industries. Students will be expected to participate in case studies and exercises designed to apply legal principals to situations that arise in the practice of law.

This course will examine the negotiation of a number of real estate contracts and the skills and methods of lawyers who handle transactions. The contracts include a purchase agreement, a construction loan commitment, purchase and remediation agreements for a brownfield site, a workout (loan modification) agreement and a management agreement for a senior living facility. The course materials will include a case study for each transaction and a form of the agreement, with an indication of the matters that most concern the party that receives the initial draft. The course will take up the rules of law that motivate and constrain the contents of particular agreements.

This course will examine the negotiation of a number of real estate contracts and the skills and methods of lawyers who handle transactions. The contracts include an office lease, a shopping center lease for a small tenant, a reciprocal easement agreement for a shopping center, an LLC agreement between a developer-manager and high net worth investors, an owner-architect contract and an owner-contractor agreement. The properties will include an office building, a shopping center, a warehouse and one to be determined. The course materials will include a case study for each transaction, a form of the agreement, and the response of the party that receives the first draft. The course will take up the rules of law that motivate and constrain the contents of particular agreements.

This course will be begin with an overview of general issues in healthcare law but will focus primarily on practical legal issues physicians face in the current healthcare world and how lawyers can be prepared to counsel the physicians facing those issues. This mini-course will address issues as diverse as anti-trust and ERISA to medical staff and peer review, from the viewpoint of a practitioner who specializes in representing physicians. Tulane medical students will also attend several of the classes, and there will also be several attorney and physician guest instructors.

This is an advanced corporate law course focusing on state corporate law, corporate governance, the fiduciary duties of directors and the rights of stockholders in the context of hostile acquisitions. This course will emphasize the practical aspects of corporate law and will cover hostile acquisitions from a bidder’s perspective (which will include takeover approaches, takeover negotiations, takeover techniques, and the structuring and pricing of offers), hostile acquisitions from a target’s perspective (which will include advanced preparation, structural changes to reduce vulnerability, and responding to acquisition offers), proxy con-tests and stockholder activism. Business Enterprises is a prerequisite for 2L students and a pre-requisite or co-requisite for 3L students. The course will be taught by Michael Maimone who is an experienced corporate attorney and litigator who practices primarily in Delaware and New York.

This course looks at issues at the intersection of politics and law that arise in investigations of public officials, including in impeachment proceedings. Topics will include criminal investigations, congressional inquiries, the role of defense counsel, and standards and processes for impeachment and removal of a U.S. president and other high-level government officers. Both the legal framework and practical political considerations will be considered. This course will be taught by Ross Garber, chair of the Government Investigations and White Collar Crime Group of Shipman & Goodwin LLP (Washington, D.C.), whose practice concentrates on representing government officials in investigations and who has served as lead defense counsel to three U.S. governors facing impeachment.

This introductory course aims to convey to the student the primary knowledge of the shipping law and practice of the Mainland of China. The key sectors which are to be covered include Chinese legal system, setting up in China, contracting with Chinese entities, carriage of goods by sea, shipping contracts, ship and ship-related rights, marine casualties, marine insurance, agency, dispute resolution and maritime procedural law. This course intends to present the unique features of Chinese shipping law and tries to prepare the students for recognizing and dealing with uncomplicated legal issues in relation to Chinese shipping industry.

In Climate Change: Underlying Drivers and Potential Solutions, students will explore major sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, understand drivers to reduce GHG emissions (including voluntary and mandatory mechanisms), assess the effectiveness of various GHG reduction efforts, evaluate available GHG reduction technologies, and review various U.S. government initiatives to accelerate GHG reduction efforts.

The rapidly growing number of disputes involving foreign parties and transactions present distinct problems that do not arise in purely domestic litigation or arbitration. The course will address these problems and the emerging solutions as developed by American courts, and it will compare these developments with approaches that prevail in other legal systems. Areas that will be covered include the extraterritorial application of U.S. laws, taking evidence abroad, personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants, and the enforcement of foreign judgments.

This course focuses on the question of what rules apply in outer space and examines the five current international treaties that govern outer space: the Outer Space Treaty, the Rescue Agreement, the Liability Convention, the Registration Convention, and the Moon Agreement. Comparisons to issues of jurisdiction in admiralty law will be made throughout the course, though no prior knowledge of admiralty law is required. This course is taught by Jeanne Amy from the Department of Justice’s Aviation, Space, and Admiralty Division.

