Course Page for Fall 2024 Regular - Tokaji, Daniel

This course will address current and future election law issues, focusing on the 2024 election. Topics will include voting rights, election subversion, the Electoral College, gerrymandering, and campaign finance regulation, with special attention to pending and possible election-related litigation. Students will be expected to write a research paper, submitting an outline, draft, and final version over the course of the semester and presenting their ideas in class.

It is recommended that students will have already taken Prof. Yablon's Law of Democracy course.

Course Page for Spring 2024 ZPO - Carstensen, Peter

Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Ard, BJ

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the legal system by reshaping how we make decisions, communicate, and work. This seminar examines how AI’s evolving capabilities—from predictive algorithms to generative models—pose new legal questions and bring fresh urgency to longstanding challenges. We will examine AI’s challenges in areas including product liability, employment law, benefits determinations, policing, defamation, and intellectual property, with a substantial focus on how AI can contribute to and obscure issues of bias and discrimination.

This seminar welcomes all interested students, with no prerequisite courses or expected familiarity with AI technologies. Course materials and discussions will introduce foundational concepts in machine learning, generative AI, and deepfakes. Diverse perspectives and interests will enrich our conversations on the complex challenges posed by AI and on strategies for addressing them.

Course Page for Fall 2023 Regular - Braver, Josh

Revolutions are violent overthrows of a system of government. At the other end of the continuum are reforms which seek to use legal avenues to shore up or fix defects in a system while still leaving its essential features intact. What may lie between these two extremes? What other modes of political change and agitation exist?

We explore the political tactics of civil disobedience, strikes and "riots." Among the questions we will ask are the following: When does the law permit and how does the law regulate each of these types of political actions? Is this legal regulation fair or just? When are these tactics legitimate or productive? Is there a way to break the law that still pays respect to it? Are these tactics revolutionary or reformist or neither? We will work through a wide variety of legal, historical, and theoretical texts.

Law is the starting point, far from the ending point for us to address these theoretical questions.

Fair warning: The readings in this course will not be excessive but it will be extensive. You are expected to complete all it.

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Course Page for Spring 2025 Regular - Meyn, Ion

Explore civil rights, focusing on race discrimination. Question what it means to discriminate, how we might investigate and detect discrimination, and the legal and political constraints on governmental efforts to remedy discrimination. Study discrimination in housing, employment, and voting. Examine how government targets racialized or ethnic groups during a crisis. Consider what constitutes acceptable conditions of confinement for prisoners. Analyze use-of-force issues in policing and confront the challenge of protecting officer and civilian safety. Understand the current doctrine surrounding using race in admissions decisions.

This Law course meets with the undergraduate Legal Studies 435.

Law students will be required to conduct independent research. JD students will be expected to understand the material presented, and thus expected to write a paper that supplements and deepens our understanding of course concepts. Law students meet with the professor has a group on week three to discuss paper ideas, and then meet again three weeks later to discuss progress and raise questions about their project.

Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - White, Ahmed

This seminar will explore the interconnections of social class, law, and labor relations in the United States. Although it will survey these connections in a range of contexts, it will pay particular attention to how they unfolded in mining, steel, and textiles. While the focus of the seminar is historical, with considerable emphasis on the early and middle decades of the twentieth century, the seminar aspires to speaks to contemporary problems and the materials and discussions will also cover more recent developments on these fronts.

Course Page for Spring 2024 ZPO - Ohnesorge, John

This seminar will provide students with a multi-dimensional introduction to the ubiquitous phenomenon of compliance. We will begin by exploring foundational issues, such as the many sources of compliance demands in today’s society, as well as the complexities that arise when institutions, public or private, are subject to these demands. We will then turn to specific applied topics such as the role of law firms in supplying compliance services, the Justice Department’s fluctuating policies with respect to prosecuting corporate wrongdoing, or the system for certifying organic food production. Students will complete substantial writing assignments on compliance topics of their choosing, and these may take the form of either research memos or scholarly essays. The final sessions of the class will be devoted to student presentations of their research.

