The Private Law of Intimacy (Stone)
Faculty
|
|
| E.T. Stone George Sharswood Fellow etstone@law.upenn.edu |
Additional Information
Skills Training
Oral Presentations
Expository Writing
Other Professional Skills:
Grading
30% Participation,
70% Paper
With Permission of Instructor
Class meets in person.
Course Continuity
Students are encouraged to stay home if you are ill or experience flu-like symptoms. If you miss a class for any reason, it is still your responsibility to make up the work missed.
I offer the following to students who miss class due to illness:
- If you are absent, due to illness or some other unavoidable circumstance, email me and I can ask for volunteers among your classmates to share their notes with you.
- If you are absent due to illness or some other unavoidable circumstance, email me and I can make PowerPoint slides or other class materials available to you.
- When you are better, please make an appointment to meet with me and I will review/answer questions about what you missed.
Meeting Times/Location
R 4:30PM - 6:30PM
Tanenbaum Hall 142
Category
Seminar
Credits
3.0
Many classic cases in property, tort, and contract law involve disputes between individuals who stand in some sort of intimate relation to one another. At times, the intimate character of the relationship is deemed essential to the rights, duties, and remedies at issue; at other times, it is irrelevant. This seminar asks why. Our investigation will have three phases. In the first, we will explore how American law defines and identifies intimacy, as well as the categories of private law and family law—categories whose doctrinal boundaries are not absolute but which remain at the heart of legal reasoning and historical inquiry on the question of what individuals owe one another “away” from the state. The second phase will be broken into three modules in which we will dive more deeply into three doctrinal areas (property, contract, and tort) and explore how intimacy features in the law’s exposition of the core values to which those areas roughly correspond (ownership, promise, and injury). In the third phase, we will analyze emerging issues and recent scholarly debates at the intersection of private law and the law of intimate relationships.
Broader themes considered throughout the seminar will include the connections between intimacy and political economy, the role of concepts such as altruism, freedom, and self-interest in the law of relationships, the formalist/functionalist divide in legal reasoning, the status/contract distinction in the history of legal doctrine, and the role of the family in law and politics.
Family Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of family law; Perform legal analysis in the context of family law; Communicate effectively on topics related to family law; Demonstrate an understanding of how family law affects other areas of law.
Perspectives on the Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate an understanding of how the law affects, and is affected by, the individual course topic; Perform legal analysis in the context of the individual course topic; Communicate effectively on the legal and other aspects of the individual course topic; Demonstrate the ability to use other disciplines to analyze legal issues relevant to the individual course topic, including economics, philosophy, and sociology, as appropriate.
Property and Real Estate Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of property and real estate law; Perform legal analysis in the context of property and real estate law; Communicate effectively on topics related to property and real estate law; Demonstrate an understanding of how property and real estate law affect other areas of law.
Equity and Inclusion Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of the varied legal aspects of equity and inclusion; Perform legal analysis in the context of topics related to equity and inclusion; Communicate effectively on the legal aspects of equity and inclusion; Demonstrate an understanding of how equity and inclusion are connected to and affected by a wide variety of legal and regulatory structures and doctrines.