General Course Descriptions for Terms: Evidence
798 - Professional Responsibility & Criminal Practice (Defender Project)
Covers the Wisconsin Rules of Professional Conduct as specifically applied to criminal defense practice. Topics covered include perjured testimony, confidentiality, client counseling, witness interviewing, handling evidence, hard bargaining, statements regarding judicial qualifications and contempt of court.
801 - Evidence
849 - Pre-Trial Advocacy
Pre-trial Advocacy is a practical course. The focus is on skills one needs in a litigation practice to prepare to try a case. These skills include case intake analysis, interviewing skills, discovery creation and responses, depositions, mediation, and trial preparation. In all phases, the focus is on strategy and practical materials to help students thrive in any litigation practice after graduation. There are no strict pre-requisites for 3L students, but historically students have benefitted most from the class with solid background in evidence and civil procedure.
854 - Clinical Program: Wisconsin Innocence Project
This clinic provides students with an opportunity to study, investigate, and litigate claims of innocence. You’ll be working to screen applicants to the clinic, completing investigation on pending cases, and working on active clinic cases. Student attorneys in WIP are expected to learn how to investigate and litigate criminal post conviction cases. Students will develop skills in interviewing clients and maintaining attorney-client relationships; finding, approaching, and speaking with witnesses; and obtaining other forms of evidence. Student-attorneys are also expected to develop the ethical and professional norms required in law practice, including diligence, competence, punctuality, and effective inter- and intra-office communication. In the seminar portion of the course, students are expected to learn about and discuss the causes of wrongful conviction, the legal framework in which actual innocence cases are litigated, and efforts to reform the criminal legal system so as to reduce the incidence of wrongful convictions and provide redress to those who have been wrongfully convicted.
915 - SP Crim. J. Admin: Law & Forensic Science
Forensic evidence used in criminal cases has come under intense scrutiny recently because much of it never has been scientifically validated and some has been proven to be highly unreliable. More than ten years ago, the National Academy of Sciences issued a groundbreaking report concluding as much. Yet forensic “science” rarely is studied in either the law school curriculum or in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) curriculum, either at the undergraduate or graduate level. This is the first course at the University of Wisconsin—and among the first in the nation—to fill that void by bringing together law students and STEM students to examine law & forensic science.
940 - U.S. Constitutional History from the Founding to the Civil War
The Supreme Court’s major “historical turn” in the past ten years has made clear that U.S. constitutional history is now a significant element of constitutional argument. Historical arguments had supplied the foundation of critically important Supreme Court decisions, involving abortion rights, gun rights, presidential powers, and voting, among others. Some working knowledge of U.S. constitutional history is thus indispensable to an understanding of and competence in constitutional adjudication for the foreseeable future. This course will study the major episodes of constitutional history from the founding era (starting in the 1780s with the Articles of Confederation), up to and including the Civil War (1861-1865), which in itself raised numerous constitutional questions. These inquiries will provide context for understanding ,and evidentiary bases for arguing, many present-day constitutional questions. We will also examine how historical arguments are made in constitutional law cases, and the interpretive theories that make historical evidence relevant to constitutional argument. Finally, students will gain the ability to unpack and critically examine historical assertions about constitutional meaning, such as “the Framers intended __.”
950 - Evidence for Litigators
This 1-credit experiential-learning module is an add-on to Professor Schwartz’s general 3-credit Evidence course and is open only to students in enrolled in that course. This “Litigators’ Module” is designed both for students who are interested in a civil or criminal litigation practice, as well as students who feel they would benefit from a capstone experience that pulls together the rules of Evidence with an active-learning approach. Students will be given a realistic case file and work in teams to analyze the file and identify and solve some of the evidence issues contained in it. The principal assignment will be to draft a short brief and then orally argue a short motion “in limine”—a motion to admit or exclude an item of evidence. Classroom time will be taken up with discussions analyzing the case file and, time permitting, short exercises in oral advocacy and direct and cross examination. The “Litigators’ Module” will meet for the last approximately three weeks of the semester in the same time slot as the main Evidence class after the 3-credit students have completed their work for the semester.