Syllabus | Colin Doyle | Law Professor

Logistics

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Contact information

Colin.Doyle@lls.edu
Office: Burns 315
Telephone: 213-736-1148

Email is my preferred method of communication. I do not regularly check my phone voicemail. If you have something important to communicate, use email.

Please note that although you may email me substantive questions, I typically do not answer substantive questions in an individual email reply. I prefer to answer substantive questions during office hours or immediately after class. If your question is of general interest, I will share my answer with the entire class.

My faculty assistant is Colin Goward, and his email is: Colin.Goward@lls.edu

Class schedule

Wednesdays from 9:50am to 11:50am
FH126

Office hours

By appointment in Burns 315. To schedule an appointment, email me.

Reasonable Accommodations

If you have, or think you might have, a disability that requires an accommodation in order to maximize your prospects for success in law school, please contact Student Accessibility Services in the Office of Student Affairs at accessibility@lls.edu or 213-736-8151. You can review the application guidelines and appeals process here.

Interpersonal Misconduct

Loyola Law School is dedicated to fostering the education of the whole person and strives to provide an environment that encourages the search for truth and freedom of inquiry. The Law School recognizes the important contribution a diverse community of students, faculty and staff makes towards the advancement of its goals and ideals. The Law School is committed to providing an environment that is free of discrimination and harassment as defined by federal, state and local law, as well as under this policy. Any violations of this policy will be treated as serious misconduct and result in appropriate disciplinary action up to and including dismissal from the Law School.

As responsible employees, faculty are required to report any case of suspected sexual or interpersonal misconduct and cannot protect student confidentiality. For more information, visit the Office of Student Affairs webpage.

Teaching Method & Class Policies

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Attendance

Class attendance is required.¹ Class starts at exactly 9:50am. Don’t be late. Arrive early and use the time before class starts to get settled so that you are ready to take notes and answer questions.

If illness or exigent circumstances prevent you from being able to attend class, you must email me or contact the Office of Student Affairs at studentaffairs@lls.edu.

Classroom Norms

To foster an environment that supports curious critical thinking, our class has a set of norms that I ask you each to follow.

Professionalism
Law school is a professional environment. Your classmates are your future colleagues, co-counsel, judges and policymakers. You should treat law school as the beginning of a professional career rather than as an extension of college.

Professionalism and ethical conduct are central to the practice of law, and thus to legal education. We will cover topics in this course that are sensitive and may have personal and significant implications for any one of us in the class, for our families and for others we hold dear. All communication for the course is expected to be professional, respectful, and on topic. For the reasons explained here, I ask that you address me as “Professor” or “Professor Doyle.”

Generosity
We should all strive to be good listeners and to be respectful of different viewpoints. Being respectful does not mean that we should hold back from critiquing others’ views, but it does require us to be be generous in how we interpret and respond to others. Particularly when disagreeing with an argument that someone else has made, try to address the strongest version of their argument. If a statement is made that offends you or that you think might offend others, do challenge it; but show respect for the person who made it. Remember, we all make mistakes sometimes in our speaking and listening.

In this classroom, we disagree with ideas, not with people. When a disagreement targets a person, it often causes that person to become defensive and unreceptive to the point being made. But when a disagreement targets an idea, it allows the person who initially voiced that idea the space to consider the point being made and gives them the opportunity to change their mind.

This semester, I hope that each of us — myself included — has the opportunity to be wrong. The luxury of an academic environment is that it is a retreat from the demands of the world and is a safe space for reconsidering what we have taken for granted or assumed to be true. Our classroom should be a supportive space where our ideas, preconceptions, and convictions are open to challenge and critique. Let’s be curious together.

Reasonable Accommodations

Interpersonal Misconduct

Course Website

You’re on the course website right now. I may also use our course Brightspace page to make announcements and to host content that cannot be shared publicly.

Class Recordings

The Instructional Technology Department will post video recordings of class as soon as the video files have been received and processed. You do not need my permission to view class recordings.