Biz Orgs I and Administrative Law are highly recommended, either in advance or concurrently with this seminar

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Course Page for Fall 2024 Regular - Friedman, James

Powers of government, state and federal, under the Constitution of the United States; relations between federal and state authority (e.g., taxation and regulation of interstate commerce); relations between branches of the federal government; limitations on governmental authority by virtue of a distribution of power.

Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Glazer, Saul

This course, generally offered in the spring every other year, will study a broad array of legal and practical issues encountered with inter-dependent transactions focused on, but not limited to, the construction industry, including contracting, negotiation, and dispute resolution strategies and tactics -- with in-class drafting exercises addressing key provisions of such process-oriented transactions. Course materials will include an extensive, easy-to-read ABA textbook plus a comprehensive set of PowerPoint slides and various other supplemental items. A former student evaluation characterized the course as being "taught...in a way to make it applicable to all fields of law, not just construction."

Course Page for Summer 2022 -

Course Page for Fall 2024 Regular - Atkinson, Nate

Contract Theory and Design

This course takes an engineering approach to contracting. It aims to bridge the gap between economic contract theory, contract law scholarship and the drafting of real-world contracts. We will develop heuristic tools on how to design contracts, and to this end you will learn key concepts from economic and behavioral contract theory. We will also analyze and mark up real-world contracts to understand where they succeed and where they fail. This is not a contract drafting class. The focus is on the incentive structures around contracts rather than the legal language of the contract itself.

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Course Page for Spring 2024 ZPO - Gross, John

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Course Page for Fall 2024 Regular - Young, Morgan

This course focuses on state and federal laws, policy and practices impacting victims and perpetrators
of domestic violence. Topics examined include dynamics of domestic abuse; restraining orders;
mandatory arrest law via law enforcement, prosecution & defense responses; family law, including
custody/physical placement, mediation, effects on children who witness violence; relief for battered
immigrants, and human trafficking. Class involves a mix of papers, observation of injunction hearings,
interactive exercises, and a final exam.

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Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Bensky, Anne

Course Page for Fall 2024 Regular - White, Ahmed

This is a course in “Employment law”.

(“Labor law” typically refers to “traditional” labor law, i.e., legal issues involving unions and/or arising under the National Labor Relations Act, and public sector labor laws.)

“Employment law” is everything else: individual employment rights; discrimination law; family medical leave, health and safety, plant closing notice laws, and wage and hour law. .

Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Worrell, Ryan

This course provides an overview of the legal, business, and financial aspects of the entertainment industry, specifically in the fields of television, motion pictures, music, publishing, internet, and the digital industries. It will focus on the practical application of various areas of the law and practice including intellectual property, contracts, right of publicity, employment, corporate, dispute resolution, marketing/advertising, and others to achieve business/creative objectives. There are no prerequisites for this course.

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Course Page for Fall 2023 Regular - Gross, John

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Course Page for Fall 2023 Regular - Glinberg, Lanny

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Course Page for Spring 2024 ZPO - O'Leary, Renagh

Course Page for Summer 2024 AKK - Peterson, Kim

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Course Page for Summer 2022 13-Week Session - Peterson, Kim

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Course Page for Spring 2024 ZPO - Desai, Anuj

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Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Levenson, Barry

What is "natural?" What is “healthy?” Is Wisconsin's "Cheeseburger Law" unconstitutional? Can food executives be imprisoned for the negligence of their companies? How do consumers fight food fraud? What about the rise of plant-based foods? What two cases decided last term at the U.S. Supreme Court may change the contours of food law?

By the end of this course, students should understand:
1. How the law embodies our many expectations of food;
2. The history of food regulation in the United States and the relationship between the states and federal government in food oversight;
3. The role of litigation in protecting food safety, advancing good nutrition, and preventing food fraud;
4. The importance of core constitutional principles (First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Commerce Clause, and Supremacy Clause) in food law;
5. How the law may be used to advance a national food policy, including eliminating hunger;
6. The role of the criminal law in advancing food safety.

