Law

Spring 2017 Course Offerings

Courses for Spring 2017
Course Name Course Description
Domestic Violence and Civil Protection Order Clinic As part of collaboration with the Legal Aid Society of Cincinnati, students act as advocates for victims of domestic violence. Advocacy includes interviewing and counseling clients, helping clients in civil protection order cases as well as issues as they relate to family law.
Administrative Law Government agencies increasingly regulate the marketplace, health and safety, and provide basic services. This course explores the constitutional powers and limitations on agency action, judicial review of agencies, and the procedures with which agencies must comply in regulating or providing benefits.
Advanced Health Law Lawyers working within the healthcare context face ever changing legal, regulatory, and ethical challenges. This course is designed to provide further understanding of health law concepts beyond those introduced in the basic health law course and to develop strategies and skills for practice in this field.
Advanced Legal Research: Methods & Applications This course builds upon the basic research skills and techniques learned in the required Lawyering I courses. Its problem-solving approach gives students practical research experience that will enhance their understanding of legal literature and legal research principles. Students will learn to assess and respond strategically to legal research problems using available resources in print and digital formats. The focus is on researching United States federal and state law.  
Advanced Topics in Constitutional Law: Children & War This course will explore some of the ways children are affected by war and the violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law implicated. The aim of the course is to stimulate critical thinking about the consequences of war for children and their place in the public war narrative.
Advanced Problems in Constitutional Law: Contemporary Constitutional Challenges This seminar will examine key constitutional challenges that the United States faces in the early 21st century - issues of public concern that have sparked significant debate about the proper role of constitutional values in contemporary American life.
Business Associations This course covers major topics in the law of agency, partnerships, limited partnerships, limited liability companies and corporations, as well as selected aspects of the federal securities laws.
Business Basics for Lawyers Virtually all forms of legal practice require a basic understanding of fundamental business concepts. This course is designed to help students gain a basic understanding of accounting and finance principles as well as general business concepts.
Business Tax This course will cover the fundamentals of the federal income tax as it applies to businesses. Its focus will be on the tax treatment of the most common business entities: C corporations, partnerships, and S corporations. This course is intended to provide a basic understanding of these entities' most frequent tax issues for those interested either in a career in tax law or representing business entities more generally.
Civil Procedure II This course continues issues first explored in Civil Procedure I. It opens with joinder of parties in multi-party actions, interpleader, class actions and intervention. Modern discovery procedures, the trial process, and post-trial motions are considered. The course ends with procedures governing appeals, alternative dispute resolution, and the effect of res judicata and collateral estoppels by judgment in prior litigation.
Client Counseling This intensive workshop course focuses on the realities of working with clients, from the initial lawyer-client interview through the challenges of counseling the fully informed client toward wise and ethical decision-making.
Constitutional Law II This required course covers individual rights and freedoms, including the incorporation of the Bill of Rights as against the States, freedom of speech and religion, due process, economic and personal liberties and state action.
Corporate Finance This course teaches concepts and methodologies used by corporations in major financing activities, as well as legal issues that may arise in those activities. Course materials are divided into four parts: equity financing, debt financing, valuation methodologies, and financial derivatives.  
Counterterrorism Law This course will introduce students to the rapidly developing area of counterterrorism law. Areas of coverage include: attacking terrorists abroad, detecting and preventing terrorism, detaining and interrogating terrorist suspects, arresting, prosecuting, and removing terrorists, managing terrorist attacks, and non-criminal sanctions against terrorists and their sponsors.
Criminal Defense: Investigation & Discovery Using the Theory of Defense as the guide by which all else follows, this course will explore the components of an effective defense of the criminally accused, with special consideration being given to the unique problems presented when representing the indigent defendant.  
Criminal Law This course deals with substantive criminal law, although its focus is on the various principles that apply to all crimes rather than on the elements of specific crimes. Homicidal crimes are given separate attention, however. The various defenses, including insanity, are reviewed.
Criminal Procedure I This introductory course deals with the constitutional aspects of various police practices, focusing primarily on the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the US Constitution. The course specifically addresses the right to counsel; arrest, search and seizure; wiretapping, electronic eavesdropping and the use of secret agents; police interrogation and confession; and the scope and administration of the exclusionary rules.
Criminal Procedure II This course covers the basic rules for post-arrest criminal litigation. Sources include constitutions, statutes and court rules, ethical codes, performance standards, research data, and appellate decisions interpreting these primary materials. Topics include the right to counsel, charging decisions, pretrial detention, discovery and investigation, plea bargaining, speedy trial and double jeopardy, jury selection, additional trial rights, including compulsory process and confrontation of witnesses, sentencing, and appeal/post-conviction procedures. The goal is clear understanding of the rules, their underlying theories, and their real-world consequences.
