Spring 2013 Course Descriptions
The growing body of international human rights laws, including United Nations activities, regional human rights bodies, women's rights, children's rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, and enforcement of these rights in U.S. courts.
A primer on the impact of the development and use of new technologies on global business and social culture. E-commerce, telecommunications, information technology, government regulation, and social policy have all been brought together by the use of the internet. The revolutionary medium of the internet has required legal practitioners to reassess the applicability of current laws and policies that protect and govern members of the global community. Explores the legal implications of the new global economy, copyright law in cyberspace, e-commerce, privacy, security, trademarks, domain names, tort liability, criminal activity, regulation in cyberspace, speech, and social and ethical issues.
An honors program for students who prepare for and compete in national advocacy. Travel/Registration Fees required. (B) Black Law Students Association; (C) Client Counseling; (D) Hispanic Bar Association; (E) Environmental Law; (H) Native American; (J) Jessup International; (K) International Environmental Law; (M) Intellectual Property; (N) Labor; (O) Other. Repeatable one time. CR/NC only. Pre: selection by competition.ion.
This course covers the employment relationship in all its forms and the legal rights and duties which arise under both common law and statutory sources. In this non-unionized setting the employers’ rules dominate except as may be limited by statutes or common law contract or tort law. A systematic analysis of those rights and duties are discussed within the context of modern human resource management, covering workers first as an applicant through recruitment, then as an employee entitled to certain rights and benefits of employment, and finally in terms of termination. Course materials focus on the practical application of labor and employment law.
Students selected for the Law Review editorial board have responsibility for editorial research, writing, and production of the Law Review published by the School of Law. Repeatable four times. CR/NC only.
This course is an interdisciplinary seminar that explores the pedagogy and theory of teaching law well. Students use the assignments in Legal Practice I and Legal Practice II, respectively, and additional readings to discover and deliver a range of techniques for teaching writing, using writing to teach, and citing authority appropriately. Professor permission required.
Formerly known as Legal Practice II. Updated to Lawyering Fundamentals II in Fall 2015.
Prerequisites/Recommended
This workshop provides a framework for considering client centered counseling and for the development of professionalism, client interviewing, client counseling, problem analysis, and negotiation skills. Each class includes individual or small group exercises in addition to discussion and lecture. Students complete at least one recorded client counseling session.
Study of principles and practices of teaching scholarly legal discourse and appellate advocacy one-to-one, transferring composition theory and linguistics into individualized methods make the legal writing process efficient and the product effective. Instructor approval required. Repeatable one time. (Spring only)
This course examines the interrelationship between the legislative and judicial branches of government in creating and interpreting laws and prepares students to work with complex statutory schemes. In modern times, legislatures have taken a larger role in creating law through the enactment of statutes, and this has resulted in a relative shrinking of purely judge-made common law. As legislatures increasingly play the role of lawmakers, lawyers and judges become more engaged as interpreters of statutes and administrative regulations. But because statutory interpretation sometimes equates to law creation, the respective role of courts and legislatures in the law-making process has become less well defined and more controversial.
This class explores the synergies and tensions between law “making” and law “interpreting” and prepares students to work in a legal environment dominated by statutory and regulatory sources of law. Along the way, it covers the federal and Hawai‘i law-making processes, mechanisms of direct democracy, theories of the legislative process, techniques of legislative and quasi-legislative drafting, theories and doctrines of statutory interpretation, and the many approaches to statutory interpretation employed by lawyers and judges in their roles as advisors, advocates, and decision makers.
Course Learning Objectives
By the end of the course, students should have:
- Gained a basic understanding of the federal and Hawai‘i legislative processes;
- Gained a basic understanding of the leading theories of the legislative process, and of how those theories inform different approaches to statutory interpretation;
- Gained an understanding of the major methods and theories of statutory interpretation, including formalism, purposivism, the new textualism, and legal pragmatism, and be able to deploy these theories in predictive and normative analysis;
- Improved their skills in researching federal and Hawai‘i legislative history;
- Improved their ability to apply statutory interpretation methods and doctrines in legal analysis; and
- Developed basic skills in legislative drafting, and, in the process, reinforce principles of English for Legal Purposes covered in Legal Practice I and II.
This course covers the theory and practice of the law relating to the transfer of rights in information and other intangibles in the context that these transactions occur. In the information economy, society depends heavily on licensing models to get intellectual property into the hands of third parties. This course will give adequate attention to downstream licensing mechanisms such as end user license agreements; but the majority of the course will be spent examining the structure and negotiation of upstream licensing mechanisms in the context of, among other things, product development, multimedia, publicity rights, merchandising, information and databases, university technology transfer, government contracts, litigation, and antitrust.
Prerequisites/Recommended
An honors program for students who prepare for and compete in national advocacy. Travel/Registration Fees required. (B) Black Law Students Association; (C) Client Counseling; (D) Hispanic Bar Association; (E) Environmental Law; (H) Native American; (J) Jessup International; (K) International Environmental Law; (M) Intellectual Property; (N) Labor; (O) Other. Repeatable one time. CR/NC only. Pre: selection by competition.
This course provides students with a direct experience of working on cases in the context of Native Hawaiian rights and issues. Each semester, the clinic focuses on one or two major cases involving issues such as traditional and customary rights, the public lands trust, the Hawaiian Home Lands trust, and water rights. Students will aid attorneys in identifying and researching significant issues, gathering evidence, interviewing clients, and drafting pleadings.