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Course Page for Spring 2023 ZPO - Jacklitz, Jill

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Course Page for Fall 2021 - Smith, Anne

The Implications of Tech Developments on Business & Law Course (the “Capstone Course”) is a capstone experience for transactionally focused law students that combines an externship and classroom component. The Capstone Course will introduce students to a select subset of modern technical innovations presented by industry and campus leaders on the subject. In the week after each class, students will participate in a focused discussion related to the legal, ethical, social, and business issues presented by the innovation. Additionally, students will engage with industry Partners to explore innovation from the experience of a company that regularly engages with disruptive technology.

Course Page for Fall 2024 Regular - Churchill, Abby

LGBTQ+ Law

This course will explore the unique legal issues impacting the LGBTQ+ community. Legal frameworks surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity are among the most dynamic and rapidly evolving in all of law. We will focus on those areas in which we are currently witnessing history being made.

Con Law I strongly recommended; but can take Con Law I concurrently.

Learning Outcomes:

This course is designed to:

1. Familiarize you with the basic knowledge of sexual orientation, gender identity, and the law, along with subject matter areas relevant to various aspects of LGBTQ+ life and the primary legal doctrine most relevant in that area.

2. Help you achieve a general understanding of how to apply what is learned about each subject matter area and its respective legal doctrines so that you can confidently work with LGBTQ+ clients.

3. Help you cultivate ways to communicate the changes we are currently seeing to non-lawyers.

4. Give you keen insight into jurisprudence as it is rapidly-evolving before our very eyes, and facilitate consideration about what the next 5 years may look like for the LGBTQ+ community.

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Course Page for Spring 2024 ZPO - Kulwiec, Alexia

"Labor Relations" is a detailed examination of the National Labor Relations Act with an emphasis on representation issues, collective bargaining, protection of individual rights, enforcement of the Act against both labor and management, enforcement of the collective bargaining agreement and regulation of economic weapons used by both management and labor. This course will briefly address the Railway Labor Act, the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, and public sector rights and bargaining obligations. The Fall term course "Labor & Employment Law" is NOT a prerequisite.

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Course Page for Fall 2022 - Raymond, Margaret

In this course, we will look at selected areas of law that have been important during COVID, either because there’s been extensive litigation and law development, or because existing law has had to adapt to the unprecedented circumstances of a worldwide pandemic. The writing project will be a structured memorandum, prepared with the guidance of the instructor, addressing the best approach to a specific legal issue that is likely to arise in a future pandemic.

Course Page for Spring 2024 ZPO - Yablon, Robert

This course examines the laws that structure the American democratic system. Topics include voting rights, redistricting, campaign finance, and the regulation of political parties. The course addresses the key constitutional principles and statutory provisions that govern these areas, with particular emphasis on recent legal developments. In addition to covering doctrine, the course focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of the electoral system, the role of courts in overseeing the system, and proposals for reform. Prior or concurrent enrollment in Constitutional Law I and/or II is recommended but not required.

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Course Page for Fall 2024 Regular - White Eagle, Amanda

The Law of Indian Tribes seminar will focus on the political and legal systems of the “Indian Tribes.” By introducing the study of tribal governments, this seminar will study the constitutions and laws of the Tribes, old and new, written and unwritten, as norm and custom and positive law. This seminar will explore the ways history, legislation, and litigation influence the development of case law. It will study several judicial opinions rendered by the Tribes’ courts and regulatory bodies. There is no prerequisite.

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Course Page for Fall 2023 Regular - Couso, Javier

Democracy and human rights reached their peak in the 1990s, with the so-called ‘third wave of democratization’ (Huntington, 1991), and the impressive development of International Human Rights Law in that decade. More recently the world has seen the resurgence of authoritarian tendencies in both new and –what used to be thought as— consolidated democracies, due to the rise of national-populist leaders (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018; Ginsburg and Huq, 2018).