Disability Law One in five Americans has a disability, but it was not until 1990 that Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities (ADA), a comprehensive federal statute prohibiting disability discrimination in virtually every aspect of American life. This course introduces students to the ADA and other federal laws protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities. It also focuses on the disability rights movement, the social construction of "disability,"‚ and the increasing appreciation of disability rights as civil rights.
Election Law The goal of this course is to introduce students to the legal underpinnings of today' s democratic politics, the historical struggle over the structure of democratic institutions, and the practical consequences that follow from different institutional arrangements. As time allows, students will examine the history, law, and contemporary legal and policy debates regarding the individual right to vote, the districting and apportionment process (including partisan and racial gerrymandering), and the financing of campaigns and independent expenditures.
Electronic Discovery Electronic discovery plays an important and increasingly high-profile role in modern litigation. This course will provide a comprehensive study of electronic discovery issues, blending an in-depth analysis of legal principles with the study of their application in practice.
Employment Discrimination This course surveys the major legislative and executive provisions prohibiting various types of discrimination in employment. Discrimination is considered in the context of hiring, promotion, discharge, benefits, conditions, and the like. Consideration is also given to the procedures applicable to employment discrimination cases.
Entrepreneurship & Community Development Clinic In this course, students will staff the Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic (ECDC), obtaining "hands on" experience representing local businesses and entrepreneurs on transactional legal issues critical to their success, including assistance and counseling on entity selection and formation, regulatory compliance and licensing, trademark/copyright protection, lease review and negotiation, contract preparation/review/negotiation, tax-exempt applications, and other legal issues confronting small businesses, both for-profit and nonprofit.
Evidence The goal of this course is for students to know and be able to apply (1) the Federal Rules of Evidence governing relevance, unfair prejudice, character evidence, impeachment, hearsay, and opinion testimony; (2) the rules as they intersect with a few constitutional provisions, such as the Sixth Amendment confrontation right; and (3) some housekeeping rules, such as Rules 102- 105, 201, 611, and the Best Evidence rule.
Expert Witness at Trial The course will address the use of expert witnesses in litigation. It is based upon the Supreme Court's seminal decisions in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136 (1997), Kumho Tire Co., Ltd. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999), as well as Ohio and Kentucky cases adopting the Daubert analysis of expert testimony. The emphasis will be on practical exercises: drafting and conducting examinations based upon expert reports and other expert trial exhibits taken from actual litigation.
Family Law Primary focus is on the relationship between law and the family in the context of the creation, maintenance and restructuring of domestic relations. Special attention is given to the nature of marriage, separation, divorce, dissolution, support, alimony, and child custody.
First Amendment Seminar Directed principally at exploring freedom of speech and freedom of religion, this seminar enables each student to consider both the historical development of and contemporary cases and issues related to the First Amendment. 
Gender and the Law This course examines how gender shapes and informs the law and how legal doctrine affects our understanding of gender. The objectives of the course include the following: (1) to provide several opportunities to write and produce quality short papers on gender-related issues; and (2) to determine how the study of gender and feminist theory can enrich the study of law. The course will introduce a variety of theoretical approaches to the study of gender and will cover such substantive areas as employment, education, and family law.
Government Regulation: Regulatory State The Regulatory State is a course about government. More specifically, it is about the legal rules, principles, and institutions by which the government operates. In popular political discourse, the claim is often made that "there is too much government."‚ Similarly, the opposite claim is also often made that "there ought to be a law."‚ Additionally, we all experience the fact that our daily lives are heavily affected by government rules and regulations from speed limits to securities regulations and from local zoning to national and international energy laws. In this way, then, government regulation may well seem ubiquitous.
Health Care Law This class explores the financing and regulation of health care, bioethics, the various structures of health care organizations, the physician-patient relationship, professional liability of health care providers, and tort reform for medical injuries.
Indigent Defense Clinic Through the Office of the Hamilton County Public Defender, students provide representation to indigent criminal defendants in misdemeanor cases. Each student is closely supervised by a licensed attorney and handles all aspects of the case, from the initial client interview and investigation to motions practice and trial advocacy.  
Individual Research Projects Under the direct supervision of a member of the faculty, upper-level students engage in original research and prepare for credit a substantial written work product. The research project is selected jointly by the student and faculty member. Customarily, the final product will be a research paper, and, in that case, the paper must be 10-15 pages long for one credit, 20-30 pages long for two credits, and 35-50 pages long for three credits.
