1L - First Year Lesson Topics

This lesson will introduce you to the quasi-legislative process known as rulemaking. It will familiarize you with the publication system and with the sources you will access to research regulations. The lesson includes several images of Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations pages, and links to regulatory information on the Government Publishing Office's homepage. The lesson is designed to augment a substantive Administrative Law Course or an Advanced Legal Research class.

This lesson was removed at the end of 2013. It is outdated but is currently being revised. CALI

This lesson is about satisfaction clauses. This is an area of special concern, as satisfaction clauses appear to make promises illusory.

This lesson assumes students are familiar with the requirement of consideration. This exercise covers one of the exceptions to this general rule. Historically, one situation where consideration was not required to create a binding contract was when the promise was made "under seal." The lesson explains the history of "the seal" and the seal's role in contract law today.

This lesson will teach students about practice centers, and describe their origins as print legal looseleaf services. Students will use a hypothetical to explore the Practice Centers available on Bloomberg Law BNA, and Thomson Reuters' RIA Checkpoint.

This is a lesson dealing with the basic justification defense of self-defense. Most of us would name self-defense as the primary justification defense; and, it is perhaps the most common or familiar of all defenses. Yet self-defense has roots in other defenses at early common law. Therefore, this lesson begins with a consideration of those roots. Moreover, there is considerable overlap between the various defenses, even when one agrees on classification. Thus, understanding the basics of self-defense is essential to understanding many or all of the justification defenses. The purpose of this lesson is to present very simply the elements of self-defense. Even a student who is just beginning the study of defenses should be comfortable working this lesson.

This lesson examines the ethical issues associated with, and tools available for, researching parties, witnesses, and jurors on social media sites.

This exercise provides an overview of the sources of American substantive criminal law. Particular attention is paid to the Model Penal Code and the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.

In the process of legal research, primary authority is the law in your jurisdiction, which comes directly from a legislative body, court, or administrative agency.

This lesson on South Carolina primary source materials covers the South Carolina Constitution; South Carolina state and local laws (Legislative); South Carolina administrative agency regulations and other executive materials (Executive); and, South Carolina appellate court rules and decisions (Judicial).