Students who are selected to participate in an interschool competition are eligible for up to two credits in the semester in which the interschool competition occurs. This course provides advanced training in appellate practice, including both the briefing and argument of cases on appeal, through participation in appellate moot court proceedings. Maximum credit allowed per semester is two. The maximum credit allowed for any combination of competition team(s) (Mock Trial, Moot Court, and International Moot court) and their classroom components is four (4). The course is graded pass/no pass.

Prerequisite or Co-Requisite: Moot Court Classroom Component

Prerequisites: Property and Civil Procedure.

This course studies the federal income tax consequences of partnerships and covers the formation, operation, and liquidation or sale of partnerships. Special emphasis is placed on choice of entity considerations and the business planning flexibility available to partnerships, such as special allocations and deferral of income. This course applies the basic principles learned in the Federal Income Taxation course to partnership transactions.

Prerequisite: Federal Income Taxation.

Prerequisites: Civil Procedure and Innovations and Patent Management.

An examination of areas of law dealing with defective and dangerous products and the remedies for breaches of warranty, strict tort liability and negligence in relationship to products. Tort and contract theories of recovery are examined and the governmental regulation of the law relating to these theories is also discussed. Special problems in product liability litigation, including the role of the expert witness, are discussed.

Prerequisite: Torts.

This course will examine, legal and business aspects of land development, including purchase and sales contracts, ground leases, notes and mortgages, title work, surveys, environmental inspection and negotiation. It can also include sales and leasing of the completed project, and working out the failed project. This is a skills course requiring detailed technical reading, multiple written and oral exercises, hands-on drafting and oral negotiation in a simulated transaction, and extensive student participation.

Prerequisite: Property.

The study of the basic elements of real estate transactions. The format traces a typical transaction through the several stages of pre-contract negotiations, involvement of attorneys and real estate brokers, preparation of the contract of purchase and sale, mortgage financing, title examination and insurance, resolution of title defects, general preparation for closing, documenting the closing, conduct of the closing, and post-closing responsibilities. The concepts and coursework apply equally to residential as well as commercial transactions. Certain assignments are included during the semester involving document preparation.

This course provides coverage of article I (general provisions), article II (Sales) of the uniform of the Uniform Commercial Code. This course may also include basic coverage of Article 2A (Leases) and the Convention of International Sale of Goods (CISG).

Prerequisite: Contracts.

This course examines the basic rules, concepts and techniques governing the attachment, perfection, priority and enforcement of commercial financing structured as a secured transaction in personal property under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Secured transactions include sales of goods and services on credit where payment is collateralized by goods, loans secured by tangible and intangible personal property, and sales of rights to payment of money.

Prerequisite: Contracts.

While the emphasis will be on the regulation of various kinds of telecommunications satellite systems, other satellite systems, such as those used for remote sensing or earth observation (LANDSAT, SPOT Image, CBERS, DigitalGlobe) will be referred to in this course. Other space activities (e.g., scientific exploration, the International Space Station, launch activities, space tourism, space debris) will also be addressed. Governmental -military uses of satellites will not be addressed.

This course explores the procedural problems that arise when litigation of international private disputes crosses the boundaries of the United States. The presence of non-U.S. party-litigants often causes conflicts with foreign substantive and procedural laws, and creates special issues that the legal practitioner does not encounter in a totally domestic litigation. The primary focus of the course is to introduce and familiarize the students with the major topics of trans-national litigation, such as service of U.S. process abroad, service of foreign process in the United States; law suits pending in U.S. and in foreign court contemporaneously, “parallel jurisdiction”; default in international litigation; taking U.S. discovery abroad; taking U.S. discovery in the United States in aid of foreign litigation; protective injunctions, “blocking statutes”; suits in foreign courts; recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in the United States; recognition and enforcement of U.S. judgments abroad; foreign sovereign immunities, etc. This course is a natural complement of and progression from Conflicts of Law and Comparative Law; however, neither of these courses is a prerequisite.

Prerequisite: Civil Procedure.

The systematic development of active student participation in the techniques involved in the trial of cases, including jury selection, opening statements, direct and cross-examination of witnesses, introduction of exhibits and closing arguments. Students conduct simulated jury trials. Problems used may be criminal, civil, or both.

Co-Requisite: Evidence.

A review of the selected criminal law and procedure topics including the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment rights, which safeguards one’s rights regarding unreasonable searches, and seizures, self-incrimination, due process, cruel and unusual punishment, as well as a criminal defendant’s right to a fair trial, as it has evolved since the 1960’s. The functional and symbolic roles of these Amendments will be viewed through the prism of the rights to counsel, to confrontation, to compulsory process, to a jury, and to a speedy trial, and the sometime conflict between a free press and the Sixth Amendment assurance of a fair trial free from prejudicial publicity. The goal of the course is to determine the Court’s adherence to the core values embedded in the primary criminal procedure Amendments and their related criminal law context.

