Some Wine With Your Law? A Law School Course in Wine
posted by Daniel Solove
Boalt Hall (Berkeley Law School) is offering a course about wine law, accompanied by extensive wine tasting:
Most students at Boalt Hall School of Law learn by reading class materials and listening to lectures.
But in Room 110, the lessons are sipped.
Glasses of pinot noir are part of Boalt Hall’s first ever wine law class, where students are learning the legal complexities of the wine industry. Lessons include tasting wines to examine the significance and differences between wine appellations, which have become a thorny legal issue.
If any student thought a class involving wine tasting would be a cakewalk, they were disappointed.
“It’s substantive. It’s hard,” said Mano Sheik, a third-year Boalt Hall law student. “We’re not just drinking wine.”
And that’s the point, according to the class’ instructor, Richard Mendelson. The Napa attorney, who has both worked in and concentrated his practice on the wine industry, said the law surrounding it is rife with issues involving the 21st Amendment, intellectual property, land use planning and international trade.
Perhaps Professor Bainbridge will soon be offering such a course at UCLA.
October 23, 2005 at 12:01 am
Posted in: Law School
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Responses (7)
Michael Froomkin - October 23, 2005 at 2:05 pm
U.Miami has been teaching wine law for *years*:
224 A ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE LAW
STEPHEN DIAMOND
The manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages are heavily regulated and have at times been prohibited. By the term of Repeal, states have authority vis-a-vis alcoholic beverages that they do not have over ordinary commercial enterprises. This course looks at evolving federal-state jurisdiction over alcoholic beverages and at the varied state alcoholic beverage regimes. Regulation of manufacture, distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages will be examined. The history of these subjects will be included, since the shadow of prohibition still looms over them.
Ann Bartow - October 23, 2005 at 7:13 pm
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/002274.html
Daniel J. Solove - October 23, 2005 at 7:26 pm
Who would have thought there’d be so many wine law courses? I do hope that they all come with wine tastings. And I wonder whether there might even be a casebook to accompany a case of wine.
Concurring Opinions - October 25, 2005 at 10:09 am
Unusual Law School Classes
I recently posted about a law school course about wine, only to discover that it’s not all that unusual. That got me thinking fondly of my days in law school, where there were many unusual courses – probably due to…
Professor Bainbridge on Wine - October 25, 2005 at 2:39 pm
A Course Proposal
Law professor and blawgger Dan Solove recently posted this observation:Boalt Hall (Berkeley Law School) is offering a course about wine law, accompanied by extensive wine tasting:Most students at Boalt Hall School of Law learn by reading class material…
ProfessorBainbridge.com - October 30, 2005 at 2:45 pm
Would that it were so
Law professor and blawgger Dan Solove recently posted this observation:Boalt Hall (Berkeley Law School) is offering a course about wine law, accompanied by extensive wine tasting:Most students at Boalt Hall School of Law learn by reading class material…
Below The Beltway - October 30, 2005 at 4:11 pm
The One Class I Never Would Have Missed
Professor Bainbridge links to this article at Concurring Opinions about a course in Wine Law being offered at the Law School at UC-Berkeley.
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