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(Formerly Law 251) Instances are common in law where more than one legal authority potentially governs a particular event, occurrence or transaction. When the outcome required by these authorities differs, which law governs? Beginning with the classic problem of choosing an applicable law in cases with facts touching more than one jurisdiction, this course is designed broadly to explore the variety of theories and systems used to resolve this question. The course thus uses state/state conflicts to develop a set of approaches and then extends these to such other problems as adjudicatory jurisdiction, judgments, federal subject-matter jurisdiction, and public and private international law. Elements used in grading: Attendance, preparation, participation and final examination.

Arbitration, once narrowly defined as a party-selected method for resolving contract-based disputes arising out of commercial transactions, is now ubiquitous. In the U.S. in addition to resolving run-of the-mill commercial disputes, arbitration may be used to resolve claims invoking anti-trust, securities, and civil rights law, and consumers, employees, patients and other individual claimants may be held to arbitration provisions included in form contracts drafted by corporations that the individuals overlooked or barely understood. Businesses too may find themselves held to an arbitration clause hastily chosen by a transactional lawyer who didn't understand what she was committing her client to. Economic globalization has created increased demand for international commercial arbitration, which offers binding resolution of trans-national business disputes, enforceable in virtually every court in the world. The increased frequency of complex high-value international transactions involving key industries -- e.g. energy and telecommunications -- has led to an increasing fraction of transnational business disputes with a significant public policy dimension. Moreover, the desires of countries with less developed economies to attract foreign direct investment has led to the creation of a specialized form of arbitration for disputes between private investors and states. Often bundled with other forms of alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") such as mediation, arbitration is actually a rule-defined adjudicative procedure, in which parties submit their disputes to privately-chosen and privately-paid decision-makers who deliver binding (and usually unappealable) outcomes, often in closed proceedings. The law that governs arbitration is a mix of domestic statutes (e.g., in the U.S., the Federal Arbitration Act) and international conventions (e.g., the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States ("ICSID")) that have been entered into by a large majority of countries. Today, arbitration offers a challenging and lucrative practice area to lawyers representing corporations in multiple industries, in domestic and international contexts, and to lawyers serving as arbitrators, who often command high hourly rates. Understanding the differences and similarities among arbitration law and practice in multiple domains and the intersection of public and private law is valuable to lawyers who specialize in arbitration. This seminar is intended for students who wish to develop this capacity as well as for students who want to understand better how to draft business contracts that will protect their clients should they find themselves subject to arbitration. Although arbitration is well-accepted around the world, certain applications of arbitration have become increasingly controversial. In the U.S. the requirement that employees agree to arbitrate sexual harassment claims as a condition of employment has led to boycotts against "big law" firms. Requirements to arbitrate disputes between private investors and national governments have knocked high-profile multi-lateral trade negotiations off-track. Some business decision-makers are turning away from arbitration for "ordinary" commercial disputes, arguing that it has become as expensive and time-consuming as court adjudication, without the protections of the latter. In this course we will consider separately and together, the statutes that provide the legal framework for arbitration, the specific rules that govern different types of arbitration, the ongoing controversies evoked by some of these rules and their application, and the reforms that have been proposed in response to these controversies. We will read and discuss U.S. case law, international arbitration decisions, academic commentary and empirical analyses of arbitration use and consequences, and hear from leading arbitration practitioners. Students will select aspects of arbitration law or practice or the controversies that surround it and write research papers on their topic of interest. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation, Final Paper. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available at https://law.stanford.edu/education/courses/consent-of-instructor-forms/. See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

This advanced course in structural constitutional law builds on concepts, doctrines, and themes developed in Federal Courts. Modern doctrines attempting to reconcile federalism, the supremacy of federal law, separation of powers, and the specific jurisdictional limitations of Article III judicial power raise complex questions about the nature and scope of judicial review, remedies, the adversary system, and alternatives to adjudication, among other subjects. This course is designed to allow students to deepen their expertise and explore discrete topics in a tutorial-style format with the instructor. Individual topics will be selected on the basis of student interest in consultation with the instructor, appropriate reading will be selected for analysis and discussion (generally by using a canonical or innovative text as a springboard), and students will be guided in the development of novel doctrines, theories, and practical solutions to some of the most vexing issues in the field. Evaluation will be based on participation in mentored research and tutorial engagement as well as the creativity, prose quality, and persuasiveness of the paper. Students may take the course for 1-3 units. The paper requirement is 10-12 pages for each unit. Student electing 2 or 3 units should enroll in Section 02 (which can count for R-credit). Class sessions to be scheduled in harmony with students' other course commitments. Elements used in grading: Written Assignments, Final Paper. Prerequisite: Federal Courts. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available on the SLS website (Click Courses at the bottom of the homepage and then click Consent of Instructor Forms). See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