This minicourse examines three interrelated areas to consider in space: delict (tort), property, and the environment. In terms of tort law and space, undertaking outer space activities is inherently a risky business. Things blow up, fall down, smash into one another – bottom line, things can go very wrong. And when they do, someone will be liable. How tort law principles apply in outer space will be the first area of focus for the mini course. Property rights, the second area of focus, also are important in space. While existing treaties provide that States cannot take ownership of celestial bodies, there is room for interpretation as to whether a private person (or institution) might acquire such ownership. Moreover, there are property rights already in outer space given the existence of man-made objects, such as satellites, spacecraft, etc. How property law impacts space law is the second topic for our discussion. Finally, we will examine space and the environment. There are environmental impacts of outer space activity not only in space, but also on Earth, including pollution created during launch operations, importing new microbes onto Earth during space activity, and objects falling into Earth’s atmosphere from space. Issues of the environment within outer space will also be discussed in the context of space debris, satellites, space stations, the future of possible space hotels, and more. The course will be taught by Professor Wian Erlank of North-West University in South Africa and will be graded in a Pass/C/Fail basis

This course is designed to provide a hands-on and practical introduction to disclosure issues and practices of publicly traded companies. The course will address disclosure issues and topics under the federal securities laws and the various rules and regulations thereunder. The course will also cover select corporate governance issues, such as director independence, committee composition and duties, shareholder approval of certain matters, and other exchange listing requirements (NYSE and/or NASDAQ rules). This is an advanced course that is designed to teach students how to approach and solve problems relating to public company disclosure issues, focusing on the structure and content of disclosure and available resources. The course will be designed to simulate the issues and tasks that an attorney would perform in representing a public company in practice. It is primarily designed for students who intend to practice corporate or securities law and represent companies in connection with public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the sale of securities.

Only about 2% of all federal criminal defendants go to trial, and only about 6% of state criminal defendants do so. Yet the vast majority of the training received by prosecutors and defense attorneys, both in law school and after, focuses on trials. This mini-course will instead address the mechanism(s) by which most criminal cases are actually resolved, (with a particular emphasis on the federal courts) and will attempt to provide future criminal lawyers with some of the tools needed to achieve just and fair resolutions in those cases. For the last class, students will be put into pairs (prosecutor-defense attorney), and required to conduct plea negotiations in a hypothetical case, and ultimately reach a resolution that does not involve a trial. The roles of the participants will then be reversed, and the exercise will be conducted again.

Founded in 1916 as the Southern Law Quarterly, the Tulane Law Review is published five times annually and is managed and edited by students of the Tulane University Law School. The Review is recognized as a preeminent forum for scholarly publication in the areas of Civil Law, Comparative Law, and Admiralty Law. The Review has a significant international circulation and is on a select list of minimum holdings for courts and law libraries in the United Kingdom. The Review maintains a wide European readership. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Tulane Moot Court is one of the largest student-run organizations at Tulane University Law School and among the oldest programs of its kind in the nation. The Tulane Moot Court program was founded in 1929 by a small group of Tulane Law students, including the legendary U.S. Fifth Circuit Judge John Minor Wisdom. Alumni include state and federal judges, members of Congress, U.S. Ambassadors, and state governors. Tulane Moot Court is comprised of four Interschool teams: Mock Trial, Appellate, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Willem C. Vis International Arbitration. The Appellate team consists of four sub-teams: International Criminal Court, John R. Brown Appellate Admiralty, Pace Environmental Appellate, and Black Law Students Association (BLSA) Appellate. Throughout the year, all of these teams earn academic credit by competing in a number of national and international moot court competitions. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

The Tulane Maritime Law Journal is a biannual, student-edited law journal that includes scholarly works written by academics, practitioners, and students concerning current topics in Admiralty and Maritime Law. In addition, the Journal publishes annual sections in Recent Developments and International Law for the United States and the international community, as well as periodic symposia on relevant topical areas in the field and quantum and collision surveys every other year. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

The Tulane Environmental Law Journal is a biannual legal periodical produced and edited by students of Tulane Law School with the support of the faculty and administration of Tulane Law School. The Journal contains timely articles written by professors and practitioners, as well as commentary on recent cases written by journal members. Featured scholarly articles rigorously analyze a broad range of environmental issues affecting individuals, communities, and the nation at large. Course may be repeated 4 times for credit.

