J.D. Courses

Course Description

When parties are unable to resolve their dispute through discussion or negotiation, a logical next step is to seek the assistance of a third party mediator to facilitate communication and the search for a solution. This workshop course is intended to familiarize students with the norms of the mediation process and to develop the lawyering skills that will enable student to either serve as mediators or to better represent clients in this increasingly important form of ADR. Attention is given to both facilitative and evaluative styles of mediation. Significant emphasis is placed on role playing exercises and on the legal consequences of the mediation process.

Course Description

In this clinic, students mediate disputes arising in the local East Bay Rhode Island communities under the supervision of a faculty clinic director. The law students will be trained in advanced mediation and other practical conflict resolution skills and then will 1) assist disputing parties to achieve mutually agreeable settlements by serving as mediators, and 2) provide conflict resolution educational workshops in the community. The course in Mediation, Family and Divorce Mediation or a similar experience acceptable to the instructor is a prerequisite.

Course Description

This course is designed to create a cross disciplinary environment where students can explore some of the critical issues that cross the boundaries between law and behavioral health. It will focus on selected topics, exploring each of them from a medical as well as legal perspective. The course will begin with an overview of the mental health system and its history, as well as an outline of the specialized legal environment in which it works. There will then be a series of focus sessions that zoom in on specific issues. There will be three skills workshops providing practical application of the material to common types of psychiatric hearings: civil certification; dangerousness; and competency/diversion. Brown University graduate students in psychiatry and psychology will be registered students in this course.

Course Description

The course will explore corporate acquisitions, including mergers and consolidations, in the form of asset sale, stock sale, or statutory merger. The consequences of these transactions will be discussed, including, potentially, successor liability, securities regulations, antitrust, tax, accounting, environmental, intellectual property, ERISA, and other legal issues. Due diligence review, negotiation, and documentation will also be discussed. Business Organizations is a prerequisite.

Course Description

This course will explore legal issues peculiar to the military service as well as issues of importance to the government of the services. The course will examine the military justice system as well as the problems facing the civilian practitioner dealing with the military services and their personnel. Topics will include the military justice system, including the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Military Rules of Evidence, veterans reemployment rights, obtaining child support, and litigating divorce or custody disputes when servicemen are involved. Other discussions will focus on policies such as the use of the death penalty, the role of women in the military, drug testing, and first amendment rights.

Course Description

This course is a survey of the major legal components of national security, including counter-terrorism; the Law of Armed Conflict; war powers issues; emergency powers of government and their relationship to civil liberties; counter-intelligence, surveillance, intelligence gathering and other covert operations; the role of international and war crimes tribunals; and analysis; and issues pertaining to access to and release of national security information. Particular emphasis will be placed on legal issues relevant to the events of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath, including recent counter-terrorism legislation and the war in the Middle East.

Course Description

n recent decades, several environmental events have occurred, resulting in legal action and financial settlement.This perspectives course will examine the financial frameworks adopted in several key environmental settlements of the 21stCentury.Topics explored will include, environmental and catastrophic event risk, the interplay between event risk and injury, and financial damages arising from environmental or ecological injury.This course will focus on experiential learning through case studies, with focused discussion of financial settlements involving recent environmental litigation.Students will acquire an understanding of environmental event risks, associated injuries, financial damages, and settlement strategies

Course Description

Over 90% of civil and criminal cases never get before a jury. They are resolved by other means, often by a negotiated settlement. Business transactions, for their part, are most often created through negotiation. As law schools place more emphasis on the skills required to be an effective lawyer, this Negotiation course is a hands-on exploration of preventing or solving conflict or variances in agreement whether the discordancy is a transaction or litigation. We will discuss theory only as it relates to a fuller understanding of the practical aspects of techniques, strategies and tactics as well as the ethical restraints and responsibilities of the lawyer. Students will negotiate weekly with a wide variety of fact patterns followed by a review and critical analysis of what was done and what might have been done more effectively.

