First-Day Assignments

Overview

Find first-day assignments for the current semester on the accordion menu below.

Spring 2023

Assignments for spring 2023 are organized by class and faculty.

For days one and two (Jan. 17 and Jan. 23):

Introduction to course

  • Review syllabus
  • Topic 1: Antidumping Law: Overview of Dumping, Dumping Procedures, and Dumping Margin Calculation
  • International Trade Law, Volume III, Chapters 1-9
  • Optional: Modern GATT Law, Volume II, Chapters 65-69

Please review the article posted on Canvas and complete/submit the self-assessment by 1/20.

Business Organizations
Read the syllabus (on CANVAS) and pages xxv-xxvi and 1-3 of the casebook. 

Please read pages 1-14 in the Mullenix casebook.

Reading Assignment 
Chapter 1 – A Few Words. 
Chapter 2 – The Building Blocks of Contracts. 
Chapter 3 – Translating the Business Deal – Part 1. 
Chapter 4 – Translating the Business Deal – Part 2. (Including the Appendices to Chapter 4.) 
Chapter 5 – A Contract’s Parts.   
Class Discussion – We will discuss Exercise 5-2 during class.  Please review it. 
 
Drafting Assignment 
Please complete both Exhibit A and Exhibit B to the Syllabus and submit them to me via email no later than 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, January 18, 2023. 

Read the 7 page syllabus before the first class on Monday, January 23, 2023.  Print it and bring to class.  

For the first day of class (Tues. 1/17), please read the environmental law news stories below. Collectively, these selections will give you an early snapshot of the wide-ranging issues, themes, and challenges for environmental law and policy, historically and looking to the future as the field continues to evolve. 

Please prepare for class by (1) carefully reading each selection (print and mark-up if you have printer access) and (2) sketch and be ready to discuss your responses to the questions below for each of the readings:

What are the environmental problems at issue and what is causing them? 
Who has an interest in these problems and why? 
What do the situations described suggest about the possibilities or limits of law as a source of environmental protection? 

(1)    “Biggest Environmental Cases to Watch in 2023” – Law360 (Jan. 3, 2023) (see Canvas) 

(2)    “Sterigenics To Pay $408M To End Over 870 Emissions Suits” - Law360 (Jan. 9, 2023) (see Canvas)

(3)    “EPA Sued Over 'Inaction' On Endocrine-Disrupting Pesticides” – Law360 (Dec. 21, 2022) (see Canvas)

(4)    “White House Unveils Final Climate Environmental Justice Tool” – Law360 (Nov. 22, 2022) (see Canvas)

1) Register for the course on TWEN.

2) Jan.17  Mulligan, Federal Civil Jurisdiction – Introduction(on TWEN); Mulligan, Federal Civil Jurisdiction – Federal Question (on TWEN)
 
3) Jan.18  Mulligan, Federal Civil Jurisdiction – Diversity (on TWEN)

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
First Day Assignment

(Tuesday, January 17th; 11:25 a.m. - 12:20 p.m.)
Room 104

1.    Please read in detail Chapter 1, which includes the Constitution and some historical background. But focus on the text and provisions of the United States Constitution which we will be covering in some detail. The history is interesting and helpful, but what the Constitution says will be our focus. 

2.     I will provide paper copies of the syllabus in class and send out an electronic copy by email in advance. 

3.     Constitutional law is fascinating and challenging, and it goes to the very bedrock of who we are as Americans. I welcome and encourage respectful and civil discussion based on all viewpoints in our class setting. Be thoughtful, analytical, and civil, like lawyers, not political partisans. 

4.    At the end of the semester, I will test you on the law, as it exists under Supreme Court precedent.

First reading will be distributed in class.

Casebook:  Introduction, pp. 1-3
Casebook: Part One, Section I, C-D Recognition and Retrenchment pp. 41-54 
NLRA: §§1, 2 and 7    

Please see Canvas for your assignment for the first day of class.

Introduction (Jan. 19)

  • Treatise (Hill, Quinn & Davidoff Solomon, MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS:  Law, Theory and Practice (2nd ed. 2019) - Chapter 1

Note: We will proceed through the textbook reading in order. If a statute or other authority is cited in the Treatise, and can be found in the Supplement, please read the full version in the Supplement (for example references in the Treatise readings to the Delaware General Corporate Law ("DGCL")). I will provide other materials (handouts, etc.) periodically. Please read the assigned reading before attending the class under which it is listed.

Read Chapter 1 of Nard, The Law of Patents (6th Edition).

Please skim the first chapter of each of the two required texts. Also, select a news article focused on privacy policy/law. We will discuss each story in class. 

I hope that you are looking forward to PR this Spring. I will do all that I can to make it a pleasant and instructive semester. The course syllabus will be available on Canvas on Friday, 13 January 2023. I addition, all of the recorded lectures which cover the whole course will also be live and available to you on Canvas on the 13th.

