General Course Descriptions for Terms: legislation
746 - Legislation
914 - Securities Regulation
This course analyzes the regulations governing the capital formation process in the United States. The course explains the process by which companies register securities with the SEC in order to go public, and the reporting obligations that arise once companies are publicly traded. The course also analyzes the process by which companies raise capital through private placements (the dominant capital formation process in Silicon Valley), restrictions on the resale of privately placed securities, recent legislation allowing "crowdfunding" of certain enterprises, and the securities law liabilities that arise in these transactions. About a third of the course consists of problem sets based on a series of “motivating hypotheticals.” Students will therefore gain hands-on experience in analyzing problems and advising clients in a complex regulatory area.
940 - Law of Indian Tribes
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.
950 - European Union Law
Course Description: The subject of this six-week, one-credit course taught by Professors from Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, will be an "Introduction to the Law of the European Union." This will be a general introduction to the legal system of the European Union covering both its constitutional and institutional architecture and focusing on a selection of issues including (1) the EU institutional setting, (2) sources of EU law (treaties, secondary legislation, law-making procedures, direct effect, supremacy), (3) remedies in EU law (enforcement proceedings, preliminary references, direct actions, liability), (4) general principles of EU law (human rights, citizenship, rule of law, discrimination, proportionality), (5) the internal market (free movement of goods, persons, services and capital), and (6) a brief overview of other policies of the EU. The focus will be on understanding the underlying principles of European legal integration and becoming familiar with European Union legal sources. Note: The course will meet starting on September 15th and meet each Friday thereafter until October 20th; the final exam will be a take-home exam on Saturday, October 21st.
988 - SP Environ Law: Natural Resources Law
This course covers the law and policy of the disposition and use of natural resources in the United States. We will emphasize federally owned and managed resources, especially the nearly one-third of this country’s land area that is owned by the federal government, although you will also learn a little about the management of state and private lands as well. Main topics include the history of public land law; the constitutional basis for federal control of natural resources, and legal doctrines and principles that cut across the whole field. We will study two important statutes that, while often included in environmental law curricula, are equally pivotal to natural land use and management in the United States: the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. We will then turn to studies of particular types of resources, including fisheries, wilderness and recreational areas, water, rangelands, federally owned minerals, and forests. Although the general public often perceives natural resources law as part of “environmental law,” natural resources law, as presented in law school courses and casebooks, covers the government’s role as owner and regulator of publicly owned resources, such as land and use of navigable waters. In contrast, environmental law tends to focus on the regulation of private conduct to minimize and provide remedies for various forms of pollution of natural resources. Natural resources law follows a property law model, whereas environmental law’s common law heritage is traceable first and foremost to tort law. While having taken environmental law will, like a number of other courses (structural constitutional law; federal courts; legislation), prove helpful for your studies of this course, it is not a requirement, and I will not assume knowledge of environmental law.