Information Privacy Law Every business deals with private information of one sort or another. That information, often traversing legal boundaries at the speed of light, might concern medical care, payments, employees, clients, or consumers, and it may implicate different sectoral and jurisdictional rules. Businesses often have to consider state, national, and international laws to figure out what they can and cannot do with the information they possess, or want to possess, or what they need to do and might have to face when they lose it. Those laws come in various forms: torts, contracts, constitutions, statutes, and regulations (with a number of industry and self- regulatory schemes to boot).
International Business Transactions This course is intended to prepare students to represent clients in a variety of business transactions that contain international elements. The emphasis is on the formation and enforcement of agreements between private commercial parties and on the anticipation and recognition of issues that are peculiar to, or are especially prevalent in, international business.
International Intellectual Property This advanced doctrinal course will consider the global aspects of protecting all the human creations that fall under the general rubric of intellectual property, from creative or expressive works, to useful inventions, to corporate brands and confidential information. The perspective is both international and comparative. That is, we will study both the internal‚ intellectual property systems of foreign nations as well as the external‚ regime that governs interactions between nations in the intellectual property domain.
International Tax The purpose of this course is to examine the U.S. taxation of transactions undertaken by foreign individuals or entities in the United States as well as the U.S. taxation of transactions undertaken by U.S. individuals or entities abroad. The former, foreign individuals or entities coming here, are referred to as inbound transactions, and the latter, U.S. individuals or entities going abroad, are referred to as outbound transactions. The focus of the course is on how the U.S. tax system deals with the consequences of both inbound and outbound transactions.
Judicial Externship The class component of the Judicial Extern Program covers writing for judges and proper conduct for judges and judicial clerks. The work performed in the judicial extern field placement is similar to that performed by a law clerk to a judge. It usually involves preparing memoranda on cases, reviewing case files, drafting opinions and orders, and attending court and conferences. The precise tasks performed, however, depend upon the type of court and the style of the judge. 
Jurisprudence: Achieving Democracy - The Future of Progressive Regulation With the change of presidential administrations, together with all of the political conversation attending it, it is a good time to consider the nature of our polity and the values obtained. This course will include discussion of "Achieving Democracy: The Future of Progressive Regulation."
Juvenile Law This course covers the juvenile justice system and related juvenile issues. This course explores the juvenile justice system with a focus on juvenile delinquency and child-welfare related matters. The course will examine the structure of the juvenile justice system and the agencies which interact with the system.
Labor Law This course examines labor unions and labor-management relations from both a legal and a social perspective and will utilize traditional legal materials such as statutes, regulations and judicial opinions, which will be complemented by social research such as theoretical perspectives and empirical studies from the social sciences.
Land Use Planning: How the Constitution & Local Government Shape the City Around You Critical consideration and discussion of the federal, state, and regulatory framework applicable to land use controls, including the origins and contemporary application of law and policies concerning land use planning, zoning, historic preservation, eminent domain, transportation-oriented development, inclusionary housing, environmental review, the interaction of those laws with private property rights, and the legislative and administrative settings within which land use disputes are fought.
Legal Analys and Drafting: the Bar Exam This course serves the dual purpose of equipping students to succeed on the written portions of bar examinations and preparing for legal practice by developing and honing skills relevant to legal analysis, professional and effective written communication, principled advocacy, and management of legal work.
Introduction to Legal Drafting This class provides a comprehensive introduction to drafting legal documents in the transactional context, with a heavy emphasis on contracts and internal corporate documents. Students will learn the basic concepts that guide contract drafting and how mastery of these concepts aid in managing risk in legal transactions.
Introduction to Legal Drafting for LLM Students This class provides a comprehensive introduction to drafting legal documents in the transactional context, with a heavy emphasis on contracts and internal corporate documents. LLM students will learn the basic concepts that guide contract drafting and how mastery of these concepts aid in managing risk in legal transactions.
Legal Ethics In this course, students consider the lawyer-client relationship in the context of realistic scenarios, evaluating the complex choices an ethical lawyer must make to establish an effective lawyer-client relationship. Following an examination of the ABA Model Rules and the Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct, students consider the ethical components of the lawyer-client relationship, with an emphasis on competency, confidentiality, and conflicts of interest. The course also includes substantial instruction in the history, goals, structure, values, and responsibilities of the legal profession and its members.
Legal Externship The classroom component of the Legal Extern Program emphasizes practical lawyering skills, law office economics, and ethical issues. In their field placements, legal externs work under the supervision of attorneys in local, state, and federal public agencies, for legal aid and other non- profit organizations, and in businesses and other organizations in the private sector. 
