Law Studies Minor
Updated Spring 2010
Overview: 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. First, to introduce students the major areas of law that affect life in the United States and important legal issues that influence current events. Second, to enable students to become familiar and fluent with a legal vocabulary and legal reasoning. Third, 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.
Required Courses (12 credit hours):
- HUMN 3250-3 Introduction to Legal Studies (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.
- COMM 4680 Mass Communication Law and Policy (offered fall & spring) Survey of 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.
- PHIL 4260-3 Philosophy of Law (offered each 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.
- 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):
- PSCI 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.
- PSCI 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.
- 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.
- PSYC 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.
- COMM 4710 Communication in Jury Decision Making (new course, offered once a year
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
The Legal Studies Program also recommends a course in informal logic to aid in preparation for the LSAT, for example, PHIL 2441.
Coordinator: Omar Swartz (Communication), J.D., Ph.D. (303) 556-5660
Additional Advisor: Glenn Morris (Political Science), J.D. (303) 556-4930