King Hall to Offer Exciting New Courses
UC Davis School of Law will offer an exciting array of new courses during the 2016-17 academic year, including Censorship in the Global Age; Information Privacy; Intellectual Property, Human Rights & Social Issues; International Business Negotiations; Mental Disability Law; Race, National Identity, and Intellectual Properties; and Refugee and Asylum Law, among others.
The wealth of new offerings is partly a reflection of the skills and interests of new and relatively new faculty, said Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Madhavi Sunder. The newest members of the King Hall faculty, Professors Irene Joe and Aaron Tang, will teach courses on Voir Dire Skills and Education Law & Policy, respectively, while recent arrivals such as Professors Karima Bennoune (United Nations Human Rights Practicum) and Lesley McAllister (Food and Agricultural Law) also are bringing new courses to King Hall.
Sunder said that many of the new courses were part of an ongoing effort to ensure that the School of Law's curriculum reflects critical emerging issues in society and law. Examples include courses on Information Privacy, International Business Negotiations, Mental Health Law, and Refugee & Asylum Law, she said.
Professor Jasmine Harris, who will be teaching Mental Disability Law, said that the presence of that class on the Spring 2017 schedule reflects a growing awareness of the many ways mental health issues impact the justice system and the practice of law.
"Mental Disability Law offers students an opportunity to see how pervasive issues of mental health are across substantive areas of law," said Harris. "For example, there is no way to discuss criminal law issues without attention to mental health. From policing to forced confessions, trial, sentencing, and prison, mental disability law is at the surface. Attention to disability offers new perspectives on institutional discrimination, new defenses, and, at the most basic level, a better sense of how to provide legal representation to someone with a mental disability without falling into historic traps of paternalism and stigma."
The new course in Refugee and Asylum Law reflects an awareness of the urgent need to address the legal problems of displaced peoples, said Professor Brian Soucek, who will be teaching the class.
"The number of refugees throughout the world right now is near an all-time high, so understanding what protections they have under international and U.S. law is more important than ever," said Soucek. "The Asylum and Refugee Law course will look at who we choose to protect, what procedures they have to navigate to get protection, and whether refugee law is the best way of helping those in need, whether they be in Syria, at the southern border of the U.S., or elsewhere. Students who take Asylum and Refugee Law at King Hall will be able to apply what they learn as they help clients in the Immigration Law Clinic, or as they run the country's only Asylum & Refugee Law Moot Court Competition."