Legal Regulation of Human Subject Research This course considers the legal regulation of an activity that is at the core of every university and academic medical center, federally funded research, as well as the human subject research conducted by drug, biotechnology, and medical device companies. Both the entities conducting the research and the entities funding it hire young lawyers to make sure that they are acting in compliance about regulations that controls every aspect of the research, from protection of human subjects, to reporting of results, to financial record keeping.
Legislation & Statutory Interpretation This course explores the enactment of statutes by federal and state legislators and the interpretation given by the courts and administrative agencies to such legislative enactments. The course will focus on various procedural, constitutional, and jurisprudential issues relating to the legislative and electoral processes embodied in our constitutional order, and to the methods of statutory interpretation employed by our courts and administrative agencies.
Mental Health Law II This course will focus on the private sector health care issues that arise frequently in mental health law. Issues to be covered include: guardianship, psychiatric malpractice and informed consent, mental health law confidentiality and privilege, duties to warn and other duties to third parties, the right to refuse treatment, the right to treatment and the influence of the ADA, the admissibility of mental health professional expert testimony, brief coverage of ERISA and the right to die.
Negotiations In this course students learn the "science and art" of negotiation. Students are introduced to significant literature and theory in negotiation and have the opportunity to practice negotiating through a sequenced series of negotiations simulations.
Practical Application of Business Tax Concepts This course will provide students with an overview of practical tax concepts for business attorneys. This course focuses on translating tax law into tax filings, the choices required to complete filings, and the process of these filings. In this process, students will be introduced to federal, state, local, and international tax practices. Some topics that might be covered include tax compliance, state and local taxes, transactional taxes, and practice and procedure.
Sales This course deals primarily with contracts for the sale of goods under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code. In it, we will master code‚ reading and basic Article 2 doctrines. Students also examine how the law of the sale of goods differs from the common law of contracts, particularly with respect to the relevant law of warranties, performance, risk of loss, and remedies. Students explore the reasons, both practical and theoretical, for the substantive differences between Article 2 and common law contracts. Finally, the course examines, to varying degrees, the related law of leases of goods (under Article 2A of the UCC) and contracts for the international sale of goods (under the Convention of Contracts for the International Sale of Goods or CISG).
Sixth Circuit Clinic In this clinic, students will work on cases for indigent clients whose cases are on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, a federal appellate court located in Cincinnati. Under the supervision of experienced attorneys, students will analyze trial records, identify arguments to be used in the appeals process, and write motions and briefs for their clients.
Introduction to Sports Law This course is designed to introduce students to the substantive and practical aspects of Sports Law. Students will be exposed to a review of current and selected past case law, a review and interpretation of federal and state legislation, as well as an interpretation of NCAA Bylaws and Constitutional provisions.
State and Local Tax This course provides an overview of the basic principles of state and local taxation. In this course, students will study the federal limitations on state and local taxation including U.S. Constitutional restraints imposed by the Due Process and Commerce Clauses and federal statutory preemptions. In addition, students will study the fundamental principles of the most common state taxes with a focus on corporate net income and sales and use taxes. This course will also address the impact of state and local taxes on multistate businesses, including commerce businesses. Finally, this course will briefly cover general state tax procedures.
Trail Practice: Competition Team Students prepare for and participate in Trial Practice Competition Team events.
Trusts & Future Interests This course covers the creation and operation of trusts and the rights and obligations associated with them. It includes the kinds of trusts available, fiduciary duties in the administration of trusts, the law of future interests, and related topics. Related tax issues are not raised or discussed.
Venture Capital and Private Equity This course introduces students to the various legal and business considerations involved in venture capital and private equity transactions.
Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Team The Vis Competition has two components. The first component is the researching and writing of two 30 to 35 page memoranda, the first supporting the position of a hypothetical international arbitration claimant and the second supporting the position of the respondent. (This component is expected to involve about 45 hours of work beginning in October and running through the end of January when the respondent memorandum is due.) The second component will include supervising and editing the memoranda plus traveling and participating in the week-long oral competition in either Vienna or Hong Kong.
Witness Preparation Through role play and other means, this course will teach techniques that trial counsel use to prepare themselves and their witnesses for testimony that is truthful, engaging, trustworthy, and persuasive. Students will learn how to showcase witness testimony, reduce risks of unexpected or damaging testimony, gain witness confidence, explain the witness' role, uncover information, lay foundations for admitting exhibits, and deal with cross examinations, etc.