There is no assigned reading for 20 January. I will not be teaching that day. Instead, Stan Hazlett, long-time Kansas Disciplinary Administrator will be lecturing to you on the disciplinary process. Nobody knows it better. The first class I will teach will be on 27 January. We will cover Unit 1 of the readings in the syllabus on that day. In person classes will focus on going over the Rules in the Kansas and Missouri Rules of Professional Conduct, both of which are available free online. I will generally not cover cases and opinions in class, but these are covered in detail in the recorded lectures which you should watch each week.

Having me as your professor comes with advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that I have been teaching and writing about professional responsibility for four decades. The disadvantages concern my health and what I must ask of you. As you will learn when we meet, I am disabled, use a wheelchair, and have limited use of my legs and my hands. I suffer from a rare, genetic autoimmune disease that causes the growth of tumors in various parts of my body and destroys nerves and muscles as they grow. Hence, the wheelchair. This disease also causes me to be immune compromised. If I get Covid, it is a very bad thing. I have already had it once and am still dealing with some of the long-term effects. I do not want to get it again, if at all possible. Therefore, I ask that you all wear a mask when we are in class, if you are willing to do so, and I very much hope that you are to protect me, I will supply new N95 masks to you. Initially, you can get an N95 mask from the front office. They will always have a supply of masks for you.

I also ask that you please sit in the back of Room 203 during class, so that we can maintain a reasonable distance between us. When the weather is good, we will meet outside on the lawn, if the class is comfortable with that. I will thank you all in advance for taking these precautions to keep me healthy.

Finally, if you are not feeling well, please stay home. If you miss class, I will meet with you either by telephone or zoom and bring you up to date. We will also be doing Zoom review sessions some evenings, so you will not fall behind. Sick days will not count as absences.

If you have questions, you may always arrange for a Zoom meeting with me. Just email me and I will set it up. I am available most days for meetings.

I will schedule review sessions on Zoom several times during the semester, just to help you with the material we have covered and to answer any questions you may have that did not get answered in class.
I thank you all in advance for taking these precautions to keep me healthy.

January 17: Sprankling and Colletta casebook pp. v, vii-viii, 1-14 [Pierson v. Post]
January 18: Sprankling and Colletta casebook pp. 25-34 [Johnson v. M’Intosh]
January 19: “A Quick Note on Reading Law Review Articles” (posted on Canvas); It's Not About The Fox: The Untold History of Pierson v. Post (law review article excerpt posted on Canvas)

Please note that the syllabus and the readings for January 19th will be posted soon.  You will get a notice via Canvas when they are ready.

Securities Regulation
Read the syllabus (on CANVAS) and pages 1-16; 22-30; 36-38; 43-46 of the casebook.

STATE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

FIRST DAY ASSIGNMENT

For the first day of class (Wednesday January 18), please read the Foreword and the Introduction Chapter (Chapter I) in the Casebook, the Kansas Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution. In advance of class, I will email you the course syllabus, and a copy of the Kansas Constitution, which also is available on both the Kansas Secretary of State’s website (https://www.kssos.org/other/pubs/KS_Constitution.pdf) and the Kansas State Library website (Kansas Constitution | Kansas State Library, KS - Official Website (kslib.info)).

You might also begin perusing Chapter II, which is a brief review of the interrelationship between federal and state law. This should be largely, though not completely, a review of your Con Law course. We will not spend long on this chapter, and I will cover it by lecture and discussion. If we have any time remaining on Wednesday, I may start it, but otherwise, it will be our starting point for Monday January 23.

Once we get past Chapter II, I will be calling on students to discuss cases in the book, and we will have some fun assignments for class exploring multiple state constitutions.

REQUIRED MATERIALS:
•    Schwarz, Lathrope & Hellwig, Fundamentals of Business Enterprise Taxation: Cases and Materials (7th ed. 2020) 
•    Current Code and Reg volume (2022-2023 ed.).  Students who took Federal Income Tax in the fall will use the Code volume purchased for that course.  
 
•    Assignments and additional readings, which include the syllabus, will be distributed electronically.

ASSIGNMENT FOR FIRST CLASS:
•    Purchase the required materials from the bookstore.       
•    Print Part I of the Syllabus.  Part II of the Syllabus, covering S Corporations and Partnerships, will be posted later in the semester.
•    For the first day, after discussing administrative matters, we’ll complete Unit 1 and start Unit 2.  Unit 1 gives an overview of the three basic models of entity taxation - the C corporation, the S corporation, and the partnership.  Although we will spend some time in this unit discussing the relevant distinctions among the three models, we will wait until we have some base of knowledge concerning C corporations before we make specific comparisons.  In Unit 2, we’ll talk about the requirements associated with section 351.  We won’t get to any of the problems in Unit 2.  Please read pages 505 – 520 and the Code sections assigned to that part of the unit.  We won’t get to American Bantam Car until the next class period.

Read Chapter 1 of the textbook in advance of the first class.

First day of class, read and prepare to discuss pages 1-11, 22-27 in the Gallanis casebook.

Please see Canvas for your assignment for the first day of class.

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