Advanced Writing Seminar: Interpretation and Application of Statutes

Limit: 16 students.

Statutes and administrative rules touch almost every aspect of the practice of law. Accordingly, lawyers need to develop the skills necessary to advise clients and advocate on their behalf regarding their rights and obligations under complex statutory and regulatory schemes. The seminar will help students develop skills that lawyers use regularly, including developing strategies for assessing statutory and regulatory schemes, refining research skills, using interpretive tools, and developing methods for writing sound legal analysis. Using case files, students will research and analyze statutory and regulatory provisions and will draft both objective and persuasive documents analyzing the law on behalf of a client. Students will gain experience analyzing the role of text, legislative history, precedent, and extrinsic sources in statutory and regulatory interpretation. Other topic areas may include judicial interpretation of laws enacted through initiative and referendum and the interplay between constitutions, statutes, regulations, and common law.

Students will write three assignments, receive written feedback on each assignment, and have the opportunity to conference individually with the professor. The focus of the course is statutory law; however, the goal is to provide students with an opportunity to refine their critical thinking and research skills, and their ability to write clear and precise legal analysis. This course satisfies the “B” writing requirement.

Meets B Writing Requirement.