Specialized Tutorial Courses
These two and three credit courses are designed to give the student an intensive writing experience with one of our distinguished faculty member's expertise. Students may register for up to three credits of tutorials. However, no student may apply toward the JD degreee more than three credits in total for tutorials and supervised research and writing (Independent Study). Students may apply for as many tutorial offerings as they wish. Of those who apply, one or two students will be selected for each tutorial offering. The tutorial offerings will involve several meetings between the student and the professor and the preparation of a research paper under the direction of the professor. This paper may be used to satisfy the Upper-class Writing Requirement.
If you are interested in applying for any of the following tutorials, please e-mail the Registrar's Office with the name of the tutorial, your name, class year, and e-mail address. We will contact you later in the summer regarding the status of your tutorial selection.
Spring 2010 Tutorials
Tutorial: Regulating Associations - Professor McClain
Many important public debates about associational life involve the functions of the institutions of civil society, the relationship among these institutions, and the relationship between civil society and the state. This tutorial examines some of these debates. It explores whether and how the liberal ideal of free and equal citizenship translates into the realm of associations. It will consider such issues as: (1) the relationship between families and other associations in civil society; (2) how government may use public-private partnerships (particularly, with religious organizations) to deliver social services; (3) the proper application of public norms of equality to associations; and (4) the relationship between civil and religious jurisdiction over family law.
Tutorial: Rights and Responsibility - Professor Fleming
In recent years, communitarian and civic republican thinkers and politicians have argued that our legal system takes individual rights too seriously, to the neglect of personal responsibility, responsibilities to community, and the institutions of civil society that are the “seedbeds” of civic virtue. They have contended that rights license irresponsible conduct, corrode the bonds of civil society and community, and impoverish political discourse by debilitating the arts of compromise and deliberation about the common good. The tutorial will engage with these charges about rights and irresponsibility.