Although easy to lose sight of in the midst of the Coronvirus epidemic, the United States is in the midst of an opioid addiction epidemic. More than 10 million Americans 12 years and older are estimated to have misused opioids in 2018, most of which misuse was linked to prescription drugs. Approximately 47,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses in that year. Opioid use is reported to have peaked in 2011 but opioid addiction remains a problem in many parts of the country (CNN Editorial Research, "Opioid Crisis Fast Facts," June 21, 2020, available at https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/health/opioid-crisis-fast-facts/index.html). The opioid crisis presents a variety of public policy challenges. Like the Crack epidemic of the 1980s, opioid misuse has had disproportionate effects on certain communities. While the former disproportionately affected poor Black urban communities and other urban communities of color, the latter has primarily affected poor White communities, particularly in non-coastal areas of the country. The former was met with popular criticism of its victims and draconian criminal justice policies that incarcerated a generation of Black Americans and other people of color. The latter has been met with an outpouring of concerned media commentary, and funding (however insufficient) for public treatment programs. It is difficult not to conclude that systemic engrained racism explains much of this difference. The opioid crisis also differs from the crack crisis, however, in that opioid victims and their advocates have been able to target responsible parties and attempt to hold them accountable for the harm and losses their conduct has imposed on addicts, their families and their communities. It is widely agreed that the origin of the epidemic was the virtually unlimited distribution of prescription opioid drugs, allegedly encouraged by the drug manufacturers and enabled by other corporations in the pharmaceutical supply chain and by the physicians who prescribed the drugs. The opioid epidemic has also led to a wide-ranging litigation, which has taken as its role model earlier litigation against tobacco manufacturers and ongoing litigation against gun manufacturers. The opioid litigation stands as an example of joining private and public civil litigation to claim compensation for losses due to alleged wrongdoing by private corporations and in the process reshape public policy with regard to harm. To prevail against defendants, plaintiffs have had to persuade courts to apply liability doctrine in unusual although not entirely new ways. Much of the litigation resulting from opioid overdoses and addiction has been contested in the federal courts, which have deployed an armamentarium of formal and informal procedural rules and practices developed over the past several decades to manage and resolve large-scale litigation. Innovative approaches have been adopted by the federal judge assigned to manage the litigation. Key defendants have chosen to manage their liability by seeking the protection of the bankruptcy courts. In sum, the opioid litigation offers opportunities to consider the roles of socio-economic inequality and racial attitudes in shaping perceptions of harm, the potential of tort law to provide remedies for losses, and the challenge of pursuing remedies for mass loss in federal courts. Through readings, guest lectures, discussion and individual research papers on relevant topics of your choice, this seminar will provide both practical information about litigating mass tort claims and space to consider the appropriate role of courts in solving social policy problems. Attendance, Class Participation, Written Assignments, Final Paper.

Sponsored by Professors George Fisher and David Sklansky, this one-credit, one-month seminar is the creation of its two primary instructors, Professors Joan Picó i Junoy and Juan Antonio Andino López, both of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Professors Picó and Andino aim to enable students to compare the evidence principles of the common law, as practiced in the U.S. and U.K. and some British Commonwealth Countries, with the civil law evidence principles embraced in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The course will benefit students who someday may take part in transnational litigation or business transactions or will engage in cross-cultural research. After a brief historical review of the development of these two procedural traditions, our focus will shift to an overview of civil law evidentiary principles with emphasis on the roles of the judge and parties in preparing the evidence. Then we take up a comparison of rules governing character evidence, witness competency, hearsay, and scientific evidence, as well as evidentiary privileges and standards and burdens of proof. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation, Final Paper. Class meets Tuesdays, 6:30PM - 8:30PM, April 5, 12, 19 (6:30PM - 9:30PM), and 26.