First published in 1991, the Tulane Journal of Law & Sexuality is the first student-edited law review in the country devoted solely to covering legal issues of interest to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community on a wide variety of subjects, including constitutional, employment, family, health, insurance, and military law. The Journal also publishes the winning article of the annual National LGBT Bar Association Michael Greenberg Student Writing Competition. Course may be repeated 4 times for credit.

The Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law was founded at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, Louisiana as an outgrowth of that institution's historical tradition as a signpost in the academic world for international and comparative law. Published biannually, the Journal is dedicated to discussing and debating all facets of international law, from human rights to transnational commerce to the historical evolution of current global law. Course may be repeated 4 times for credit.

The Tulane Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property (JTIP) is a student-edited, subscription-based, scholarly publication of Tulane University Law School. JTIP examines legal issues relating to technology, including topics such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, antitrust, information privacy, computer law, constitutional law, contracts, torts, and all other policy implications of law and technology in our society. Course may be repeated 4 times for credit.

The Sports Lawyers Journal is a national legal journal edited by Tulane law students and published by the Sports Lawyers Association (SLA). Every member of the SLA, currently nearly 1,500 practicing lawyers, professors, law students, and other professionals, receives the publication annually. Since the Journal is composed of articles authored by American, Canadian, and European law students, it provides a unique view of sports issues and an unparalleled opportunity for students to have their works published and read. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Directed Research is a way for students to receive one, two, or three hours of credit for research papers completed under the supervision of a member of the full-time faculty. The faculty member must approve the topic and scope of the paper and determine the number of pages required for the credit granted. Students may receive a maximum of three credits during their entire degree program. Course may be repeated 3 times for credit.

Out of class work component for 3 credit law seminar courses Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Legal Research and Writing Senior Fellowship.

The Externship courses provide legal education and skills development in real-life settings. Students work and learn in a variety of workplaces: public interest or nonprofit organizations; courts or government offices at the federal, state or local level; and corporate counsel offices. The Externship courses allow students to gain expertise in professional skills and problem-solving; study professionalism and the lawyers’ ethical requirements; examine lawyers’ roles in the delivery of justice and ensuring justice for all; develop specific lawyering skills or learn a specific area of law; explore career interests in a variety of legal fields and build a professional network; and provide service to the community and to the public at large. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Upper-class summer externship.

The 30-minute sessions are designed to help you reduce stress, increase concentration, and thrive during exam period.

This course is designed to teach students the fundamental skills necessary to represent clients in civil discovery and motion practice before trial.  The course concentrates on developing skills in client communication, drafting pleadings, preparing and responding to written discovery, arguing pretrial motions, and preparing for and taking the depositions of both fact and expert witnesses.  Throughout the individual lessons, the faculty spends time discussing case development, the burden of proof at trial, and the witnesses and exhibits that an attorney will need to obtain in preparation for representing their client before a jury.  The faculty also discusses related issues including insurance coverage and its effect on the attorney-client relationship and execution of a potential judgment.  The course’s explicit focus on pretrial practice reflects the availability of further education in trial skills through Tulane’s Trial Advocacy program and Tulane’s clinical programs.   

This course hopes to teach students three critical skills required for pretrial advocacy in criminal litigation: information gathering; drafting motions; and arguing motions.  The course will focus on the five matters (and related motions) most commonly encountered in the interval between arrest and trial: (1) bail; (2) discovery; (3) “similar acts”/FRE 404B evidence; (4) motions to dismiss; and (5) motions to suppress evidence.  Students in the course will be divided into two groups – a prosecution track, and a defense track – and will be expected to learn what information is necessary for each motion; to research and write each motion; and then to argue their motion (or opposition) each day.  In addition, students will be expected to learn to formulate a theory of the case, either prosecution, or defense, and then to make strategic decisions consistent with that theory as they move through the pretrial process.  The course is designed to occupy the territory between classroom theory and trial practice.  Training in the latter area is readily available through Tulane’s Trial Advocacy program, Tulane’s Criminal Law Clinic, and Tulane’s supervised externships at public defenders’ and prosecutors’ offices.

