Professional Responsibility

Satisfies the Florida Bar requirement for curricular study of the regulation of the integrated bar. Studies include the exclusionary and anti-competitive practices of the organized bar, problems in the allocation of legal services, controversies over the deficiencies of various methods of regulating lawyer behavior, customs and courtesies of the bar, and the socioeconomic expectations of lawyers, clients, and the public.

Products Liability

A study of the legal responsibility for product-related harm. Topics include the legal theories of liability for product injury, definitions of product defectiveness, government regulation of product safety, evidentiary issues in products liability litigation, and the politics and economics of contemporary products liability reform. Course uses problem method of instructions, with students occupying roles as attorneys and judges.

Privacy

This course examines information privacy, an individual's right to control his or her personal information held by others. The aim of the course is to understand how courts and Congress seek to protect information privacy as new technologies and institutional practices emerge. The course traces the origins of the right to information privacy in American law through Constitutional law, tort law, and modern statutory law. Case studies of landmark privacy legislation illustrate how expectations of privacy are translated into legal frameworks.

Practicing Environmental Law in Florida

Much federal environmental law depends critically on the implementation of compatible state law. This is a survey course in environmental, natural resource, energy, and land use law in the State of Florida emphasizing the importance of this cooperative federalism relationship in environmental protection. The course is intended to provide a combination of review of substantive state law and skills training especially for, but not limited to students expecting to practice in the State of Florida.

Poverty Law

Poverty Law examines the role played by the law and lawyers in protecting the rights and interests of the poor. We will review general information about poverty, the history of anti-poverty advocacy in the United States, the institutional development of free legal services for the poor, and the effect of constitutional norms in providing such services. Students will gain insight into several substantive areas of poverty law practice, including housing, government benefits, consumer and child welfare law.

Postconviction Remedies

This class explores both state and federal postconviction mechanisms for challenging both unlawful detention and convictions and sentences after one has been convicted and completed their direct appeal. Some refer to postconviction as the “red-headed step-child” of the criminal justice system, mostly because it is cumbersome, it seems like it never ends, and practitioners, even the ones who practice it regularly, may not even fully understand it.

Patent Law

This course involves an in-depth study of the law applicable to patents. The patent is the form of intellectual property protecting "inventions.” It is the most important form of protection for enterprises competing on the basis of technological advantage. The course covers patentable subject matter, application for grant, the criteria of patentability, rights of patent holders, causes of action against alleged infringers, defenses, remedies, licensing, the relevant application of competition/antitrust law and patent policy.

Oil and Gas Law

This course will explore the law that applies to extracting and transporting oil and gas resources in the United States. The first several days of the course will describe the process of locating minerals underground and drilling and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and oil, as these processes and technical terms for these processes will arise in many of the cases that we will explore.

Nonprofit Organizations

This is a 2-credit class surveying the comprehensive law of nonprofit organizations. The course will begin with an overview of the nonprofit sector and provide an understanding of the various dimensions and rationales for nonprofit organizations. We’ll then dissect the legal framework of these organizations, including formation, dissolution, and restructuring; operation and governance; and state and federal requirements for existence.