Course Description

This course will cover New York civil procedure from the commencement of a lawsuit through final adjudication. Topics will likely include the discovery process, the trial process, alternative dispute resolution, equitable remedies, and recent developments in New York law.

Course Description

The New York Pro Bono Scholars Program (NYPBSP) bridges law school education and the practice of law while engaging students in the provision of critical legal assistance to low-income people. Students will provide approximately 480 hours of pro bono legal service over a 12-week period for which they will receive 10 fieldwork credits. In addition, students will take a two-credit weekly seminar on pro bono practice, access to justice and public interest lawyering. The field work will be graded Pass/Fail. The seminar will be graded.

SPRING ONLY

Course Description

The New York Pro Bono Scholars Program (NYPBSP) bridges law school education and the practice of law while engaging students in the provision of critical legal assistance to low-income people. Students will provide approximately 480 hours of pro bono legal service over a 12-week period for which they will receive 10 fieldwork credits. In addition, students will take a two-credit weekly seminar on pro bono practice, access to justice and public interest lawyering. The field work will be graded Pass/Fail. The seminar will be graded.

Course Description

The areas in which oceans and their branches and land masses meet are the source of many relationships largely peculiar to those areas. Sea level rise, global warming and effects on our oceans, coastal resilience and retreat options from mega storms like Sandy and Katrina, wetlands protection, environment and ecological issues, the position of the area in terms of industry and commerce including such international rules as those governing fisheries, whaling and other trapping and hunting, are a part of the special problems facing this zone and the areas of water and land nearby. The course examines the various legal regimes with a consideration of policy issues that are involved in the complex relationships generated in these areas.

Course Description

Creativity and productive ideas have proven essential to economic progress. The federal government has developed an elaborate set of laws and regulations to protect these ideas from appropriation by others. This body of law, and elements of the practice under it, will be covered in detail. The patent law seminar includes elements of US and foreign patentability standards, perfection of patent rights, enforcement (litigation and ADR, border controls), relation to other bodies of law and practice such as antitrust, employment, corporate finance, licensing and joint ventures, federal civil procedure and evidence, international law, legal ethics, trademark, copyright, trade secret and Constitutional law. A background of science or technology education or experience can be helpful but is not required. Practical exercises in analyzing inventions and patents are given during the semester. The seminar grade is based primarily on a term paper due at the beginning of the exam period with some adjustment for class participation.

Course Description

This course covers Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code. It surveys the legal concept of money, negotiability, usury laws, commercial paper and bank credit as a money substitute, doctrines of holder in due course, liability and discharge and paper/electronic transfers. Consideration is given also to letters of credit and documents of title.

Course Description

The goal of this course is to enable the student to develop certain skills and additional substantive knowledge required in the practice of Elder Law. Driven by the changing circumstances and needs of the student’s hypothetical first clients, students will learn to effectively plan for and to represent the elderly client at different phases in the aging process. Elder Law is a prerequisite.

Course Description

This course studies the history, evolution and challenges associated with modern policing in the United States through a shared legal and criminological lens. It deals with fundamental issues concerning the relationship between the state and the individual, and raises critical concerns about surveillance, force, racial justice, and basic civil liberties. Topics include police stops, frisks, searches, uses of force, examining various models of policing, and police culture. This course is essential starting ground for anyone interested in practicing in the criminal justice space, be it direct services or law reform, but will be of interest to anyone concerned about some of the paramount issues of the day: community policing, police strategy, tactics, and oversight, excessive force cases, and qualified immunity. Active and retired law enforcement from across the country will participate in each class to share their professional experiences with the class and ensure that a practitioner’s perspective is incorporated into the course

Course Description

This class will closely analyze some of the most highly visible cases in the country involving police use of excessive force, for example the cases of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Kim Potter and Michael Brown. Before delving into the particulars of these cases, the class will offer a thorough background of the development of this area of the law over the last fifty years through Supreme Court decisions and applicable statutes. Additionally, this course will provide a brief review of criminal procedure to understand the travel of the cases from grand jury to indictment to trial. Following this study, the course will offer an in-depth analysis of the cases including; reading grand jury and trial transcripts, watching trial testimony and available video and reviewing some of the public commentary related to the cases. Finally, the course will examine some Rhode Island cases involving police officers' use of force.