Please note that you are not allowed to record or share all or a portion of classes at Loyola Law School (video, audio, or photo) without the express permission of your instructor or the law school administration.

Slides

When using slides in class, I will post a copy of my slides to this website in the afternoon following our class.

Technical Assistance

Should you encounter any hardware or software issues during this course, please contact the ITS Service Desk at helpdesk@lls.edu or by calling 310-338-7777, option 2.

For assistance with class technology, such as class recordings, Brightspace, or Zoom, please contact LLS Instructional Technology at:
instructional.technology@lls.edu.

Section 3.2 of the JD Handbook states, “A student is required to attend classes regularly. A student may be withdrawn, and/or excluded from an examination, and given a failing grade in any course in which the student has not maintained a satisfactory attendance record.” ↩︎

Assignments & Grading

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Overview

This course is worth two credits. According to ABA Standard 310, for a two-credit course you are expected to spend at least four hours per week on course-related work outside of class.

Your grade will be based on:

Weekly reading responses (25%)
Class participation (25%)
Final collaborative project and presentation (50%)

Weekly Reading Responses

By midnight on the Tuesday before each class, please email me a 250-500 word reading response to that week’s assigned reading. To be sure that I do not miss your email, please use the subject line “Reading Response.”

Your reading response should articulate your initial reactions to and thoughts about the theories, concepts, arguments, and ideas from the week’s reading.

I highly encourage you to take notes as you read. Reading without taking notes is not reading at all. Jotting down notes only after finishing the assigned reading will almost always result in a subpar reading response. As you work through your reading assignments, don’t read passively and don’t take anything for granted. As you read, write down questions that come to mind. Ask yourself: What aspects of the author’s argument do you agree and disagree with? Why? Why not? What are the opportunities and limitations of these ideas? What assumptions are being taken for granted? What questions have been left unasked? What questions would you like to ask the author?

Your reading response should take the form of an edited collection of those notes. With reading responses, you are not expected to have arrived at answers that can resolve difficult and thorny issues. Rather, a good reading response thoughtfully probes at important questions.

These reading responses are not busy work. They are the foundation of our classroom discussions. Each week, I will incorporate your questions and thoughts into our classroom exercises and discussion topics.

Class Participation

Class preparation is required. I expect that you will come to class having completed the reading and ready to speak about the materials assigned for that day. You are expected to participate actively in class discussions every week.

I also expect you to ask questions of each other in class, and you should always feel free to ask me questions as well. In particular, I would encourage you to ask about anything unclear from the readings. Please don’t be embarrassed to ask about things you don’t understand — there will likely be others with the same question.

Final Project & Presentation

Final projects should be conducted in teams of 1-3 students. You are encouraged to work in pairs or teams but may work independently if you do not like group work. You must complete a research paper (approximately 10 single-spaced pages) and related presentation (approximately 15-20 minutes) that is inspired by the course material. These projects are an opportunity for you to examine a wider range of techniques, domains, and moral and legal principles than we have covered in class.

Although you have flexibility in constructing these projects, I anticipate that most projects will take one of two forms:

Describe the use or potential use of an algorithm in a part of our legal system and analyze the positive and negative implications of this development using the principles and theories explored in class.
Analyze how current law and policy may need to adapt to a new development in algorithmic technology.

Students are encouraged to discuss ideas for final projects in class. Later in the semester, we will carve out time in class for students to discuss potential projects and recruit partners and teammates.

To help formulate your final project, students are highly encouraged to schedule office hours with me before the end of March.

Student presentations will be held on our final two weeks of class: ~~April 12th and April 19th~~ April 19th and April 26th.

Final papers are due ~~Wednesday April 26th~~ ~~Wednesday~~ Thursday May 4th (rescheduled because of Week 07 class cancellation). You are encouraged to use the questions and reactions to your in-class presentations to refine your final paper.