M.S.L. Courses
Master of Studies in Law students have the opportunity to take a wide range of course at the law school.
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Course Description
This course provide an introduction to the law of liability for civil wrongs. Topics include intentional torts, negligence, strict liability, nuisance and damages.
Course Type
Core CourseCourse Credits
3.0Course Degree
Juris DoctorMaster of Studies in LawCourse Description
This course provides an introduction to the law of liability for civil wrongs. Topics include intentional torts, negligence, strict liability, nuisance and damages.
Course Type
Core CourseCourse Credits
2.0Course Degree
Juris DoctorMaster of Studies in LawPrerequisite
LAW.616 – Torts ICourse Description
This course teaches all of the foundational skills of transactional lawyering, from advising and counseling business clients to the highest professional and ethical standards, to analyzing and drafting contracts to reflect the parties’ deal, objectives, and concerns. Students learn to understand a transaction through both its legal and business issues. In learning the process of drafting a contract, students learn to understand a client’s deal and then translate the deal into contract concepts that become the building blocks of the contract. Through exercises, simulations, and projects, students then learn to draft clear, careful, unambiguous provisions in a well-organized, readable, complete contract. Students learn how to add value to the contracted deal by drafting language or structuring the deal so that it shifts the risk levels for each party. Students also learn the art of analyzing, reviewing and commenting on drafted contracts using current practices and technologies. The class involves group exercises, simulations, and role play, as well as lecture. The type of contracts covered are relevant to most transactional law practices.
Course Type
ElectiveCourse Credits
3.0Course Degree
Juris DoctorMaster of Studies in LawCourse Description
The trial advocacy course employs a learning-by-doing approach. Thus, most of the course will involve the practice of trial skills including direct and cross examination, opening statements, closing arguments, and jury selection, in a simulated courtroom environment. During the last two weeks of the course, each student will participate as co-counsel in a full-length simulated civil or criminal trial with a sitting Rhode Island judge or professor presiding.
Evidence is a prerequisite but may be taken concurrently with the permission of the Trial Advocacy instructor.
Course Type
ElectiveCourse Credits
3.0Course Degree
Juris DoctorMaster of Studies in LawPrerequisite
LAW.645 – EvidenceW
Course Description
Water is our most valuable resource, and as the 21st Century continues, struggles regarding its management and use will become even more prominent as the climate changes and populations grow. This course explores legal schemes for securing, allocating, and managing water rights for public and private uses, and will address both fresh surface and ground water resources. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the riparian and prior appropriation doctrines; common law, state and federal statutory schemes and regulations for managing water use; and mechanisms for transboundary and interstate allocation of water. We will also consider social policy, history, and the value (economic, social cultural, etc.) of water, as well as the science of hydrology and hydrogeology, as a basis for water law and for understanding overall water resources management and regulations
Course Type
SeminarCourse Credits
2.0Course Degree
Juris DoctorMaster of Studies in LawThis Course Meets for Six Weeks
Course Description
This course will use the collection of essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates, “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy” to discuss the election of the first African American president and the political response to his presidency. Mr. Coates explores the echoes of the earlier post-Civil War Reconstruction era in American history in the response to the Obama presidency and its aftermath.
Course Type
SeminarCourse Credits
1.0Course Degree
Juris DoctorMaster of Studies in LawFaculty Associated
Diana J. HasselCourse Description
This seminar deals with policy, doctrine and jurisprudence implicated by corporate and other business entities' criminality. The course will cover the criminal liability of business entities and their officers, involving the study of federal criminal statutes used to prosecute corporate and white collar crime, including mail & wire fraud, conspiracy, racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations (RICO), anti-trust, securities and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Course Type
SeminarCourse Credits
2.0Course Degree
Juris DoctorMaster of Studies in LawFaculty Associated
Susan Schwab HeymanCourse Description
This course is intended to prepare a student to advise clients about ordering their personal and financial affairs to more effectively provide for themselves and the people about whom they care. Various dispositive mechanisms inter vivos testamentary and in trust, will be covered, as well as devices to appoint health care and financial proxies. The course will also address the ethical and professional responsibilities of lawyers representing clients in this area.
Course Type
ElectiveCourse Credits
3.0Course Degree
Juris DoctorMaster of Studies in LawFaculty Associated
Akilah N. FolamiCourse Description
This course will consider and evaluate benefit delivery systems for those who suffer work related injuries. Class discussion will trace the evolution of the law from common law tort system and the use of the affirmative defenses to bar most claims to the development of benefit systems which do not utilize fault as a liability measure. The structure of the benefit system will be evaluated and distinctions considered between the various state systems as well as the federal longshore and harbor workers compensation act.
Course Type
ElectiveCourse Credits
2.0Course Degree
Juris DoctorMaster of Studies in LawCourse Types
We have classified RWU Law classes under the following headers. One of the following course types will be attached to each course which will allow students to narrow down their search while looking for classes.
Core Course
Students in the first and second year are required to take classes covering the following aspects of the law—contracts, torts, property, criminal law, civil procedure, and constitutional law, evidence, and professional responsibility. Along with these aspects, the core curriculum will develop legal reasoning skills.
Elective
After finishing the core curriculum the remaining coursework toward the degree is completed through upper level elective courses. Students can choose courses that peak their interests or courses that go along with the track they are following.
Seminar
Seminars are classes where teachers and small groups of students focus on a specific topic and the students complete a substantial research paper.
Clinics/Externships
Inhouse Clinics and Clinical Externships legal education is law school training in which students participate in client representation under the supervision of a practicing attorney or law professor. RWU Law's Clinical Programs offer unique and effective learning opportunities and the opportunity for practical experience while still in law school.