Session Two:
Classes: June 29 – July 10, 2020
(Take both courses for three (3) credits)
Cross-Cultural Negotiation and Dispute Resolution
9:00 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. June 29 – July 3 | 9:00 a.m. – 10:50 a.m. July 6-10, 2020
Professor Laura Padilla,
California Western School of Law
Like any skill, negotiation can improve with careful work. There is a popular perception that some people are “born negotiators,” while others among us somehow “don’t have it.” In fact, all of us are born negotiators. Anyone who has ever dealt with infants and children for very long knows that negotiating begins very early in life. Since the time when we were very young, most of us have broadened our negotiation repertoires through a process of observation, experimentation, and reflection. You come to this course with many years of experience negotiating. While you may not have yet negotiated as a lawyer, there are some important lessons to be drawn from the experience you already have.
There is no single, universal “best” way to negotiate. We will consider many different approaches to negotiation. Your goal should not be to hunt for the one “right” approach. Negotiation is a dynamic, context-sensitive enterprise. You should be suspicious about efforts to create universal negotiation rules (“always/never give the first offer,” “always/never negotiate in private,” “always/never walk out,” and so on) because they ignore important differences in context, personal comfort, goals, and counterparts. At the same time, you are encouraged to develop a rich set of guidelines for yourself – practices that form something of a personal default, from which you can vary if you perceive a strategic reason to do so. Hopefully, our course discussions and exercises will help you start to build an expanded repertoire of skills.
Learning to negotiate need not be a competition. Many people see negotiation as a competition to be “won,” and we will talk at great length about whether and when this view of negotiation is accurate or helpful. Regardless of whether you view negotiation as a competition, learning negotiation need not and should not be a competitive endeavor. This is a course aimed at improving skills. By definition, it will require everyone in the class to experiment with different approaches, searching for those that seem to work best. That kind of genuine experimentation can take place only in a learning environment that is open, supportive, honest and creative. I will need your help in making sure that we create that atmosphere. – (2 credits)
Supreme Court Advocacy
1:30 – 2:30 pm | June 29 – July 2
President and Dean, Michael F. Barry
Associate Dean, Catherine G. Burnett
This is an intensive skills-focused short course designed to hone professional judgment. Students critically assess litigants’ written and oral advocacy strategies in cases of constitutional magnitude recently presented before the United States Supreme Court. During class sessions, students analyze how parties chose to frame questions presented, fact statements, summaries, and legal arguments in a side by side review of one pending case. Students then apply that analytical framework to their assigned case.
A Comparative Study of the United States and European Supreme Courts
11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. | July 6 – 10, 2020
Justice Sonia Sotomayor,
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
In this five-day course, students will examine the differences between the two systems including the structure of processing cases before courts; jurisdiction of the courts; standards of reviews in lower court, executive, administrative, and congressional decisions; advocacy and best practices in oral and written presentations; and creating an ideal supreme court. – (1 credit)
Click here to view course descriptions
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
All courses are taught in English and assessment of student performance uses the same criteria employed in upper-division elective courses, which includes written final examinations, graded projects and presentations.
