LAWS 5521 The United States Legal System

This course is required of LL.M. students who do not hold a U.S. J.D. degree. The course has several objectives: exposing students to fundamental concepts underlying the U.S. legal system, providing survival skills for the LL.M. year, exposing students to key doctrinal areas, and offering a frame of reference for comparing the U.S. legal system with students' own. The course is divided into three units: (a) an overview of our basic legal institutions, including the adversary system, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights; (b) a case study in product liability law, as both substantive exposure to private law and an exercise in identifying and manipulating legal doctrine; and (c) an examination of how the structure of the legal profession and different modes of lawyering contribute to the functioning of the U.S. legal system as a whole.