Comments on: Unusual Law School Classes

By: nyujew

nyujew — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 22:25:38 +0000

Sexuality, Voice, and Resistance: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Neurobiology and Politics

http://its.law.nyu.edu/StudentCourseInfo.cfm?

STAGE=2&CourseId=3451

Course Description: The seminar examines the central place of sexual voice in resistance to basic injustices like anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and homophobia. Our study asks why the repression of sexual voice (whether in celibacy or Puritanism) is often required by such injustices, and how questioning such repression energizes movements of resistance. Our interdisciplinary approach includes political philosophy, psychoanalysis, and neurobiology in understanding the body, voice, resonance, and truth in various historical and contemporary liberation movements. The seminar includes in its pedagogy experiments in freeing creative voice through multiple short papers each week, and theater exercises, including writing and staging plays with other students.

By: Jeremy A. Blumenthal

Jeremy A. Blumenthal — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 19:34:43 +0000

Digression – “Thinking about Thinking” was with Alan, SJG, and Robert Nozick (not Rawls, which also would have been fascinating). VERY entertaining course, though lectures often were often more about the interplay among the profs than about the substance.

By: Paul Secunda

Paul Secunda — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:29:22 +0000

To follow up on Orin’s earlier comment, if memory serves right, Dershowitz taught “Thinking about Thinking” along with Stephen Jay Gould and John Rawls. It was a big hit with freshman at Harvard in the ‘89-’90 cycle as part of the core curriculum.

By: Concurring Opinions

Concurring Opinions — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 06:50:34 +0000

Unusual Law School Classes: Quiz Answer Key

If you attempted to take the quiz I set out in my post earlier this week about unusual law school classes, I just posted the answer key in the comments to the post. Please continue to submit comments about your…

By: Daniel J. Solove

Daniel J. Solove — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 06:45:33 +0000

ANSWER KEY

1. Art, Love, and Power: A Philosophy of American Law

(a) Jan Deutsch and J.L. Pottenger, Jr.

2. Bearing Witness

(f) Harlon Dalton

3. The Law and Economics of Art and Mortality

(e) Henry Hansmann

4. Modernity

(k) Paul Kahn and Anthony Kronman

5. Tragic Choices

(b) Guido Calabresi

6. Is Constitutional Law Law?

(h) Jan Deutsch

7. Law and Grace

8. Law, Secrets, and Lying

(j) Stephen Carter

9. Law and the Human Subject

(f) Harlon Dalton

10. Public Life in the Modern World

(l) Owen Fiss and Anthony Kronman

I took courses 5 and 7. Both were great.

By: Michael Lewyn

Michael Lewyn — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 06:12:04 +0000

Last year, I taught a course on “The Law of Sprawl”; I’m actually writing an article about the course.

By: Alfred Brophy

Alfred Brophy — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 01:39:57 +0000

Well, the historian in me leads me to another question: when did unusal law classes enter the legal academy? Even during the period of my primary interest–the years before the Civil War–some lectures would be considered by some of posters here as unusual. David Hoffman’s 1823 Lectures at the University of Maryland were pretty strange by standards of his contemporaries. (Maybe that’s why they weren’t popular.) And so were James Wilson’s 1791 lectures for that matter. Come to think of it, the introduction to book one of Blackstone’s Commentaries looks pretty strange to people concerned solely with the practice of law in the eighteenth century.

But I’m guessing that a law school catalog from the 1950s don’t have courses like Bloodfueds. So the modern origins of the unusual courses are the late 1960s? Didn’t Borris Bitker teach a course in reparations at Yale in the early 1970s? Of course, going back to Solove’s first post, perhaps an interesting question is when did courses begin to be organized around a common object (like wine). Weren’t there courses in railroad law at the beginning of the twentieth century? I thought so, though perhaps I’m just confusing railroad law treatises with courses in railroad law.

By: Crescat Sententia

Crescat Sententia — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 18:01:21 +0000

Law and basket-weaving

Dan Solove has a post recounting the amusinc course offerings from his days here at Yale. I confess that I cannot sort out which professors match which courses, in part because it is just too easy to envision so many…

By: Crescat Sententia

Crescat Sententia — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 18:01:05 +0000

Law and basket-weaving

By: The Fried Man

The Fried Man — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 06:26:33 +0000

In a self-referential meta stroke of brilliance, a Yale Law barrister’s union trial focused on fictional events that took place in a fictional course called “Law and the Law.” Anear Afar was the fictional professor, and strongly resembled Akhil Amar.

