1L Reading Groups
We are proud to offer our first year students faculty-led first-year Reading Groups that give students a chance to interact with faculty members on a more intimate basis. In a Reading Group, students have the chance to explore an intellectual interest outside the scope of the basic first-year curriculum. Reading Groups offer students a chance to talk about the topics that interest them and to hear how professors think about those subjects.Although faculty participation is voluntary, more than 40 professors choose to lead groups in their homes or other social settings. With only about a dozen students per group, students can gain in-depth understanding on topics range from disability law to bioethics to terrorism, and from presidential lawmaking to Plato to cyberlaw.
The reading groups are not for credit and are not graded. A student's only obligations are to prepare for each session (in most cases, by reading) and to actively participate in the discussion.
Here are some recent examples, along with the faculty member leading the group:
- Disability Law in a Global Setting - William Alford
- Socrates for Lawyers: What can "Socratic" Method Contribute to Learning Law? - Scott Brewer
- Delivery of Legal Services: A Comparative View - Jeanne Charn
- A Lawyerly Reading of Scripture - Alan Dershowitz
- Philosophical Perspectives on Legal and Constitutional Issues - Richard Fallon
- Bioethics - Martha Field
- American Legal Theory - William Fisher
- Major Movements in Legal Scholarship - Heather Gerken
- Terrorism - Jack Goldsmith
- The Responsibilities of Public Office in a Democracy - Philip Heymann
- Assessing Social Security and other Federal Entitlement Programs - Howell Jackson
- Presidential Decision-making - Elena Kagan
- Law and Sexuality - Randall Kennedy
- The Evolution of the Business Corporation - Reinier Kraakman
- Conflicts Over Cultural Property - Harry S. Martin III
- International Justice - Martha Minow
- Tribal Sovereignty - Joseph Singer
- Debt in America - Elizabeth Warren
- Literary and Critical Foundations of Cyberlaw: From Borges to Barlow - Jonathan Zittrain