Primary focus will be on the community property laws of California, Texas and Wisconsin. This course will compare constitutional law decision making and substantive results under different constitutional systems of common law nations. The course will use Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States as the primary examples and primary sources of law, but it may also draw upon examples from the constitutional law of other nations, such as Israel and New Zealand, and it may consider the effect of the European Convention on Human Rights on constitutional law in the United Kingdom. The course offers basic information on the historical development of the main legal systems and their sources, ideologies, and techniques. The course may also acquaint students with some subjects of particular importance in international legal practice, such as international judicial assistance, application of foreign law in American courts, and application of American law in foreign courts.
Countries covered include France, Germany, China, Russia, South Africa and Palestine.
Particular consideration is given to the current evolution in the theoretical approaches to these problems. Attention is also focused on the particular limitations imposed on American state courts by the federal constitution. While this course will provide students with an exposure to both the First and Fourteenth Amendments, faculty members teaching the course may emphasize one amendment more than the other and will so advise students by notice in the registration materials. Special emphasis will be given to the manner in which copyright protections affect new technologies, such as videotaping, computer hardware and software, electronic data transfer, and cable television rebroadcast, and the ability of such legal concepts to keep pace with technological developments. The four-credit course will cover these topics as well as a few additional general corporation topics.