Course Description

The Post Conviction Relief course will provide a broad, but experiential, overview of post-conviction
relief, both in state court (with some exemplary emphasis on Rhode Island case law) and federal court.
Subjects covered will be the various grounds that may -- or may not -- be asserted as a basis for post-
conviction relief, procedural and substantive defenses to post-conviction relief, standards of review
applicable to such actions, higher court review of actions for post-conviction relief, and the competing
societal and other interests that have resulted in the development and evolution of state and federal
provisions governing post-conviction relief.

Course Description

This course will provide a broad introduction to the theory and practice of poverty law. The course will be divided into four parts: (1) an overview of poverty and theories about poverty in the United States; (2) poverty and constitutional doctrine (due process, equal protection and fundamental rights) (3) federal and state government safety net programs (4) and the role of lawyers and the civil justice system in poverty law and policy. Substantive topics will include demographics of poverty in the United States, policy arguments about the causes of poverty, access to justice, welfare reform, food and income programs, health care access, low-wage work, housing, education and child protection.

Course Description

This course taught by Adjunct Professor Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler investigates how social, cultural, economic, and legal factors contribute to racial and socioeconomic health disparities in the U.S. and the role of interprofessional team-based approaches in addressing unmet legal needs as part of health care. The course will include students from the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Rhode Island College Schools of Social Work and Nursing, and Roger Williams Law School. Students will participate in interdisciplinary case studies and problem-solving exercises. Among the topics explored will be: health care system responses to the social determinants of health; poverty, health and the safety net; the role of housing in health; interdisciplinary approaches to family violence; and ethical issues in interprofessional practice.

Course Description

This three-credit seminar addresses the rights of incarcerated persons to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, while also giving students practical litigation skills in cases challenging government abuse of inmates in the prison system. The first three weeks will provide a crash course in the substantive and procedural law that governs prisoners’ civil rights cases. After that, students will be immersed in a simulated case in federal court (based on a real case), which will give them opportunities to hone their skills in assessing potential claims, drafting a complaint, responding to motions, seeking discovery, taking depositions, opposing summary judgment, and conducting oral arguments. The course will involve research, writing, and rewriting that will satisfy the graduation writing requirement.

Course Description

This course introduces students to the various frameworks of law governing the collection, use, access and disclosure of private sector data. Students will learn the Fair Information Practice Principles and the laws and regulations administering these principles by area of sensitive data: identity, medical, financial, education, and sales and marketing. Other topics include state privacy laws and legal limitations on government and court access to private-sector information. This course will also cover information tested for certification as a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP).

Course Description

This course explores tortuous injuries engendered by products, a predominant basis of modern tort litigation. Students will discuss the nature of product defect- manufacturing, design and marketing imperfections–and the various theories of liability–risk/utility and consumer expectation models. Finally, this course will examine contemporary products liability issues including the nature of products and their associated services, as well as the predicted return to a fault-based system of liability.

Course Description

In this course, which will function as part seminar and part workshop, students will explore the relationship between form and content in legal writing and employ the techniques learned to craft high-quality writing samples. Specifically, this course will review the foundational elements of writing—such as grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure—and guide students as they sculpt the structural components of their texts to match the ideas they express. More than an elaborate editing session, this course will also introduce more-sophisticated writing concepts like semiotics, prosody, and classical rhetoric to have students consider and refine not only their writing, but also their thoughts and opinions. Writing and revision will be required for, and likely in, each class but, if done with care, should result in a finely crafted and cohesive professional composition.

Course Description

This course analyzes the responsibility of lawyers and judges from the perspectives of the rules and case law, the profession and the client/consumer. Topics include the historical, political, and sociological bases of legal ethics; conflicts of interests; attorney-client privilege; admission to the bar; disciplinary matters and procedures; unauthorized practice of law; attitudes toward bench and bar; professional liability; and canons of ethics and codes of professional responsibility.