Classes I Teach:

USC Law Students:

I currently teach two classes at the USC Law School: Criminal Procedure and Gifts, Wills and Trusts, affectionately known as GWATS (pronounced similar to "tots").

Criminal Procedure is an extremely exciting field and is extremely relevant to each and every one of us. Every time one of us gets pulled over for a routine traffic stop, did you know that ALL passengers can now be ordered out of the car. Well, up until February, 1997, this was not the case in all the states, until the U.S. Supreme Court held in a recent decision that having the passengers step out of the car was not a further intrusion of their constitutional rights.

As for GWATS, the entire course can be summed up in two words. Can you do it? Yes friends and neighbors, you got it: DEATH and GREED.

USC Undergraduates:

In addition to teaching the law students, I am also privileged to lecture to approximately 100 undergraduate students each semester in my Law 200 course: Law and Society.

Law and Society is a dynamic introduction to law which is designed to give the student a basic working framework to understand legal concepts and to think like lawyers. The students are required to learn from a casebook, where they have to read cases and brief them. In addition, the class takes an interdisciplinary approach to teaching students about the courts, the Constitution, cases and how it relates to them.

The thesis of my course is that Law is a Liberal Art. Every thoughtful citizen - especially those whose lives are spent in other professions with only marginal contact with the law and lawyers - should know enough about the legal system and its development that they will never feel intimidated when they confront it.