Douglas G. Baird
Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor of Law
1111 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
phone: 773-702-9571
email: douglas_baird@law.uchicago.edu

Current Year Courses

• 30511 1 Contracts
  This course, offered over two sequential quarters, addresses the enforceability and interpretation of contractual arrangements, sanctions for their breach, and justifications or excuses for nonperformance. Special attention will be paid to the role of nonlegal sanctions in commercial relationships. The student's grade is based on a single final examination.
  Winter (3) 1L
  
  
• 42201 1 Secured Transactions
  This course deals with the many legal issues that come into play when there are collateralized loans for which the collateral is personal property. Students focus on Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, the Bankruptcy Code, and other related laws. This form of lending is central to our economy, and the applicable legal doctrines are ones that every corporate and commercial lawyer should firmly grasp. The course is a useful, though not absolutely essential, preparation for Bankruptcy. The student's grade is based on a proctored final examination.
  Autumn (3)
  
  
• 49901 2 Independent Research
  Second- and third-year students may earn course credit by independent research under the supervision of a member of the faculty. Such projects are arranged by consultation between the student and the particular member of the faculty in whose field the proposed topic falls.
  Autumn (3)
  
  
• 75101 1 Decisionmaking: Principles and Foundations
  Individuals, particularly those in leadership positions, are often called upon to make decisions on behalf of others. Such decisions are made in both the public and private spheres and can have enormous influence both on individual lives and on public policy. Lawyers are often called on either to make important decisions themselves or to give counsel to people who make them. The way in which individuals are judged often turns on a handful of decisions they make over the course of their lives, and the way they make these decisions has been the focus of thinkers from Thucydides and Aristotle to Bentham and Kant. It has also been a recurring theme in literature and much of modern economics. The course offers a rigorous study of how philosophers and others have examined these questions, and the tools they have used, including those from behavioral economics and game theory. Included will be discussion of moral dilemmas and of some of the more common pathologies of decision-making: akrasia, self-deception, blind obedience to authority.
  Spring (3) e, c/l
  
  

Other courses taught include:

• Bankruptcy and Reorganization: The Federal Bankruptcy Code
• Civil Procedure
• Commercial Law: Selected Topics
• Commercial Transactions
• Decisionmaking: Principles and Foundations
• Game Theory and the Law