Course Syllabus

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Law 200.001: Torts
Chris Jay Hoofnagle
Fall 2021
Class Hours: MW 3:35P-5:25P
Class Room: 170 Berkeley Law Bldg

Office Hours: W 9-10:30
Berkeley Law 341 & in Zoom Room

Walking office hour: Th 3:35-4:30 (Meet at Holmes quote at west entrance)
Featuring T. rex, Smilodon, & Pseudo Lucy

Welcome to your first year of law school and to torts, a topic as rich as it is traditional in legal education. Torts provides an expansive lens to learn about the American legal system. This course will cover the basics of torts and in the process, the fundamental reasons and principles underlying doctrine.

Required materials

  • John Fabian Witt & Karen M. Tani, Torts: Cases, Principles and Institutions (“TCPI”)(Fifth Edition, 2020)
  • Other materials will be posted on bCourses. These will include some edited cases and portions from the Restatement (Second or Third) on Torts (“RST”)

Our textbook is available free from CALI: https://www.cali.org/books/torts-cases-principles- and-institutions

I want you to buy the printed copy. It is only $33—about 10% the cost of competing textbooks—from Lulu: here

Why? The research on digital reading points to three problems: skimming, shallow engagement, and a metacognitive deficit—a polite way of saying that research subjects overestimate the depth of their on-screen reading. The inferiority of screen reading is worsened under time pressure and where the reading is expository, two key attributes of 1L education.

Assessments

You will complete three problem sets during the semester. These are ungraded, and intended to help you assess your progress and prepare for 1L exams.

On Call Days

If your last name begins with A--L, you are on call Mondays; M--Z are on call Wednesdays.

Poll Everywhere

We will use a polling system called Poll Everywhere to do in-class exercises. The good news is that you need not install any software, etc., to use it. Simply visit our URL when it is poll time: https://pollev.com/torts/

Ways to Participate

In addition to participating in class, you can also contribute to the course through online conversations. Instead of announcements, we'll use Piazza. This is a platform very popular in CS that does class discussions nicely: https://piazza.com/berkeley/fall2021/tortslaw201lec001/home 

First Week's Assignments

Please be sure to carefully read 1–3 below for our first class.  Page numbers are keyed to the PDF and print versions of TCPI.

  1. Orin S. Kerr, How to Read a Legal Opinion, 11 Green Bag 2D 51 (2007). We will not discuss this article in class but Professor Kerr’s article has become a classic HOWTO LAW SCHOOL.

  2. TCPI pages 1–19 (Chapter 1, section A onward until you reach the Garratt case in subsection 7)

  3. Restatement (RST) of Torts 2d § 1 Interest (and comment a-f)

  4. TCPI Garratt v. Dailey and notes 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10

  5. RST 3d § 1 Intent (comment a, b, and c)

Course Syllabus

Download here (updated 8/23)

Course Summary:

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