Prerequisite: Criminal Law.

This is a year-long clinical program open to third-year students. Students must register for each semester. Students must be cleared by the Florida Board of Bar Examiners and certified by the Florida Supreme Court to participate in this clinic. The Appellate Litigation Clinic provides experience in handling criminal cases in state appellate court on behalf of clients represented by the Miami-Dade Office of the Public Defender. Each student will have primary responsibility for at least two cases in which the record on appeal has been filed and the case is ready to be briefed. Working in a team of two students, each student will prepare an initial brief of appellant in the first case and an answer brief of appellee in the second case. Each student will present the oral argument before the Third District Court of Appeal in one of their two cases. This is a graded clinic with a weekly classroom component.

Prerequisites: Evidence.

Co-requisite: Criminal Procedure.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: Yes.

Minimum Hourly Requirement: 16 hours per week

Co-requisite: None required.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: No.

Minimum Hourly Requirement: 16 hours per week.

This is a single semester externship, available for four or eight credits, which provides opportunities for students to observe and participate in lawyering at government agencies and non-profit, public interest settings. Typical placements include legal aid services, city and county attorneys, state and local government agencies, school boards, and healthcare facilities. Participation enhances the development of a broad range of lawyering skills, advance personal career goals, enable critical reflection of the legal profession and legal institutions, encourage self-directed learning through reflection, and promote core competencies and professional values that produce skilled and ethical lawyers and professionals in our society. Those students whose placement requires a Certified Legal Intern status must have completed four semesters (a minimum of 48 semester hours) and have received Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance.

Students are required to attend the weekly class component.

Prerequisite: Completion of one year of law school in good academic standing.

Co-requisite: None required.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: Depending on placement.

Minimum Hourly Requirement: 16 hours per week minimum 4 credit; or

30 hours per week minimum 8 credits.

* The summer semester is four credits with a minimum hourly requirement of 32 hours per week for seven weeks.

Co-requisite: Trial Advocacy Practice or Mock Trial.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: Yes

Minimum Hourly Requirement: 30 hours per week.

* The summer semester is six credits with a minimum hourly requirement of 32 hours per week for seven weeks.

This is a Spring semester externship that addresses the ethical and practical issues of representing the elderly. Issues include income maintenance, health care, long-term care, competency, guardianship, and probate. Students will become familiar with the medical considerations of an aging population. Students will be assigned to the Probate division of the Circuit Court and work, together with members of the Florida Bar’s Elder Law section, to learn strategies and case management skills in dealing with an aging population.

Students are required to attend the weekly class component.

Pre-requisites: Wills and Trusts.

Co-requisite: Elder Law.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: No.

Minimum Hourly Requirement: 16 hours per week.

Eligible Students: 2L’s and 3L’s

For one semester, the intern will function as a law clerk to an individual Justice or as a central staff law clerk working for all of the Justices. Duties include: reviewing and making recommendations on petitions for discretionary review, attorney discipline matters, and extraordinary writ petitions; and conducting legal research and preparing memoranda on pending cases. The intern will have the opportunity to attend oral argument, discuss cases with staff attorneys and the assigned justice, and assist in the drafting of orders or opinions. The intern also will attend special lectures, group discussion, and training sessions. The intern will be awarded a certificate of recognition upon successful completion of the program. This Internship requires the student to have his or her Notice of Registrant Clearance.

This placement is based in Tallahassee. Housing in Tallahassee is provided by the law school.

Prerequisites: Second- or third-year students with an outstanding academic record (generally top 25 percent) and exceptional research and writing skills. Civil Procedure; Evidence. Criminal Procedure and Florida Constitutional Law are recommended.

Co-requisite: None required.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: Yes.

Minimum Hourly Requirement: 40 hours per week.

* The summer semester is six credits with a minimum hourly requirement of 40 hours per week for seven weeks.

This is a year-long clinic available to second- and third-year law students designed to provide the legal, ethical, and moral tools needed to provide high-quality immigration services to the under-served community. Students will represent asylum seekers, battered spouses and children, and other non-citizens seeking immigration relief in Immigration Court, before the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Prerequisites: Immigration Law.

Co-requisite: None required.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: No.

Hourly Requirement: Minimum 20 hours per week.

