Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor Mikhail

J.D. Seminar 625 | 3 credit hours

This seminar will address selected doctrines of criminal law, including their constitutional, historical, and jurisprudential dimensions, in more detail and with more sophistication than is possible in a typical first-year criminal procedure or substantive criminal law course. Rather than studying one topic per week, we will often spend two or three weeks on a given topic in order to examine it in greater depth. Likely topics include definitions of intent, criminal negligence, justification and excuse, insanity/mental illness, the scope of the necessity defense, theories of punishment, double jeopardy, and Eighth Amendment proportionality review in both capital and non-capital contexts. Readings will include both cases and scholarly writings, and the seminar will incorporate perspectives from both comparative criminal law and recent developments in cognitive science.

Prerequisite: Criminal Justice (or the equivalent Democracy and Coercion) or Criminal Procedure.