By: Rick

Rick — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 05:40:08 +0000

I took a course at Yale — a wonderful course — called “Administering Death”, taught by Bo Burt.

By: gulcalum

gulcalum — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:06:50 +0000

cross-posted from Volokh Conspiracy:

When I was at Georgetown, I took a class with Prof. Neal Katyal called “Clinton.” We studied Morrison v. Olson and the ICA, the secret service privilege case, Clinton v. Jones, the government attorney client privilege case, the Swidler Berlin case (Sup Ct case involving whether Vince Foster’s attorney-client privilege survived him), impeachment issues, etc, etc. Guest speakers included Ken Starr, Bob Bennett, Asa Hutchinson, and Monica Lewinsky, though not, for some reason, the course’s namesake. This was, as I recall, fall semester 1999. Truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

By: TRG

TRG — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 23:53:49 +0000

Course description for “Bloodfeuds”

http://cgi2.www.law.umich.edu/_ClassSchedule/aboutCourse.asp?crse_id=030026

Course description for “Faking It”

http://cgi2.www.law.umich.edu/_ClassSchedule/aboutCourse.asp?crse_id=039135

Course description for “Eye for an Eye”

http://cgi2.www.law.umich.edu/_ClassSchedule/aboutCourse.asp?crse_id=040509

By: TRG

TRG — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 23:51:07 +0000

Course description for “Bloodfeuds”

http://cgi2.www.law.umich.edu/_ClassSchedule/aboutCourse.asp?crse_id=030026

Course description for “Faking It”

http://cgi2.www.law.umich.edu/_ClassSchedule/aboutCourse.asp?crse_id=039135

Course description for “Eye for an Eye”

http://cgi2.www.law.umich.edu/_ClassSchedule/aboutCourse.asp?crse_id=040509

By: Paul Gowder

Paul Gowder — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 23:50:30 +0000

Nate: hah! I can top that. I took a class supposedly about economic analysis… of law!

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 23:47:39 +0000

When I was in law school I took a course that was called “Property” (apparently not required at YLS) that I thought was pretty strange.

We essentially studied the genesis and evolution of a bunch of rules related to the regulation of feudal society and then tried to apply them to modern situations. There were all of these strange epicycles like the Rule in Shelly’s Case (a real name) and stuff about perpetuities. It was a fun intellectual endeavor as a matter of historical and antiquarian interest, but I didn’t think that it really had any contemporary applications.

By: Avery Katz

Avery Katz — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 23:09:59 +0000

Here at Columbia Law School, we have a popular course called “Deals,” taught by Ron Gilson and Victor Goldberg.

By: Daniel J. Solove

Daniel J. Solove — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 22:39:22 +0000

Thanks for the comments so far. I might gather together some of my favorites from your comments in a post later on. Also, I'll post the answers to the quiz later this week. So please keep submitting courses and course descriptions. And if anybody can track down the description for the YLS course called "Law" by Prof. Dalton, it would be greatly appreciated.

By: Laura I Appleman

Laura I Appleman — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 22:36:23 +0000

Let’s not forget the classic YLS course, “Procreation and the Law of Family,” taught by Dr. Jay Katz, all about reproductive technology. A fantastic course that had the extra added benefit of shocking various law firm partners & judges during interviews. Truly, the pained look on their faces when they asked if I really had taken a course about sex in my first year of law school was just priceless.

By: Paul Gowder

Paul Gowder — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 22:29:49 +0000

My favorite unusual law school courses were actually normal-sounding classes with totally abnormal treatments of the subject matter. Charlie Nesson’s Evidence, of course, is King of this genre (and I learned much more there than one would learn in a traditional evidence class). David Rosenberg’s Federal Litigation class traditionally bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the description in the catalog or to anything else… but possibly the best course title I’ve ever seen in the HLS catalog is “Beyond Biology.” “Law, Psychology and Morality: An Exploration Through Film,” is a close second. It appears that today there’s a “Power, Beauty, Sex and Violence” reading group…