In this seminar we will study the threat posed to constitutional democracy by the rise of populism. We shall: a) analyze the phenomenon of “authoritarian populism”; b) address the way the latter uses –and abuses— legal institutions to advanced its goals (specifically, “abusive constitution making”); c) explore the origins, features, retreat and resurgence of the “principle of non-interference with internal affairs of sovereign states”; d) explore its collision with International Human Rights Law and courts, and, finally, e) address the way the latter is deployed by authoritarian governments in countries as diverse as Hungary, Venezuela, Turkey, Brazil, Russia, China, and The Philippines.

The Seminar is open to students interested in compliance with International Human Rights Law, as well as those interested in the challenges to constitutional democracy posed by nationalist populism.

Methodology: This Seminar is based on an intensive participation of the students enrolled in it, through a critical analysis of the reading assigned to each session. In consequence, each student will be expected to give her/his opinion on both the themes addressed by the readings as well as the approach taken by the authors.

Evaluation: Final term paper of 20 pages, single spaced, for 3 credits, or 15 pages, single spaced, for 2 credits, on a topic previously discussed with the professor.

Course Page for Spring 2025 BNG - Mitchell, Everett

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Course Page for Spring 2022 - Desai, Anuj

This course provides an introduction to the federal laws and governmental institutions that shape significant aspects of social and economic policy. The course addresses legislation, statutory interpretation, regulation and administrative agencies. Legislation and regulation play the dominant role in shaping law and governance in the modern American legal system. While numerous other law school courses involve statutes and regulations or legislatures and administrative agencies, this course considers the overarching questions about these laws and institutions: how statutes are enacted and agency regulations issued, what tools lawyers use to shape statutes and regulations, how judges interpret them, etc. The main goal of the course is practical. All lawyers, irrespective of the area of law—from securities law to criminal law, from environmental law to tax, from labor and employment law to contract drafting, from military law to bankruptcy, etc.—must understand statutes and regulation. This course is aimed at providing students with a deeper understanding of these forms of law and the institutions that make this law, and to help them better appreciate the role that lawyers play in the American legal system as it operates in practice. To think like a lawyer, and hence to represent or advise clients, requires an ability to do so in the context of the regulatory state.

This course meets the Legal Process graduation requirement.

Learning Outcomes:

(i) To understand the role of legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts in the legal process.
(ii) To understand the relationship between and among these institutions.
(iii) To understand the role that lawyers play in furthering their clients’ interests in each of these institutions.
(iv) To understand the differences in the forms of legal argument that occur in these different institutions.
(v) To understand how courts interpret statutes.
(vi) To understand how administrative agencies interpret and implement statutes.
(vii) To understand how courts oversee the interpretation and implementation of statutes by administrative agencies.

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Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Van Rybroek, Gregory

Introduces students to the cases, statutes, and legal doctrines related to rights, treatment, and hospitalization and incarceration of mentally ill or developmentally disabled persons. Includes issues such as voluntary and involuntary civil commitment and the arc of its history to current legal standards; competency and restoration to competency issues for criminal defendants; the insanity defense history, legal standards, and lack of criminal responsibility in our society today; the right to refuse psychiatric treatment and ramifications of such laws; social science research in law such as eyewitness memory, interrogation and confession evidence; the regulation of the mental health system and mental health providers (and its positives and negatives), civil commitment of sex offenders, drug/alcohol and courts, the police function and mental health and personal mental health for lawyers.

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Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Davis, Sarah

This seminar is designed to deepen exploration of the systemic causes of problems people experience with healthcare systems in the U.S. and strategies to affect them. Taught through a health justice lens, it is distinct from a classic health policy course in three ways: (1) it offers patients' perspective, those impacted by a policy, and/or those with lived experience - and builds skills to engage key stakeholders in the change-making process, (2) it focuses in multiple arenas where policy-making and implementation occur - including in communities, organizations and legislative bodies, and (3) it emphasizes leadership and advocacy skill-building.

