Courses

    This course examines what can happen in a civil lawsuit. It asks: What kinds of courts exist in the United States? What limits does the law impose on where cases can be brought? Who can sue? What remedies can a court impose? What choices do the parties have about who else participates in the lawsuit? How much information about the lawsuit must each side disclose in the initial pleadings, or at other times before trial? What opportunities are there for resolving disputes without trials? In trials, what are the respective roles of judges and juries? What are the tensions between a lawyer's duty to a client and the lawyer's duty to the system of justice? Who should make the procedural rules for lawsuits, and how, if at all, should those rules be changed? Like other first-year courses, this course also seeks to help students build important legal skills. It provides practice in reading with care the statutes, rules and cases that express the law; analogizing and distinguishing precedent; applying legal theories to new facts; expressing arguments with precision; appreciating the ethical as well as the intellectual and strategic dimensions of a legal problem; and thinking critically about the rules of a legal system even while learning to operate within those rules.