This is a single semester internship that provides experience within the judicial system. Students learn about judicial decision-making and use their analytical, research, and writing skills to draft opinions and memoranda for pending matters under the direct supervision of judges, their law clerks, and staff attorneys. By observing court proceedings, students become familiar with court procedures and legal advocacy. Placements include the judicial circuit courts, the Florida District Courts of Appeal, the United States District Court, and the United States Circuit Court of Appeals. A student must be in academic good standing to apply.

Students are required to attend the weekly class component.

Prerequisite: Completion of one year of law school in good academic standing.

Co-requisite: None required.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: No.

Minimum Hourly Requirement: 16 hours per week.

* The summer semester is a minimum hourly requirement of 32 hours per week for seven weeks.

This is a single semester internship that provides experience within the judicial system. Students learn about judicial decision-making and use their analytical, research, and writing skills to draft opinions and memoranda for pending matters under the direct supervision of judges, their law clerks, and staff attorneys. By observing court proceedings, students become familiar with court procedures and legal advocacy. Placements include the judicial circuit courts, the Florida District Courts of Appeal, the United States District Court, and the United States Circuit Court of Appeals. A student must be in academic good standing to apply.

Students are required to attend the weekly class component.

Prerequisite: Completion of one year of law school in good academic standing.

Co-requisite: None required.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: No.

Minimum Hourly Requirement: 16 hours per week.

* The summer semester is a minimum hourly requirement of 32 hours per week for seven weeks.

The United Nations Internship aims to form global legal leaders by instilling in students the knowledge of multilateral international organizations, the importance of globalizing international relations, and a desire to use law to assist the world’s most vulnerable. United Nations interns are accredited to the United Nations by permanent missions, intergovernmental organizations and nongovernmental organizations as well as by various offices of the United Nations Secretariat. Interns obtain access to meetings, events and discussions available only to diplomats and delegates. United Nations interns have attended meetings of the Security Council and spoken to the UN General Assembly, Commissions, Committees, High-Level Dialogues and have engaged in formal and informal resolution consultations.

Member states, permanent missions and non-governmental organizations partnering with the St. Thomas Law United Nations Internship program include, the Permanent Missions of South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Honduras, Dominica, Costa Rica, United States of America and Grenada. Intergovernmental Organizations with Permanent Observer Missions at the United Nations include the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Malta, Asian-African Legal Consultative Organization, International Criminal Court, International Union for the Conservation of Nature and a spectrum of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and NGO committees, among them the Committee on Disarmament, the Committee on Africa, the Committee on Child Rights, the Committee on the International Decade for the World’s Indigenous People, Committee on Financing for Development and the Committee on Sustainable Development.

The United Nations Internship is highly sought after; it operates year round and typically provides credentials for between six and eight interns at the United Nations Headquarters in New York and Geneva.

Prerequisite:

Co-requisite: None required.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: No.

Minimum Hourly Requirement: 40 hours per week.

* Twelve credits are awarded in the Fall and Spring semesters. Six credits are awarded in the Summer semester. The academic component is graded and the field work is Pass/Fail.

Co-requisite: None required.

Florida Bar Notice of Registrant Clearance: No.

Minimum Hourly Requirement: 16 hours per week.

This course will provide students with an introduction to the substantive norms of human rights in the inter-American, European, and African systems of human rights protection, the main theoretical issues concerning the nature and scope of rights that appear in conventional instruments, and the diverse procedures available at the regional level for defense and protection of human rights. The course is broken down into three main sections:

1. The Inter-American System of Human Rights Protection
   This part of the course will provide students with an introduction to the substantive norms of human rights in the inter-American system, the main theoretical issues concerning the nature and scope of rights that appear in conventional instruments, the diverse procedures available at the regional level for defense and protection of human rights, and the ways in which policymakers in the countries of the Western Hemisphere attempt to reconcile the demand for enforcement of human rights with the current of foreign policy objectives.
2. The European System of Human Rights Protection
   This part of the course will give an overview of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights and its procedural as well as substantive guarantees. The Convention is applied by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. In the last half-century the Court has developed its own, rich jurisprudence. Its doctrines cover the right to life, the prohibition of torture, slavery and forced labor, criminal procedure and the principle of legality, privacy and family law issues, freedoms of speech, of press, of assembly and association, equal protection, right to property, prohibition of death penalty, right to free elections, etc.
3. The African System of Human Rights Protection
   The part of the course will examine the practice of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) regarding the review of individual NGOs complaints, with a case study of the implementation of the right to a fair trial, since it has developed important case law on this guarantee. The course will also deal with the development of in-site investigations and the thematic procedures, especially those relating to the mandates and work of the Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary and arbitrary executions and of the Special Rapporteur on the conditions of prisons in Africa. The course will conclude with an evaluation of the work done by the ACHPR under its protective mandate and consideration on its future role in the context of the establishment of an African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights.