Course Page for Spring 2024 ZPO - Glinberg, Lanny

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Course Page for Fall 2022 - Atuahene, Bernadette

Since 2009, 1 in 3 Detroit homes have been subject to property tax foreclosure. More troubling, the City assessed the majority of Detroit homes at rates that violated the Michigan Constitution, placing the unprecedented number of property tax foreclosures in disrepute. The problem, however, goes beyond Detroit. Racialized property tax injustice is a national racial justice issue that our country has yet to confront. After our one week intensive course, students will be prepared to work collaboratively with the Coalition for Property Tax Justice (illegalforeclosures.org) to end racialized property tax inequity in Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee. This is a 3-credit course with an enrollment limit of 12 students.

Class sessions (synchronous online) are 9/7 through 9/14 only (including Sat. 9/10); thereafter students work on project paper, which will be due at the end of the semester.

Class session times:
4:10-7:10 pm: 9/7, 9/8, 9/12, 9/13, 9/14
Noon-3:00 pm: 9/9 (Fri)
9:00 am -2:30 pm: 9/10 (Sat)

Students may fulfill the Upper-Level Writing Requirement in this course.

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Course Page for Fall 2024 Regular - Rogers, Joel

This course is about problems in the design and maintenance of a democratic “affirmative” (aka“welfare” or “opportunity”) state that satisfies popular interest in both efficacy and democratic legitimacy, particularly in the latter’s requirement of demonstrated fidelity to the rule of law. We take the activities of this kind of state, which is characteristic of all modern capitalist democracies, to include not only income maintenance and social insurance programs but any public policies or programs that, in alleged pursuit of improved living standards and egalitarian ends, supplement or replace unregulated markets, procedural rights, and representative democracy — for example, in environmental protection, industrial policy, and the provision of basic public goods in education, security, energy, transportation, and communication. We will examine the modern affirmative state’s origin, evolution, current problems in satisfying expectations of it, and a variety of strategies to address those problems.

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Course Page for Spring 2023 ZPO - Atuahene, Bernadette

Racist policies are any written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people and produce or sustain racial inequity between racial groups. To better understand racist policies that have undermined property ownership for racial minorities in America, students will learn about an array of topics, including racialized property tax administration, racially restrictive covenants, mortgage and insurance redlining, land contracts, subprime loans, urban renewal, residential segregation, and partition sales.