This course offers a study of the Uniform Commercial Code provisions that deal with commercial paper (Article 3), bank collections and deposits (Article 4), funds transfers (Article 4A) and letters of credit (Article 5), as well as material on alternative payment systems, including credit cards, electronic fund transfers and related federal law. Topics include negotiability, the holder-in-due-course doctrine, the demise of the holder-in-due-course doctrine in consumer transactions, allocation of risk for forgery and fraud, the bank-customer relationship, letters of credit, unauthorized use of credit cards, and risk of loss in funds transfers.
Lawyers negotiate settlements in almost all their cases. This class presents a "hands-on," skill-building approach to the newest ideas, as well as centuries-old techniques, about the skill lawyers will use most often in their private practice- negotiation. The class also examines the rapidly developing field of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), including mediation, facilitation, arbitration, and court-annexed ADR. (Cross-listed as CEE 614)
Examines the meaning, scope, and role of non-profit organizations in contemporary society, and focuses on selected non-tax laws and primary tax issues relevant to non-profits. Law students only. Recommended: 531 and 567. (Once a year)
Prerequisites/Recommended
This class starts from a central tenet of American Constitutionalism – a government by the people – asks under what conditions people become active, self-governing agents. This course considers the relationship between jurisprudence and action. It incorporates the key questions of legal theory – what is justice, and what the relationship between law and justice is – with social change practice.
An honors program for students who prepare for and compete in national advocacy. Travel/Registration Fees required. (B) Black Law Students Association; (C) Client Counseling; (D) Hispanic Bar Association; (E) Environmental Law; (H) Native American; (J) Jessup International; (K) International Environmental Law; (M) Intellectual Property; (N) Labor; (O) Other. Repeatable one time. CR/NC only. Pre: selection by competition.
This course is designed to teach the theory and practice of civil pretrial litigation skills and focuses on pleadings, discovery, pretrial motions, case evaluation and resolution strategies, including alternative dispute resolution. The course is graded on a credit/no credit basis.
This class teaches litigation skills through the prosecution of real, minor criminal cases and the simulation of a major civil trial. After about three weeks of classroom discussions and simulations, students prosecute real traffic and misdemeanor cases for the Prosecuting Attorney's Office. The classroom component meets throughout the semester and is designed to meet the needs of students interested in both civil and criminal litigation. Courtroom work is supervised by Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys. Simulated cases are critiqued by the faculty and practicing lawyers. The course can be taken as a 2, 3 or 4 credit class. The 2 and 3-credit options have fewer court appearances and class meetings, and does not include the mock civil trial which uses expert witnesses. Co-requisite: Evidence (LAW 543).
Prerequisites/Recommended
U.S. cases and legal theory emphasizing law in the social construction of racial categories, shifts in race-based anti-discrimination law, and the interaction of culture and law in judicial decision-making.
This course deals with the purchase and development of commercial real estate. Mortgage financing is at its core, since purchase, construction and take-out financing, as well as mortgage securitization, are lawyer-intensive aspects of real estate development. The course also focuses on issues concerning the development and management of subdivisions, condominiums, timeshares and shopping centers, with some discussion of hotels and resorts as well. Hawaii's experience with ground leasing is considered. The course goal is to prepare new lawyers to begin practice with law firms, lenders and developers active in commercial real estate.
This course is the foundation of all further study relating to land, its ownership, development, and regulation. As such, emphasis is on the theory underlying concepts of property and tenure. While elements of personal property are summarized, emphasis is on real property. Subjects covered include estates in land, future interests, concurrent ownership, eminent domain, covenants, easements, licenses, public land use controls, air rights, water rights, and adverse possession.
All students are required to take a LAW 530 seminar for which they must write a substantial paper of publishable quality. This seminar is taken during the spring semester of a student’s second year. Seminar offerings will be announced early in the fall for the spring semester. Seminar placement is by lottery. Prior topics have included Torts, Environmental Law, Property, Jurisprudence, Antitrust, Intellectual Property, Legal History, Constitutional Law, Japanese Law, Native Hawaiian Rights and U.S. and Asian labor and employment.
This course is about getting paid. Lenders may reduce the risk of non-payment by obtaining an interest in the borrowers’ property as collateral to secure repayment. The course introduces students to the Uniform Commercial Code and examines the creation, perfection, priority, and enforcement of security interests in personal property under UCC Article 9.
Torts cover the statutory and common law of negligence, causation, defenses, damages, strict liability, intentional torts and tort policy and reform, with emphasis on national and Hawai'i law. (Spring only)
With the assistance of members of the Hawai‘i trial bar, students examine sequential stages of pre-trial and trial practice in a problem setting. Topics include investigation, pleadings, motions, discovery, voir dire examination, opening statements, direct and cross examination, closing argument, selected evidentiary problems, post-trial motions, and appellate practice. Students engage in simulated exercises and their work is critiqued. The course is graded on a credit/no credit basis. Pre: Evidence (LAW 543).
Prerequisites/Recommended
This course revolves around the gratuitous transfer of wealth, beginning with underlying philosophical tensions and broad societal concerns, and then focusing on “who gets it when you go,” including the legal requirements for wills, revocable trusts and other will substitutes, and what happens in the absence of such a document. Also considered are statutory protections for a decedent’s surviving family members and an array of other related topics, such as powers of appointment, incapacity planning, charitable giving, asset-protection planning, tax planning, and fiduciary responsibility. Local stories are used to illustrate the impact of trust and estate laws on the lives of real people.