This course explores issues of humanitarian law, i.e. the law of armed conflict, faced by professionals of war, relief workers, humanitarian organizations and others working in complex emergencies. Students will explore and analyze emerging and controversial aspects of law and policy. With the proliferation of conflicts around the globe, humanitarian organizations are being forced into new and unfamiliar territory. Increasingly, humanitarian professionals are attempting to provide relief in settings of diminished security and are grappling with the growing involvement of non-state actors – from rebel groups to private corporations to humanitarian organizations themselves – in situations of armed conflict.

This course also explores novel issues of criminal liability under international law, resulting from war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the crimes of aggression. It examines substantive elements of such crimes; jurisdictional elements of domestic and international law over international criminal activities; the implications of international cooperation in criminal matters, such as extradition and mutual legal assistance; and the history, practice, and impact of international war crimes tribunals, including the International Criminal Court under the Statute of Rome.

The COVID-19 crisis has created an unprecedented disturbance in the enjoyment and the realization of human rights. Rights of the individual have been curtailed on account of a national emergency, to pursue the legitimate aim of securing public health. International human rights law foresees limitations on rights under very strict criteria. However, many times there is a clash between rights. This course addresses human rights in extreme situations, real or claimed, that pose a threat to a country’s or its people’s survival. This involves situations such as war and other man-made attacks, natural disasters and pandemics. The issues are whether, and to what extent, the peacetime structure and content of human rights survive the actual and claimed fundamental crisis. The course will draw a comparison of standards and their application through examples including inter-state war, terrorism, earthquakes, with a particular emphasis on the present COVID-19 crisis.

This course will start with an introduction to the concept of international protection of refugees and an examination of the various international attempts since 1921 to meet the problem of the forced movements of people due to persecution or armed conflict. This will be followed by an introduction to the basics of international refugee law, including the gaps in this body of law. This will in turn lead to a comparative study of the refugee definitions as a basis for the determination of refugee status, the issue of the safe third country and the problem of responsibility for determining asylum claim, and other contentious issues relating to refugee status determination.

Other themes will include: the mandate of work and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; refugee protection and human rights; asylum; non-refoulement under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugee under general human rights law; temporary or time-limited protection and “subsidiary protection”; refugee detention and freedom of movement; refugee protection in armed conflict and complex emergencies; security of refugee camps and settlements; the protection of refugee women and the problem of sexual violence against refugees; the protection of refugee children; the developing law of internally displaced persons; the solutions to the refugee problem; the challenge of repatriation; and the future of international protection.

This course addresses water as the source of life, considering that the right to drinking water and sanitation is unquestionably a human right, without distinction of any kind: race, color, sex, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. The human right to water is inextricably linked to the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as well as to the right to life and human dignity, and constitutes a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights and integral human development.

This course explores issues arising from the universal and regional legal instruments designed to protect the rights of women and the rights of the child, including, but not limited to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as their various protocols.

1. Women’s Human Rights
   While human rights law has become a staple in legal discourse, women’s human rights law still lacks this universal recognition. Human rights violations of women tend to be recognized only if such violations resemble those of men. Women who are tortured for their political beliefs are granted the same protections as men in the same position. However, if the abuse takes other, gender-specific forms, such as rape and forced impregnation, involves non-political, i.e. social and economic rights, or is inflicted by private rather than governmental actors, human rights protections are being disregarded. In part, this is a function of the universal subjugation of women; in part it is the function of current human rights systems which values male-identified rights, i.e. political rights, above others and focuses on abuses by government actors. Because of the general disregard of women’s rights it is important to highlight the particular issues women face which involve violations of human rights. Such violations occur in the United States as well as internationally. In some cases, women are treated differently even though there is no justifiable, gender-based reason; in others, women are treated the same as men even though unequal treatment would be more appropriate; in a third group of cases women are treated unequally because of a received gender difference.
2. Human Rights of the Child
   This part of the course will consider issues and problems affecting children in light of the 1989 Convention of the Rights of the Child and related protocols, its background, and its normative policy dimensions. It considers the identification of the child as the holder of certain rights, with the grant of procedural status to assert these rights in appropriate domestic judicial and administrative proceedings. It treats the substance of the Convention alongside implementation of its provisions and the guiding principles of interpretation and construction of the child’s “best interests”; the “evolving capacities of the child,” and equality in treatment (non-discrimination). It also addresses a variety of situations identified by the human rights community as making children especially defenseless, and discusses the child’s means of international protection.

• 2022-2023
• 2021-2022
• 2020-2021
• 2019-2020
• 2018-2019
• 2017-2018
• 2016-2017
• 2015-2016