Fall 2004

Professor Laura Beth Nielson l-nielson@law.northwestern.edu

Graduate Teaching Fellows: Carla Shedd c-shedd1@northwestern.edu

and Crina Archer c-archer@northwestern.edu

**This is an updated version of the syllabus from the one that appears in the front of the reader. Please follow these dates.**

General Information:

Legal Studies 398-1 is the first quarter of the year long sequence (398-1,-2,-3), which is a required course sequence for the adjunct major in Legal Studies. Admission to the major is a prerequisite for registering for the course. Admission to the major is competitive. Generally admission to the major is made in the spring of the previous academic year through application procedures described at the website for Legal Studies (www.northwestern.edu/legalstudies/) . The purpose of the Advanced Research Seminar is to expose students to theoretical and empirical approaches to law and legal institutions and allow students to develop their own research paper on a topic of interest. The first quarter (398-1) introduces students
to materials on courts, legislation, and regulation from a variety of disciplinary and legal perspectives. Material will be conveyed through modules taught by the core faculty of Legal Studies. Students will be trained to use the specialized resources of a law library and will receive a basic introduction to legal reasoning and analysis. The second quarter (398-2) will combine additional modules in substantive law and research methods with the initiation of student research projects. The third quarter (398-3) will supervise student research projects, culminating in presentations to the seminar and a thesis paper.

Format:

In the first quarter and during the first half of the second quarter, two meetings for a total of 3 hours per week. In addition, students will receive specialized training at the law library at regularly scheduled times. In the second half of the second quarter and in the third quarter, the entire class will meet once a week for 90 minutes and students will have individual meetings with Graduate Teaching Fellows and faculty advisers on their research projects. Additional class meetings will be scheduled at the end of the third quarter for student presentations.

Evaluation:

In the first quarter, evaluation will be based on a series of short essays, written exercises, and class participation. In the second quarter, students will prepare the first stages of their thesis and receive a “k” grade. In the third quarter, students will be evaluated based on their class presentation and their thesis. Two credits will be awarded on this basis.