Course Page for Fall 2024 Regular - Mitchell, Everett

Topics covered in Race, Racism & the Law are:
-What is Race? Race the Power of an Illusion; Notes on the State of Virginia; Dred Scott v. Sanford.
-Not Just Black People: Racism with Native, Chinese, Japanese and Mexicans Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. McIntosh; Cherokee Nation v. Georgia.
-Worcester v. Georgia; Indian Citizenship Act of 1924; ;Tee-Hit-Ton v. United States; Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe; The “Chinese” Problem – People v. Hall; Japanese – Korematsu v. United States; Mexicans – Campaign of Terror, “Zoot Suit Riots”; Tennessee v. Garner; Graham v. Connor; Qualified Immunity: Estate of Smart by Smart v. City of Wichita,.
-Black Lives Matter Protest: A Legal Review of Deadly Force; Estate of Harmon v. Salt Lake City.
-Qualified Immunity. Review the 13th Amendment; Kalief Browder, Netflix; Meek Mills, Netflix)
-Racism and the Criminal Justice System. War on Drugs: Federal Drug Laws and the Impact on Minority Communities; Brief Overview of Certain Aspects of the Criminal Justice System; Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System; Operation Pipeline; Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program; Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act; Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive; 4th Amendment Rules; Florida v. Bostick; Ohio v. Robinette: Subjective and Reasonableness; Mandatory Minimums: the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986; Kimbrough v. United States; Harmelin v. Michigan.
-Eighth Amendment—Excessive Bail; Wis. Stat. 969.01(1) and (4); Kalief Browder: Pre-Trial Detention; Prosecutorial Discretion: The Case of William Arnold Jr.; Probation and Parole: Discussion of Meek Mills: Probation and The Courts; Truth in Sentencing: Wis. Act 283; Review Shelly v. Kraemer, Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.
-Voting Rights and The Battle for Democratic Voice; Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot; Democratic National Committee v. Wisconsin Republican Legislature;
Merrill v. People First of Alabama; Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Kathy Boockvar, Secretary of Pennsylvania; 15th Amendment; 19th Amendment; Reconstruction Act of 1867; Radical Reconstruction 1867 to 1877; Post Reconstruction Efforts to Limit Voting; Guinn v. United States; 1965 Alabama Literacy Test; Poll Tax: Breedlove v. Suttles; Harper v. Virginia Board of Election, Gomillion v. Lightfoot; Voting Rights Act of 1965; Gatson County v. United States; Shelby County Alabama v. Holder.
-Voting Rights Continued: Gerrymandering and Felony Disenfranchisement. Florida Question: Does requiring individuals to pay off all remaining fees before being considered a rehabilitated felon a modern day poll tax? Gerrymandering: Vieth v. Jubelier; Gill v. Whitford; Both Democratic and Republican led states have abused their power.
-Immigration: United States v. Wong Kim Ark; Graham v. Department of Pub. Welfare; Plyler v. Doe; INS v. Lopez-Mendoza; Hamdan v. Rumsfeld; Padilla v. Kentucky; Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of University of California. Evicted by Matthew Desmond; The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
-Racism in Housing: From Restrictive Covenants to Renting; 14th Amendment
Plessy v. Ferguson; National Housing Act of 1934; The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein; What is De Jure Racial Segregation? Buchanan v. Warley; Shelly v. Kramer; Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co; Fair Housing Act of 1968; Limiting of Damages by the Court.
-Racism in Schools: The Struggle for Equal Education; Cumming v. Richard County Board of Education; Meyer v. Nebraska; Brown v. Board of Education;
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1; Miranda in Schools.

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Course Page for Fall 2024 Regular - Misey, Robert

Methodologies and tools for tax research; responding to and dealing with various functions of the IRS; professional and inter-professional responsibilities, administrative procedures and techniques.

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Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Schaub, Josh

What is a sports lawyer? I can tell you it looks nothing like you imagine nor what you are told by Hollywood. This class will cover in a small part, the most famous type of sports law, that of the player-agent relationship, but seeks to broaden the concept of sports law to everything related to the business, law, and regulation of sport. There will be an emphasis on antitrust and labor laws and the impact it has on the business of sport. This class will lean heavily into professional sports while borrowing from NCAA litigation and NIL matters to better understand the rule of reason and the role of competitive balance in the defense to antitrust claims. Students can expect practical teachings by being presented real life scenarios encountered by real sports lawyers and being asked to apply the assigned case law to resolve issues for employers and clients. This class does not cover Title IX or IP in sports.

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Course Page for Fall 2023 Regular - Seifter, Miriam

This course studies state and local government law in the United States. Although much of legal discourse focuses on the national government, it is in fact state and local governments that influence much of our day to day lives. Moreover, state and local government decision-making will play a prominent role in many of your legal careers. And state and local government law is at the center of some of the most significant theoretical and normative questions in American law, including those regarding democracy, federalism, and distributive justice.

The course will include study of the allocation of authority within and between state and local governments. This will include analysis of the three branches of state government and separation of powers questions arising among them, as well as analysis of how local governments are structured, financed, and organized. We will also study how state and local governments interact, covering doctrines of home rule and intrastate preemption. Throughout, we will ask whether and how current doctrines and policies implicate democracy, efficiency, and distributive justice. In addition, we will explore how these various doctrines and ideas play out in the context of contemporary disputes, including over housing, education, and civil rights.

This course will involve the completion of two short response papers during the semester and a final take-home exam.

