Omri Ben-Shahar : Courses and Seminars
Consumer Law
LAWS 57502
This course examines the legal framework for consumer protection law in the United States. It explores the federal and states' consumer protection legislation as well doctrines of common law that limit unfair and deceptive contract practices. The course will pay special attention to consumer financial and mortgage protection and consumer protection on the Internet.
Contracts is a pre-requisite.
The student's grade is based on class participation and a final examination.
Winter 2013
Omri Ben-Shahar
Contracts
LAWS 30511
This course, offered over two sequential quarters, is an introduction to commercial and consumer law and lays the foundation for advanced study in commercial transactions, corporations, restitution, consumer credit, insurance, labor and employment law, and investment securities. Substantively, the Contracts course deals with how contracts are formed, which contracts are valid, when a contract has been breached and the various remedies for breach, including damages, specific performance, and restitution. The course is also designed to introduce the student to legal methodology and to compare the common law with the techniques of statutory interpretation, particularly in connection with the Uniform Commercial Code.
Winter 2013
Omri Ben-Shahar
Food Law
LAWS 94503
This seminar will examine issues relating to food law and food policy. Topic covered will include: food safety, food labeling, food patents, corn policy, regulation of food quality, factory farming, obligations of food retailers, and more.
Students will have to write an SRP paper and make a presentation in class.
Autumn 2012
Omri Ben-Shahar
Greenberg Seminar: Law and Disaster
LAWS 95902
The Greenberg seminar on law and disaster will examine different ways in which the law responds to, or prepares for, disasters, and how disasters shape the law. Natural calamities like Hurricane Katrina, mass accidents like the Titanic, environmental tragedies like a large oil spill, economic crashes like the collapse of the financial markets, impending catastrophes like climate change, and even colossal legal blunders -- all have met patterns of legal responses that are uniquely shaped by the social and psychological attitudes towards disaster.
The seminar meetings will be held in the Winter and Spring terms.
Winter 2013
Omri Ben-Shahar, William H. J. Hubbard
Insurance Law
LAWS 43601
An exploration of risk spreading through common law and administrative regulation of insurance products. The primary emphasis of the course is liability insurance (including commercial, automobile, professional, and product liability), although the class also tackles other, more exotic forms of insurance (including reinsurance). The goal of the course is to alert students to how insurance institutions in the United States and abroad affect economic behavior, and in particular how they affect litigation and lawyers.
Grades will be based on a final examination.
Autumn 2012
Omri Ben-Shahar