When you first encounter civil procedure in your 1L fall quarter, it may seem dry and technical. If you take advanced procedure or complex litigation or do a summer clerkship in litigation, you will move on to considering the more interesting strategic use of procedural rules. But, with so much to learn so fast there often isn't time to talk about the political economy dimension of the rules. Moreover, for reasons we will discuss in this seminar, the rules are conventionally presented as neutral, notwithstanding the fact that they determine who gets access to court, for what types of claims, and with what sorts of potential outcomes. In fact, the civil procedure rules have huge distributional consequences: some sorts of claims and claimants are advantaged and some are disadvantaged by them. Not surprisingly, then, the rule drafting process is dominated by interest group politics and in recent decades, key U.S. Supreme Court decisions interpreting civil procedure rules have been shaped by the justices' ideological preferences. At the same time, the procedural rules affect the efficiency of the litigation process: how fast disputes are resolved and at what cost, which are important to litigants on both sides of the v. Hence, there are non-ideological as well as ideological rationales for certain rules and rule interpretations. In this seminar, we will consider the distributional consequences of the rules that shape the key stages of the civil litigation process, focusing on the pretrial stage at which most civil disputes are resolved. We will read key rules, selected court decisions interpreting their application, and commentary on interpretation (some empirically grounded), focusing on political economy perspectives. Where source materials exist, we will discuss interest group lobbying for and against rule changes and who won and lost these interest group competitions. I also hope to have a few guest speakers who have been "on the ground" as these efforts took place join us to share their observations. Our topics will include the composition of and appointment to the Civil Rules Advisory Committee, pleading rules, enforcement of mandatory pre-dispute arbitration contract clauses, discovery, summary judgment, class action certification and settlement approval, and third-party litigation financing. During the quarter, students will choose 2 - 3 topics from our syllabus and write brief (6-8 page) reflection papers considering their anticipated distributional consequences and efficiency arguments for those rules, referring inter alia to syllabus materials on relevant interest group efforts and empirical research (if any). Students taking the seminar for 2 credits will write 2 papers; students taking the seminar for 3 credits will write 3 papers, but all students will attend all seminar sessions. Papers must be submitted on the FRIDAY of the week before the session at which your chosen topic is discussed. Each student will also lead ONE discussion session on a topic of their choice. Depending on the number of students, these sessions may be led by one or several students collaboratively. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation, Written Assignments.

(Formerly Law 746) This course will advance students' understanding of economic, legal, and political approaches to avoiding or managing the problem of global climate change. Beyond focusing on economic issues and legal constraints, it will address the political economy of various emissions-reduction strategies. The course will consider policy efforts at the local, national, and international levels. Theoretical contributions as well as empirical analyses will be considered. Specific topics include: interactions among overlapping climate policies and between new policies and pre-existing legal or regulatory frameworks; the role that jurisdictional or geographic scale can play in influencing the performance of climate policy approaches; and numerical modeling and statistical analyses of climate change policies. Elements used in grading: Class Participation, Written Assignments, Final Exam. Cross-listed with Economics ( ECON 159).

The supply of a safe, reliable, low-cost and clean energy for the United States is a key determinant of current and future prosperity. It is also the most important element of both state and federal decarbonization efforts. Electric utilities are also among the most heavily regulated of large firms. This statutory and regulatory framework is composed of a complex patchwork of overlapping state and federal rules that is constantly evolving to meet emerging challenges. In this course, students will acquire a basic understanding of the law of rate-based regulation of utilities. We will then examine the history of natural gas pipeline regulation in the United States, concluding with the introduction of market competition into US natural gas markets and the advent of shale gas. Next, we will cover the basics of the electricity system, including consumer demand, grid operations, power plant technologies and electricity sector economics. We will then revisit cost of service rate regulation as it has been applied in the electricity context. Next, we will examine reform of both rate-regulated and wholesale market-based structures, focusing on various attempts to introduce market competition into specific segments of the industry. Finally, students will examine various approaches to subsidization of utility scale renewable energy and the growth and compensation of distributed energy resources. Throughout, the course will focus on the sometimes cooperative, sometimes competing, but ever evolving federal and state roles in regulating the supply of electric power as a unique example of cooperative federalism. Students will write two 1000-word response papers during the quarter in addition to taking a final exam (composed of two 1000-word essays). Elements used in grading: Class participation (20%), written assignments (40%), and final exam (40%).

Environmental law is critically important and endlessly fascinating. In this course, we will look at the major statutes and policies used, at both the federal and state levels, to protect humans and the environment against exposure to harmful substances, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Superfund, and the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act. This class will also examine the National Environmental Policy Act and the challenges of climate change. The class will look not only at the substance of these laws and policies, but also at enforcement challenges, alternative legal mechanisms for advancing environmental policies, the roles of market mechanisms in addressing environmental problems, and constitutional restrictions on environmental regulation. As part of the class, students will engage in a series of situational case studies designed to provide a better sense of the real-world issues faced by environmental lawyers and to teach students the skills and tactics needed to solve those issues. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation, Exam.