This course will consist of a series of counseling, negotiation, due diligence, and drafting exercises structured around a basic corporate transaction (e.g., an asset purchase).  The course will introduce students to fundamental deal skills, such as structuring the timetable for a transaction, eliciting and drafting the operative business terms, identifying legal and business risks and negotiating corresponding risk-shifting and risk-reduction provisions, and reviewing and drafting the ancillary documents necessary to consummate the transaction. 

This one-credit course is designed to introduce students to a range of basic business concepts that lawyers will encounter in commercial or transactional practice. Students will be grouped into 6 teams, each of which will act as a consultant in connection with a proposed sale of a publicly traded company (the “Company”). With the assistance of one or more Senior Advisor, each team will participate in a series of exercises designed to analyze different aspects of the proposed sale, including an understanding of the industry, the value chain in the Company’s market, the value of a business combination with the Company in advancing the long-term objectives of different bidders, the fair value of the Company under different valuation methodologies, the options available to a finance a business combination with the Company, and the risks posed to individual bidders by a business combination with the Company. As a final project, each team will make an oral presentation to the CEO and board of a specific bidder regarding the Company’s strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and challenges posed by a business combination with the Company.

TRADEMARK Prosecution Boot Camp This 1-credit graded course will provide students the opportunity to engage in educational simulated hands-on trademark prosecution tasks, including researching trademark availability, preparing freedom-to-use and registrability opinions, preparing trademark applications, preparing use affidavits, evaluating and responding to USPTO office actions, and responding to oppositions. The course, taught by Prof. Joel Feldman, will simulate the lifecycle of a trademark application, from clearance through publication for opposition

Law study abroad in Australia.

Law study abroad in Argentina.

Law study abroad in Hong Kong.

Law study abroad in Denmark.

Law study abroad in France.

Law study abroad in Germany.

Law study abroad in Israel.

Law study abroad in Japan.

Law study abroad in Amsterdam.

Law study abroad in The Netherlands.

Law study abroad in Spain.

Law study abroad in Colombia.

Law study abroad in China.

Law study abroad in Switzerland.

Law study abroad in Sweden.

Special research topics for visiting scholars. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Law transfer coursework. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Law transfer coursework. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Law transfer coursework. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Law transfer coursework.

One-credit, graded co-requisite seminar component for the Law externships.

English as a second language for Law students.

Law Exchange Student Study Abroad.

Research topics for Law SJD students. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Law summer abroad in Berlin, Germany.

The Berlin Summer Program in Intercultural Negotiation and Mediation is a joint venture between Tulane Law School and Humboldt University in Berlin/Germany. 2024 marks the 26th consecutive year that the Program is being offered. The curriculum consists of lectures, Q+A sessions and role-play exercises. An experienced team of academic experts and practitioners from the United States, Germany and Israel provides a thorough introduction to the theory and practice of successful mediation including the challenges that arise in intercultural settings. A special unit will focus on the negotiation and mediation of political disputes. Successful participants receive one credit of experiential learning (at Tulane) and a certificate that documents successful participation in the Program. Participants will move between general lectures and exercises in small groups. The language of instruction is English. The main reading is Stulberg/Love, The Middle Voice (Carolina Academic Press). Additional readings, presentation slides and fact patterns will be provided via Canvas (for TLS students) or email (non-TLS students).

The Berlin Summer Program in Intercultural Negotiation and Mediation is a joint venture between Tulane Law School and Humboldt University in Berlin/Germany. 2024 marks the 26th consecutive year that the Program is being offered. Segment 1 (Negotiation) consists of lectures, Q+A sessions and role-play exercises. An experienced team of academic experts and practitioners from the United States, Germany and Israel provides a thorough introduction to the theory and practice of successful negotiation including the challenges that arise in intercultural settings. A special unit will focus on the negotiation of political disputes. Successful participants receive one credit of experiential learning (at Tulane) and a certificate that documents their successful participation in this segment of the Program. Participants will move between general lectures and exercises in small groups. The language of instruction is English. The main reading for this course is Fisher/Ury, Getting to Yes (Penguin). Additional readings, presentation slides and fact patterns will be provided via Canvas (for TLS students) or email (non-TLS students).

