University of Colorado Denver College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

The Minor in Law Studies at the University of Colorado Denver (UCD) is an interdisciplinary course of studies intended to help students become intelligent and critical scholars of legal and political discourse. While the minor may be useful for students contemplating law school, it is also intended to appeal to a wider group of students interested in issues relating to law and society and careers in public policy related fields.

The minor is designed to achieve the following three interrelated goals:

1. To introduce students the major areas of law that affect life in the United States and important legal issues that influence current events.
2. To enable students to become familiar and fluent with a legal vocabulary and legal reasoning.
3. To better prepare students with the analytical and conceptual tools to be critical citizens in our constitutional democracy.

In addition to these goals, students who complete the minor and who intend to attend law school may find themselves more prepared than they otherwise would be for the often mystifying and rigorous first year of law school. To help these students, the program contains an advising component which assists students who are contemplating law school to provide them with a realistic appraisal of law school and of the legal profession. The counselors will aid students with the law school application process.

Requirements for the Minor

A total of 18 semester hours must be completed for the Law Studies minor. The courses must be taken in residence at UCD. A minimum grade of C is required in each course and students must maintain a GPA of 3.0 in courses taken toward the minor. Every course taken for the minor must be upper division. Courses taken for the minor cannot serve to fill requirements of the undergraduate core, and students should check with their major department(s) to determine whether courses counted toward the Law Studies minor can fulfill major requirements.

A. Required Courses, 12 credit hours

1. HUM 3250, Introduction to Legal Studies (three credit hours, offered every fall)
   Survey of the U.S. legal system. Introduces students to the materials and methods of law studies and the law and society movement. Topics include the organization and powers of federal and state lawmaking institutions, court procedures, and the analysis of statutory provisions and judicial opinions.
2. PHIL 4260, Philosophy of Law (three credit hours, offered every spring)
   Survey of theoretical positions on the nature of law. Subject matter includes natural law, legal positivism, law as integrity, legal realism, critical legal studies, critical race studies, feminist jurisprudence, the nature of responsibility, and international law.
3. COMM 4680, Mass Communication Law and Policy (offered fall and spring)
   This course reviews major issues and areas in mass communication law, ethics and public policy. Highlighted are constitutional issues, libel, privacy, obscenity and indecency, corporate speech, advertising, relationship between the media and the judiciary, protection of news sources, and regulatory issues regarding cable, the Internet, and other media.
4. COMM 4750 Legal Reasoning and Writing (offered each spring)
   Introduces students to the fundamentals of legal reasoning and legal argumentation through intensive class discussion, formal debate, and writing. Attention is given to the relationship between case and statutory law and their application in trial and appeals courts in the United States.

Elective Courses (6 credit hours) (two courses from the following list):

1. PSC 4494-3 Judicial Politics
   Examination of the principal actors in the legal system: police, lawyers, judges, citizens. About half the course will be devoted to the study of judicial behavior, especially at the Supreme Court level. Political and personal influences on judicial behavior.
2. PSC 4427-3 Law, Politics, and Justice
   Analysis of the relationship of politics, law, and justice, particularly the degree to which moral norms and political concerns should and do influence legal standards and their perceived legitimacy.
3. COMM 4681 Communication Issues in Trial Court Practices and Processes (offered each Fall)
   Introduces students to communication and language research aimed at improving the fairness, reliability, and validity of court and judicial processes, including lawyer-client interviews, interrogatories, jury selection, jury instructions, witness examination, and the use of language evidence in court.
4. PSY 3505 Psychology and the Law
   Examines the legal and extralegal applications of psychology, such as assessment of insanity and competence, psychologists as expert witnesses, accuracy of eyewitness accounts and issues relating to employment decimation.
5. COMM 4710 Communication in Jury Decision Making (new course, offered once a year)
6. CJ 4430 Law and Society
   Examines social science perspectives of the law, legal institutions, the legal process and the impact of law on behavior, with particular emphasis on the study of criminal behavior and the criminal justice process in American society. Additional topics include theories of law and legality and comparative legal systems, lawyers.
7. BLAW 3000 Legal and Ethical Environments of Business
   Students are taught to identify legal issues, make ethical judgments about business conduct, and understand the ways ethical and social issues are developed. Topics include actual analysis of legal and ethical issues, ethical theory and its application, law-making processes, contracts, torts, product liability, criminal law, constitutional law and real property.
8. COMM 4683 Media in the Courtroom (offered each summer)
   Media in the Courtroom. Critically examines the complex issues raised by media involvement in criminal court cases, including effects of pre-trial publicity, cameras in the courtroom, participants who argue their stories to the media, the CSI effect, and other phenomena relevant to media influence.

