Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professors Assey and Margie

J.D. Seminar 200 (cross-listed) | 2 credit hours

This course examines how courts, legislatures, and regulatory agencies react to constant change in communications technologies – ranging from television to telecommunications to the Internet. We will focus on specific technological advances to explore the way legal, economic, social, and technological forces shape and are harnessed by legal systems faced with challenges to the status quo. The course will draw on leading communications law cases, statutes, and FCC and FTC actions. Students will explore the legal and lobbying battles raging today in Washington and across the world that are fueled by technological change, in areas such as privacy, free speech and broadcast indecency, competition, and spectrum policy. The goal is to deepen each student's understanding of major communications law topics, to determine if a comparison of these topics reveals a set of common legal, policy, and political reactions to technological change, and to provide future policymakers with the tools to respond to change more effectively.

Recommended: Prior enrollment in one or more of the following courses: Communications Law and Policy; Telecommunications Regulation; International Law I: Introduction to International Law or courses covering Internet Law and/or the First Amendment.