Sean Lyness he/him

Introduction to the procedural rules governing non- criminal disputes with focus on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, including jurisdiction, service of process, venue, parties, pleading and discovery, the right to jury trial, the trial process, appellate review, and the res judicata.

An exploration of how statutes and regulations shape the modern legal system. The first part of the course examines the competing theories of statutory interpretation and how courts choose between ¿letter¿ and ¿spirit¿ of the law. The second part introduces the interpretive tools courts deploy, including legislative history, semantic and substantive canons, and doctrines of constitutional avoidance. The third part turns to the administrative state: the delegation of power to agencies, presidential and congressional control, and judicial review of agency action. Along the way, we will consider broader questions of institutional design, democratic accountability, and the separation of powers.

An exploration of how the law allocates and protects our most precious natural resource: water. We will explore common law water doctrines¿riparian rights, the doctrine of prior appropriation, the groundwater doctrines, and the public trust doctrine¿as well as how federal law intersects with a decidedly state-level area of law. The course will conclude with an extended look at a single piece of water litigation covering the briefing, motions, and opinion