This course is an introduction to the structure of the U.S. Constitution and the rights and liberties it defines. Topics include judicial review, federalism, separation of powers, and equal protection and due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Extensive coverage is devoted to individual rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Teaching
This course is an introduction to the legal doctrines and policies that regulate family and other intimate relationships. The course will examine marriage, alternatives to marriage (common law marriage, civil unions, cohabitation, singleness, and nonrecognition of legal relatedness), parenthood, divorce, child custody, property division, alimony, and child support. Substantial coverage is devoted to constitutional doctrines, such as the right to privacy in sex, reproduction, and raising children; the right to marry; and the problem of equality.
This course is about the criminal adjudication process “from bail to jail.“ We will focus on constitutional and policy issues surrounding the criminal process, including topics such as charging, counsel, prosecutorial discretion, plea bargaining, the jury, and sentencing. We will also address distributional consequences including racial and class impacts.
This course considers doctrinal principles and theories of substantive criminal law, including criminal responsibility, the significance of act, intent, causation and result, justification and excuse, and the rationales of punishment. We study illustrative crimes with particular attention to homicide and sex offenses. Other subjects include attempt, complicity, conspiracy, and prosecutorial and sentencing discretion. Throughout, we explore distributional effects of criminal law doctrine.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 makes it unlawful for a school receiving federal funds to discriminate “on the basis of sex.” This reading group will explore how we got from that federal anti-discrimination law to the legal interpretations, practices, and culture that currently regulate sexual activity on campuses. Considering current debates and controversies surrounding this legal regime, we will read legislation, cases, administrative materials, campus policies, and articles. Topics include student discipline for sexual misconduct, relation to the criminal law of sexual assault, prevention and education programs on sex and sexual violence, and effect on the educational environment.
This experiential course meets January 3 to 13, and is co-taught by Prof. Jeannie Suk Gersen and Nana Sarian, General Counsel of Stella McCartney. The course will consist of interactive workshops featuring case studies on fashion law. Students will put themselves in the shoes of a lawyer advising a brand, working in small groups to tackle real legal challenges and scenarios faced by in-house fashion counsels on a daily basis from the office and atelier to the runway, with a particular focus on legal analysis and problem solving. Topics will range from intellectual property, franchise law, real estate, commercial law (including commercial arrangements to license the IP of a brand to third parties for the manufacture and sale of products which traditionally are not produced in-house by a brand (e.g. fragrance, sportswear), contracts for sale (to wholesale and retail customers) as well as the laws relevant to fashion shows/presentations (covering matters as broad as design rights and labour law) and supply chains (with a focus on sustainability in fashion).
What is the relation between performance and law? This course, co-taught by Jeannie Suk Gersen and Damian Woetzel, Director of the Vail Dance Festival and former Principal Dancer of the New York City Ballet, explores how law shapes performance and is in turn structured by performance. The course can be divided into three interrelated subjects. First is the question, what is performance? What is the relation between text and performance? What about between performance and ordinary life? How do the concept, phenomenon, and theory of performance play out in art, life, and law? Second is the law of performance, that is, how the law treats performance as a subject. What is the role of government in shaping artistic performance? How may lawyers have careers that draw them into engagement with the performing arts? Third is law as performance. How are law, legal texts, and legal practice forms of performance? How is performance central to the work lawyers do, or to how the public experiences law? How does legal performance relate to performance in art and in life?