Recommended, but not required:

The Legal Studies Program also recommends a course in informal logic to aid in preparation for the LSAT, for example, PHIL 2441.

Contacts:

Coordinator: Omar Swartz (Communication), JD, PhD, 303-556-5660

Additional Advisor: Glenn Morris (Political Science), JD, PhD 303-556-4930

The UC Denver program in Chinese Studies is an innovative program offering the student specialized study of China through coursework in the related disciplines of language, economics, anthropology, history (both ancient and contemporary), geography, literature and political science. China's economic and political presence is increasingly prominent in the United States. According to a recent national survey, Chinese is the fastest growing language at United States colleges and universities. University of Colorado Denver is uniquely positioned to make use of its location at the cultural, economic and political center of the Rocky Mountain region and of its attraction of a diverse, well-trained and highly qualified faculty to offer a course of studies related to China. Course offerings are diverse to foster an interdisciplinary study of China in its many dimensions.

The increasing prominence of China in world affairs has made knowledge of Chinese language and culture a valuable asset in numerous fields. Today, career opportunities abound for graduates in Chinese studies in government, international business, banking and financial services, law, medicine, journalism, and graduate study in Sinology. The breadth of the program's course offerings, coupled with the resources of the faculty, ensure that its graduates will be prepared for any of these professional pursuits.

The program in Chinese Studies offers a host of study abroad opportunities throughout the academic year and every summer for CU system undergraduates and graduates, as well as for the general public. University of Colorado Denver has ongoing programs at the Chinese Agricultural University in Beijing. Study abroad programs of two weeks to one year may be arranged, and program faculty can help students enroll in intensive Chinese language programs in Taiwan or in China. Students pursuing the minor in Chinese language and area studies are encouraged to complete the program with a period of residence and study in China. Many students have also been employed in China as English teachers.

Requirements

The Chinese Studies minor requires a total of 18-19 credit hours. A minimum of 15 credit hours must be taken from University of Colorado Denver faculty. All courses must be completed with a grade of C or better.

All students must complete the following three courses for a total of 13 credit hours. CNST 1000 should be taken toward the beginning of the minor.

Required courses, 13 credit hours total:

• CNST 1000, China and the Chinese (three credit hours)
• CHIN 1010, Beginning Chinese I (five credit hours)
• CHIN 1020, Beginning Chinese II (five credit hours)

Elective courses, five to six credit hours total

An additional five to six hours of coursework should be selected from the following list of courses:

• ANTH 4000, Food in China and Beyond (three credit hours)
• ANTH 4750, Chinese Society and Culture (three credit hours)
• ANTH 4995, Travel Study: The Arts of Self and Society in Contemporary China (three credit hours)
• CHIN 2110, Second Year Chinese III (five credit hours)
• FA 4750, Arts of China (three credit hours)
• GEOG 3160, China (three credit hours)
• HIST 3210, Comparative Religion: The Religions of China (three credit hours)
• HIST 4420, Traditional China: China to 1600 (three credit hours)
• HIST 4421, Modern China (three credit hours)
• HIST 4601, East and West: The Long History of Globalism (three credit hours)
• PSCI 4615, Politics and Government of China (three credit hours)
• PSCI 4665, Politics of China, India and Japan (three credit hours)
• PSCI 4995/5995, "Window on China" (two-week study abroad; three credit hours)
• PHIL 3666, East Asian Philosophies and Religions (three credit hours)
• PHIL 3981, Chinese Philosophy (three credit hours)

For More Information

Director/Faculty Advisor: Stephen C. Thomas
Office: Department of Political Science, Box 190, King Center 520
Telephone: 303-556-5259
E-mail: Stephen.Thomas@ucdenver.edu