2L Fall Class Schedule
BLUF: My fall schedule is stacked, my classes are awesome, and it's all on Zoom.
Honestly, I can’t believe I’m starting my second year of law school. Summer FLEW by (a true quarantined haze) and in hindsight, 1L went pretty quick too. I’m not sure if time passes as quickly on Zoom, but I’m about to find out!
Despite the online environment, I’m very excited about my fall courses. 2Ls and 3Ls have a ton of freedom when choosing their schedules, unlike 1Ls; HLS only sets a few broad requirements for us. All upper-class HLS students must take a mix of “in-class” classes and “practical” classes; pass an ethics course during 3L; and complete 12+ credits per semester.
Cue your girl coming in at 13 credits for Fall 2020 😁
COURSE ADVICE
The 2020-2021 HLS course catalog has about 550 class options, and it’s very tempting to only take the ones that sound “fun.” But instead of winging it, I reached out to a few judge advocates for advice - which classes SHOULD I take to prepare for my career? The officer in charge of Air Force JAG Accessions said I should DEFINITELY take the following:
Evidence (rules about evidence in criminal cases)
Trial Advocacy (course in trial analysis, skills, and techniques - think, Moot Court)
Administrative Law (law-making in the executive branch of government)
Family Law (Judge Advocates help a lot of military members with marriage, divorce, and custody issues)
Trusts & Estates (We also deal with wills!)
Contracts + (A more advanced version of my 1L contracts class)
I’m checking off #1 and #2 in the fall and winter terms, and will hopefully take one more this spring. After my summer with a Judge Advocate office, I was extra motivated to load my fall schedule with criminal law and trial courses. What can I say, I’m pumped for the military justice stuff! 🤷♀️
FAIR TRIAL
Monday & Tuesday, 8:30-10, 3 credits
“This is a course about Jury as key to Sixth Amendment guarantees to persons accused of crimes.”
Fair trial is an examination of the Sixth Amendment right to be judged in a court of law by a jury of our peers. It seems straightforward, but there are lots of weeds here. First of all, why was the Sixth Amendment passed in the first place? Are we successfully avoiding the evils that it tried to prevent? Also, what IS an impartial jury? Does it truly exist? How much do things like race, ethnicity, class, and gender sway the ‘justice’ of a jury? Can we fix present inequities?
Juries are extremely relevant to military law as well; although we call them “panels” in the Air Force, not “juries,” they’re the same thing. A court martial panel ranges from 4 to 12 members (depending on the type of court and case), and the accused is allowed to choose whether they want all officer members or a mix of officer and enlisted. They can also choose a judge over a panel for any court, and for the sentencing process post-conviction. So this course should definitely be relevant in my future life!
Plus, the professor instructed us to watch My Cousin Vinny, Twelve Angry Men, and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution before class starts. I love it already.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Monday & Tuesday, 10:20-11:40, 3 credits
“This course considers the legal, political, and social implications of the practice of capital punishment in America, with an emphasis on contemporary legal issues.”
I didn’t plan to take this course until one of my friends mentioned they were enrolled. Now, I’m very glad I snagged a seat! We touched briefly on the death penalty in my 1L criminal law class, and just a few cases revealed tons of problems with the administration of capital punishment. Then I read and watched Just Mercy, and now I can’t wait to dive into this class.
Capital Punishment will discuss the history of the American death penalty, as well as the morality of keeping it; challenges to discriminatory application of death sentences; relationship between (and limitations placed on) judges and juries in death penalty cases; and scope of review regarding capital punishment. The death penalty exists under military law, so again - very applicable to my future career.
This class is already off to a good start too - when I tried to buy the Capital Punishment course materials, the HLS website said no textbooks required! But I do have a“in-class” exam this December so it can’t be THAT chill.
JURISPRUDENCE: LEGAL IDEALS
Monday & Tuesday, 3:20-4:50, 3 credits
“The liberal ideal of legality yields both formalization of law (law as formal rules or doctrines) and idealization of law (law as principles and policies).”
Confession time – I barely know what “jurisprudence” means and am only taking this course because my friends are in it.
I KNOW.
Jurisprudence is a class dedicated to examining the ideals of law – how we want it to work vs. how it works in the real world. This is a highly theoretical course (the subject area is literally “Legal & Political Theory”), but we’ll read some cases and commentary to examine modern tensions within the legal system.
TBD on how useful this is, or how much I like it. I hope my friends are worth it.
SEEING CRIMINAL (IN)JUSTICE: Examining the Interplay of Visual Media, Storytelling, and Criminal Law
Tuesday, 5-8, 2 credits
“Together, we will explore different approaches to understanding how visual storytelling, particularly in the form of documentary film, can shift the way we understand criminal legal narratives.”
This class is labeled a “seminar” so it’s only worth two credit hours, only happens once a week, and has no final exam. Still – this is my “fun” class. It has great reviews from other students (probably because it’s based on films). From the class description, it looks like we’ll watch a bunch of documentaries, movies, news clips, and body cam footage and then discuss. The idea is to examine how the media influences (and interferes with) justice in our society – how it changes the everyday American’s perception of the legal system.
Oddly enough, I DO need a textbook for this class! But it’s a 1990 novel called “The Journalist and the Murderer,” which doesn’t sound like your average law school book. And after watching subject interviews, unrest on the news, and way too many crime shows, I can’t wait to become “media literate.”
EVIDENCE
Wednesday, 1-3, 2 credits
“The law of evidence regulates the presentation of factual information in the Anglo-American jury trial process and legitimates the outcomes of that process. In a wider sense, the concept of evidence embraces the process of proof of facts in any legal proceeding.”
This class is 'highly recommended’ before I take my January course, Trial Advocacy Workshop. But after my summer doing military justice work, I'm genuinely excited for Evidence!
As you may have guessed, this course is all about the rules of evidence in a trial; what’s admissible, what isn’t, what the other side has to give you, what you can slide into a court through other means, where to LOOK where you have questions, etc. Through this course, I’ll learn specifically about the Federal Rules of Evidence; the Air Force uses a slightly different version, called the Military Rules of Evidence, but they’re pretty similar.
Almost every law student takes evidence, it’s just a question of how many credits your particular evidence course is. I planned to take a super detailed one (aka, four credits) but that fall course is completely full (and I’m still like #120 on the waitlist). I needed to take Evidence before my class in January, so I opted into a two-credit option – the reviews say it’s still a good course and will cover all the necessary stuff! Hopefully that’s true, or I may end up taking another round.
ROLLING INTO FALL
From now until class starts, I’m just gearing up mentally and getting my books and note-taking in order. I also need to order a video camera, as HLS has requested that we stay visible during class (urgh). However, it shouldn’t be too bad - you may have noticed that I only have class on Mon and Tues, with a single two-hour session on Wed. Nothing on Thursday or Friday. I didn’t intentionally pick classes to ensure four day weekends until December, but since it worked out that way…
Don’t mind if I do 😏