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This course examines gratuitous transfers by trusts, wills, and intestate succession; execution and revocation of wills; will substitutes; administration of estates; family survivors' rights; the nature of trusts and fiduciary relationships; powers of appointment; and future interests.
Prerequisite: Property.
National Security Law
Lawyers always have been deeply involved in the formulation and implementation of United States foreign and national defense policy. This course addresses a variety of domestic, constitutional, and international law issues illustrating this fact. We will examine authority for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, intelligence gathering at home and abroad, detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects, planning for the next terrorist attack, protection of sensitive government information, and much more. We can also expect to deal with new developments that are bound to arise during the term.
Satisfies perspective requirement.
Property
An introduction to the concept of ownership and its legal implications: rights to control, enjoy, and transfer real and personal property, including public and private restrictions on use; estates in land; concurrent ownership; adverse possession; easements and licenses; and landlords and tenants.
Secrecy and Democracy
This seminar explores the role of secrecy in a representative democratic government. For practical reasons of personal and business privacy, as well as national security, the government must safeguard some information it holds. But in the process, democratic ideals of transparency and accountability are necessarily compromised. Here we consider, inter alia, a variety of statutes, such as the Freedom of Information Act, along with common law and constitutional principles, that seek a proper balance between openness and secrecy. We review the effect of secrecy on public participation in government decision making, for example in licensing nuclear power plants and in emergency planning for chemical factories. We also examine the use of sensitive information in civil litigation, as in suits growing out of the NSA warrantless wiretap program, and in criminal prosecutions such as the Zacharias Moussaoui case. In addition, we look at efforts by Congress to obtain information from the executive branch, for example regarding intelligence leading up to the Iraq War, government measures to prevent or punish unauthorized disclosures through Espionage Act prosecutions, and the role of the media in American society, analyzing the iconic Pentagon Papers Case. Our agenda will be flexible and opportunistic, in order to pursue developments in the news during the term. There will be no overlap in coverage between this seminar and the course in National Security Law.
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