The Berlin Summer Program in Intercultural Negotiation and Mediation is a joint venture between Tulane Law School in New Orleans and Humboldt University in Berlin. 2020 marks the 22nd consecutive year that the program is being offered. The four-week curriculum consists of lectures, Q+A sessions and role-play exercises that cover both theory and practice of negotiation and mediation. An experienced team of academic experts and practitioners from the United States, Germany and Israel provides a sound introduction to the principles and techniques of ADR and highlights the special challenges of conflict resolution in an intercultural setting. A special unit will focus on online negotiation. Optional components feature the mediation of political conflicts (post-conflict/peace negotiations and conflicts over employment and pension rights) as well as virtual excursions to Germany and the European Union. Successful participants receive three credits of experiential learning as well as certificates in negotiation and mediation. The entire Program is conducted online via Zoom (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays). Participants will move from common events (general lectures) to small groups (exercises). The language of instruction is English.

This course is designed to expose students to a variety of alternative (to litigation) dispute resolution mechanisms. These include mediation, administrative conciliation, and arbitration. Students will be instructed both in the legal doctrines governing the manner in which these mechanisms are implemented and enforced as well as the skills attendant to participation as a party to one or more of these mechanisms. Particular focus will be put on instructing students in the preparation and participation in these alternative mechanisms. This will be accomplished through drafting of documents and participation in simulated exercises.

This course introduces students to the general field of energy law. It begins with an overview of the global energy situation in terms of supply and demand as well as balanced projections for the coming decades both in the U.S. and abroad. It then will proceed to examine the primary sources of energy along with the multi-faceted role of electricity as the central source of secondary energy in our economy. This portion of the course will offer a survey view of how these energy sources are used and regulated from economic, reliability, and environmental perspectives. This will include an overview of legal and regulatory principles governing fossil fuel extraction and use, the coal industry, nuclear power, a range of renewable energy sources, and finally the regulation of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. The course will conclude with a brief review of the growing role of conservation and climate change in energy markets here and to some extent abroad

This course will expand on the materials introduced in the Environmental Law, Regulation and Policy Survey from Term 2 relative to water pollution. The focus of this course will be a comprehensive and detailed examination of the content of the federal Clear Air Act and the role of the federal Environmental Protection Agency in interpreting, applying, and enforcing the terms of this statute. But as there is also a large body of state and local regulation of air pollution, students will also be exposed to the issues addressed by this legislation and their methods of enforcement. Attention will also be given to drafting or amending emissions standards, greenhouse gas regulation, and environmental justice issues.

This course will cover the role and influence of the legal system on the use, allocation, and steward-ship of water resources in the United States. Since the field of water resources management is rapidly evolving to accommodate storm protection, ecosystem restoration and sea level rise an understanding of the policies that underlay our current laws and the factors that are influencing current policy and lawmaking will be an important part of the course’s focus. Students will be required to participate in one group project in which they will be asked to develop, present and defend a position paper on some aspect of the water resources management challenges arising in a coastal region of the United States.

This course will examine legal efforts to address climate change, both at the national and international level. It will include detailed examination of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol and the extent to which these policies have been adopted in the U.S. at the national and local levels. Attention will also be given to non-statutory responses in the U.S. to the addressing climate change including judicial decisions that have attempted to mitigate the effects of climate change. Among the specific aspects of climate change that will be examined are coastline impact, auto emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, limitations on fossil fuel development and utilization, and human rights issues including environmental justice. Students will be asked to develop climate change policies and assess the U.S. response to the global impact of climate change.

This course provides an overview of the Federal Power Act (FPA) and the agency charged with its implementation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Students will learn how “electric public utilities” are defined under the FPA, and which of their activities are regulated by the federal government under the FPA. They will also learn the rules that govern FERC’s regulation of various utility activities, from rates and services to mergers and acquisitions. Students will explore the differences between types of public utilities (including independent power providers, regional transmission organizations, and vertically integrated utilities). The course will also address FERC’s policymaking procedures and will include a discussion of ongoing public policy initiatives. Please note that the course does not cover the Natural Gas Act (gas pipelines and related facilities) or the Interstate Commerce Act (oil pipelines).

This course will expand on the materials briefly examined in the introductory Energy Law, Regulation and Policy Survey course taught in Term 1. This course will provide a more detailed and comprehensive examination of the legal issues and legal rules and regulations relevant to the development and utilization of alternative energy sources. It will also examine the calculations that business do and should undertake in determining whether or not to invest in these sources. It will also examine the policy issues underlying governmental decision making concerning the encouragement of developing alternative energy sources.

