Second-Third-Year

This course is a practical introduction to the law and business of investment products. It will examine the financial industry’s most important structures (including mutual funds, ETFs, and REITs), strategies (such as private equity, venture capital, and hedge fund styles), and financial engineering tools (like securitizations and derivatives). In each case, students will consider not only the relevant legal issues, but the underlying investment ideas and the ways in which resulting products are distributed and sold. 

This skills training class, focuses on helping students develop effective communication skills in the courtroom. Particular focus will be given to communications between lawyers and judges, lawyers and witnesses, and lawyers and juries, as well as communications among lawyers.  This class counts towards the skills training requirement.

This skills training class focuses on the United States Supreme Court decisions on capital punishment beginning with Furman v.

This course introduces students to the key legal principles governing the relationship of debtors and creditors, with primary emphasis on federal bankruptcy law.

The primary objective of this three credit course is to familiarize students with various analytic methods and tools and their applications to various legal fields and issues. Topics include decision analysis, risk and uncertainty, preference aggregation and voting problems, selected issues in finance (e.g. time value of money and diversification of risk), elementary game theory, financial statements, basic microeconomics and fundamental concepts in statistical analysis.

This course surveys the statutory no-fault insurance system that displaces tort law in the workplace. Class discussion centers on the scope of coverage and benefits under compensation legislation.

The course will cover a range of topics, including, among  others, corporate criminal liability, mail fraud, securities fraud, tax fraud, and environmental crimes.

This course provides an introduction to Water Law and Policy, a subject of great import to practitioners of environmental law, property law, international law, and other fields that contend with the allocation of scarce water resources among competing human, economic, and environmental needs.  Water management is especially important in Florida, which lies over the largest freshwater aquifer in the world, and Florida has become a leader in modern regulatory approaches.

In this course we will study the legal, ethical and political aspects of war. The course is in three parts. The first part will cover the theoretical frameworks used to explain war: just war theory, realism and pacifism. The second part will explore the law of the use of force, with special emphasis on the UN Charter and past and current cases. Finally, we will conduct an introductory survey of the laws of war as established in the Geneva Conventions. Students must read the assigned materials, participate in class, and write a final examination.

This seminar will explore the role of trust in various relationships and how the law may promote or undermine trust between interacting parties. During the course of the semester, we will critically discuss the nature of trust, fiduciary relationships, trust in consumer transactions, and extra-legal trusting relationships, such as familial relationships and other social interactions. We will discover the limits of trust and the law’s ability to influence it as well as gain an understanding of how the law deeply influences a wide array of human interactions.