Students who are interested in undertaking a final paper (or satisfying their upper-level writing requirement) on a topic related to state and local government law may, space permitting, enroll for separate directed research credit through the State Democracy Research Initiative (SDRI). Please contact SDRI's Legal Research Director Allie Boldt for more information: awboldt@wisc.edu.

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Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Seifter, Miriam

Public law at the state level affects our everyday lives and shapes our national democracy. This research seminar, in collaboration with the law school’s State Democracy Research Initiative (SDRI), will examine state constitutions, state government institutions, and state democratic processes—topics that are too often overlooked in legal circles. The seminar will be interactive, with a mix of foundational readings, guest speakers, and hands-on research projects.

Students will complete three written assignments over the course of the semester. Research topics may include analysis of state court decisions with a state or across states; analysis of state constitutional amendments; and analysis of the existing practices of state government institutions. Examples of recent SDRI projects are available on SDRI’s website.

The Law School’s course in State and Local Government Law or prior experience working on issues of state or local government law are prerequisites of the course. [Within three days of enrollment, students must send the instructor an email describing their fulfillment of these requirements. Students are also welcome to note at that time whether they have interest in particular SDRI projects or subject areas.]

Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Gondwe, Nyamagaga

Taxpayers are more than the sum of their economic transactions. In this seminar, we will apply multiple critical lenses to evaluate the structure, goals, implementation and impacts of the federal tax system. The seminar explicitly invites consideration of tax policy from “outsider” perspectives that center gender, race, socioeconomic class, disability and other identity axes. We will consider the extent to which the tax laws contribute to and play a role in maintaining inequality, and whether tax policy is an appropriate or effective way to achieve greater justice in society. Students are expected to take an active role in leading class discussions.

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Course Page for Spring 2023 ZPO - Cauble, Emily

This course will introduce the students to tax research techniques, tax memo writing, and writing client letters. Students will become familiar with resources that are helpful when conducting tax research. Students will also learn about special terminology used in tax opinions to indicate different levels of confidence in the conclusions reached. During the semester, students will draft memos and client letters for two main assignments that require them to research and address various tax questions (and receive feedback to use when revising their drafts). In addition, during the semester students will complete various shorter exercises to gain experience with researching and summarizing applicable tax law.

Course Page for Fall 2023 Regular - Schnur, Robert

This seminar is entitled “Income Taxation of Corporate Mergers and Acquisitions.” It has been offered for more than a decade (at Wisconsin Law and at Cornell Law). Enrollment is limited to 16 students and Tax I is a pre-requisite. (Tax II is not a pre-requisite and the course will therefore begin with an overview of how corporations are taxed under the Internal Revenue Code).

The structure of the seminar is intended to replicate to the greatest extent possible the experience that a new lawyer might have at a law firm or other place of professional employment. Therefore, it is built around a series of “Assignment Memoranda”, each of which sets forth a proposed hypothetical corporate acquisition and asks a series of questions relating to various tax planning issues faced by the acquired and acquiring entities and their shareholders. There will be no final exam but each student will be required to prepare three written “Response Memoranda” during the semester, based on assigned and independent tax research, discussing the issues presented by the acquisition described in that week’s Assignment Memo. Then, each seminar session will be devoted to a discussion of those issues. The emphasis is not on “right” or “wrong” answers but on how a lawyer should approach these types of tax planning questions. The focus is on domestic and not international transactions.

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Course Page for Spring 2024 ZPO - Ard, BJ

This course examines how the legal system responds to technological change. We will study the legal, economic, and social impacts of so-called “disruptive” technologies; the strategies through which courts, legislatures, administrative agencies, and international institutions respond to the legal uncertainty surrounding new technologies; and efforts by both incumbent and newcomer industries—and their attorneys—to use the law to support their preferred business models in the face of change.

Technologies discussed may include smartphones, autonomous weapon systems, domestic drones, robotics, driverless cars, cyberwarfare, the railroad, the internet of things, social media, big data analytics, the sharing economy, 3D-printing, as well as developments appearing in this semester’s headlines.