This foundational course introduces students to sources and functions of law in our society relating to energy law. The course begins with an overview of the American legal system and sources of law and introduces students to statutory interpretation and plain language analysis. In Legal Analysis I, students will learn to read and interpret statutory law and regulations, read and brief cases, and develop basic legal writing and analysis skills. Students will also learn to find and research legal information through multiple short research assignments focusing on energy law issues. Through multiple short writing assignments such as a case brief, an IRAC essay analyzing a statutory issue, and an e-memo interpreting statutory & regulatory law relating to an energy law topic, students learn to apply statutes and regulations to analyze legal issues relating to energy law.

This course builds on Legal Analysis I to introduce students to the relationship between enacted & administrative law and common law. The course continues instruction on legal research methods in finding and analyzing cases and common law. Students learn to read and synthesize multiple cases and learn analogical and policy-based reasoning. Through multiple short writing assignments, such as an e- memo analyzing a statutory issue in the context of a litigated issue arising out of administrative enforcement action, students learn to apply statutes, regulations, administrative materials, and case law to analyze complex legal issues relating to energy law.

This course will expand on then materials introduced in the Environmental Law, Regulation and Policy Survey course from Term 2. It will begin by examining the definition of natural resources and then examine such issues as alternative methods of conservation, preservation, the public trust doctrine, relative merits of private ownership versus governmental regulation of common areas, fragmentation, riparianism, threatened species, and bioregionalism. Special attention will be given to the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Forest Service Organic Act, and the property and takings clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

The course explores the history, present status, and nature of administrative agencies. The main emphasis is placed on administrative procedure, contrasting it with the judicial process, as well as constitutional limits on administrative action and the due process rights of persons who are adversely affected by agency action. Topics covered will include delegation of powers, the law of judicial review of agency actions, and procedural requirements of administrative rulemaking and adjudication.

This course will expand on the materials introduced in the Energy Law, Regulation and Policy Survey course taught in Term 1. It will examine the various statutory and administrative regulations of fossil fuel, business concepts relevant to the continued development of fossil fuel sources, as well as other issues arising out of the development and utilization of fossil fuel including environmental impact, human rights concerns, racial injustice considerations, impact on forest ecosystems, alternative methods of obtaining fossil fuels, and the acquisition and retention of permits.

This course will encourage broad thinking into the nature and purpose of utilities and will overlay this with an understanding of the driving forces behind the protection and enhancement of the natural environment. We will investigate the failures and successes of laws and policies that have influenced the establishment of one of the most ambitious public works projects ever attempted, as well as some of the most significant disasters in American history. In addition to learning the advantages and shortcomings of current and historic law, regulation and policy, students will also learn how to investigate and prepare for a mass tort action and to understand the underpinnings of corporate criminal liability for personal injury, death, property damage and environmental crimes. Students will also cover the basis for safety law, policy and practice in the context of one of America’s most lethal professions. The importance of nature, and particularly trees, to society and the economy will also be reviewed, particularly in connection with the disparate impacts on communities of different economic levels (energy justice and environmental justice). The study will include the practical role of administrative proceedings and procedures, including permitting.

This course will require the students to draw upon the knowledge and skills learned in the previously taken courses by applying that knowledge and technique to four separate projects. Three of these projects will require the student to prepare a detailed paper consisting of a position statement in response to energy law-based administrative enforcement inquiry, documentation relevant to participation in a mediation or arbitration of an energy law-based dispute, a business plan for the development of an alternative energy source. Two of these projects will be done an individual basis. The third will be a collaborative effort by members of a team assigned by the instructor. The fourth project will consist of participation in the negotiation of, and subsequent drafting of, a contract between commercial entities in the energy industry.

All students enrolled in the online MJ program must attend one EIW to be eligible to receive the Masters degree. Students are welcome to attend more than the one EIW session. Each session is composed of two days of academic and other programming at the Law School during the summer. The EIW is designed to (a) supplement the online curriculum by involving students and faculty in discussion of new developments and unique other issues not addressed in the online curriculum; (2) provide students with networking opportunities by meeting their peers; (3) provide students and faculty opportunities to meet face-to-face; and (4) provide a tangible link between the students and the law school to promote their continued relationship to the school. The course is not offered for credit but attendance is required for program completion.