Spring 2025
Professor(s):
Lonny Hoffman (FACULTY)
Credits: 3
Course Areas: Procedure and Practice
Practice Skills - (Research and Writing)
Time: 12:00p-2:00p M Location: Foundation Room
Course Outline: For much more about the class, see the syllabus (insert hyperlink here) but here’s a summary:
Premise of course/learning objectives. The Colloquium is an attempt to create a cooperative scholarly enterprise in which students and faculty from other schools work collaboratively. Each week, the invited faculty speaker presents a work in progress to the class. Prior to class, students read the paper and come prepared to discuss and critique it. Students benefit from being exposed to scholarly analytic treatment and discussion of a subject in ways that few other, if any, law school classes provide. By the end of this class, you should be more capable in summarizing the material points in other written work and crafting an original evaluative thesis in your own writing.
Structure of Course. Each week, the invited faculty speaker presents a work in progress to the class. Prior to class, students read the paper and come prepared to discuss and critique it.
Class Size, Student Requirements and Grading. This three-credit course is limited to twelve students. Students are evaluated as follows:
Weekly submissions. Each week, students will submit two or three questions or issues that the paper for the week raises. They are worth, collectively, 30% of the final class grade.
Long papers. In addition to the weekly papers, students will write two long papers (first one ungraded; second one graded. Graded paper is worth 50% of the final class grade.
Class Engagement. Finally, 20% of your final grade will be based on class engagement.
For Spring 2025, we have a terrific lineup of speakers (see below). The topics will cover a wide range of different subject matter. At least two weeks before each speaker’s visit, we’ll have their papers to distribute.
Spring 2025 Schedule of Speakers:
February 3 TBD
February 10 Victor Flatt (Case Western)
February 17 Len Riskin (Northwestern)
February 24 Adam Gershowitz (William & Mary)
March 3 Christine Hurt (SMU)
March 10 [spring break]
March 17 Zach Bray (Kentucky)
March 24 Joan Krause (North Carolina)
March 31 Sapna Kumar (Minnesota)
April 7 Summer Chavez (UH, political science department)
April 14 Leslie Griffin (UNLV)
Course Syllabus: Syllabus draft date as March 4, 2025
Course Notes: (Face-to-Face) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.
Quota = 12.
Prerequisites: None
First Day Assignments:
Final Exam Schedule:
This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:
Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: Yes
Experiential Course Type: No
Bar Course: No
DistanceEd ABA: No
Pass-Fail Student Election: Conditional Availability (not for required credits)
Course Materials
No book required for this course