Requisites: This course is appropriate for students regardless of their prior experience with technology or their career interests; there are no course prerequisites. New technologies have raised challenges in every area of the law and the regulatory strategies and modes of legal argumentation explored in this course are transferable across subject areas

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Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Kasper, Amy

State Administrative Law is a two credit seminar on an area of law that permeates every aspect of daily life yet is often overlooked. The course will concentrate specifically on Wisconsin administrative law, which has undergone a sea change in recent years due to statutory changes and several recent cases. Wisconsin courts are being asked more and more to referee administrative law conflicts between the executive and legislative branches, and a once sleepy area of law is now at the forefront of many of the state’s most interesting constitutional questions. Federal law and law from other states will also appear in our discussions for comparison.
The course is generally divided into three main sections: agency rulemaking, administrative hearings, and judicial review of agency decisions. Throughout, we will discuss separation of powers questions and the role of the public in the administrative state, all while remaining grounded in the day-to-day considerations of a practicing state administrative law attorney. A concerted effort will be made to weave real world problems and current events into the class discussion.
The first hour of each class will consist of a lecture and class discussion of the various statutes, topics, and concepts on the syllabus. The second hour will be devoted to a discussion of the related cases or “questions to consider” listed for the week. Students may be asked to lead the discussion of a specific case or question.
Grades will be based on a proctored final exam, which will make up 90% of your grade. Class participation is greatly encouraged and will count for the remaining 10% of your grade.

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Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Kelly, Kevin

Wisconsin Legal History will meet once a week for two hours. The thirteen class sessions will focus on the following: 1) earliest legal antecedents & the Territorial legal system; 2) making of the Wisconsin Constitution & early Wisconsin state law; 3) the Civil War era & Wisconsin’s early industrial age; 4) corporate consolidation and regulation 1875-1915 & Wisconsin 19th century tort law; 5) Wisconsin women and the law & ethnic assimilation 1846-1920; 6) the Good Government movement 1895-1925 & Wisconsin’s tax system 1897-1925; 7) utilities 1890-1920 & the workplace 1867-1925; 8) Substantive Due Process, administrative law & labor and Wisconsin’s “Little New Deal”; 9) Wisconsin 20th century tort law & Wisconsin contract law; 10) Wisconsin criminal law & Wisconsin civil rights law; 11) Wisconsin women and the law since 1920 & Wisconsin practice of law; 12) the Governor Thompson years & the essence of Wisconsin’s legal system; and 13) Wisconsin legal highlights thus far in the 21st century.

Course Page for Spring 2025 ZPO - Clark, Hayley, Mallon, Heide

This experiential course is taught by experienced attorneys and is designed to introduce second- and third-year law students to worker’s compensation law and procedure. Hayley Clark of Aplin & Ringsmuth, LLC, and Administrative Law Judge Heide Mallon are co-instructors of the course. Students are assigned to advocate fictitious Wisconsin worker’s compensation claims from the pleading stage to hearing. Roughly half of the class sessions involve a traditional lecture/discussion format, although legal, procedural, and medical topics are discussed with the fictitious claims in mind. In other class sessions, guest experts—including an orthopedic surgeon, a psychologist, and a vocational expert—pose as witnesses in the fictitious claims and are “examined” and “cross-examined” by experienced attorneys as if they were testifying at hearing. One class session involves the direct and cross-examination of a claimant from one of the fictitious claims. Students learn about medical, psychological, and vocational science and acquire litigation skills in these class sessions. Current administrative law judges also teach a class session as guest lecturers on effective advocacy at hearing and on settlement. At the conclusion of the course, students are required to write a brief advocating their clients’ positions in the fictitious cases for hearing, and then litigate their clients’ claims in a two-hour mock worker’s compensation hearing, conducted during the final exam period before a current administrative law judge and court reporter. Course materials include the Wisconsin Worker’s Compensation Handbook by John D. Neal and Joseph P. Danas, and additional materials provided to students by the instructors electronically

Recent Offerings of this course by this instructor