This course provides an introduction to European Integration from the Treaty of Rome to the recent treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice: It examines the institutional and legal foundations of the EU. The EU is a legal order: It was created by law and it uses law as its main instrument. The course shows how law binds the EU together, the nature of the law and how it is enforced. Furthermore, it focuses on the basic freedoms and the basic rights under European law and the draft constitution.

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This course introduces students to the legal and practical concepts of corporations and partnerships. The main focus of the course is on marketable share corporations and on companies with limited liability, which have a huge economic importance all over the world. Special emphasis is placed on the central problems of corporate governance and corporate finance as well as on a comparison to U.K. and U.S. company law.

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This course examines three documents that are indispensable to international trade: the bill of lading, the bill of exchange and the documentary credit. The course also considers non-paper, computer-based alternatives to these documents.

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In the past 25 years, international arbitration has become a major method of international dispute resolution.  Despite this popularity, many lawyers and businesspeople remain unclear as to exactly what international arbitration is and how it differs from court-based international litigation. The International Arbitration I course examines a number of major topics in the field, including the nature of arbitration, its strengths and weaknesses, the validity of international arbitration agreements, and the role of international arbitral institutions.

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The legal systems of different countries resemble each other in some ways, but, despite globalization, are still significantly different. Attorneys and businesspeople in different countries are often unaware that legal structures and concepts that they take for granted in their home countries are not shared elsewhere. The Comparative Law course introduces students to the differences and similarities in the concepts, organization, and functioning of national legal systems.

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This course intends to give a theoretical as well as practical overview on the different forms of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). The course is structured along three leading questions: How to obtain, how to maintain and how to enforce IPRs. However, the focus will be on the first aspect. To start with, participants will get an insight into the leading general concepts in Intellectual Property law. In the following, they will learn how German Law addresses the above-mentioned three issues regarding Patents, Utitlity Models, Trademarks, Copyright and Industrial Designs. Throughout the course, European and International rules regarding the creation, registration, maintenance and enforcement are examined too. Each class concludes with the discussion of a current topic.

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This course examines in depth the structure, principles and functions of leading modern systems of civil liability in their social economic and political context, with the aid of original sources and authoritative and ground-braking materials. A comparison will be made between the main European traditions and the Anglo-American approach to Tort theory and practice, in the light of major contemporary issues of liability and compensation. In the first part the readings offer a panoramic view of the current debate in Tort laws, from a moral, comparative and economic analysis perspective, examining the claims of the different views of the function of Tort liability, such as loss allocation, victim satisfaction, income distribution, punishment and deterrence. In the second part the readings focus on the impact of procedures of mass litigation on the function of Tort law in society. The third part deals with the special challenges presented by product liability in the US, Europe and Japan. Finally, the fourth part is dedicated to the on-going debate about the future of Tort law in the US and Europe.

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Data Governance is a political process for solving complex enterprise policy decisions concerning the use, enhancement, and protection of data.  It integrates technical challenges with organizational obligations, and it involves structured requirements gathering, policy management, asset valuation, and operational risk control.  This course is divided into two one-week intensive workshops that will explore methods for forming a governing board, assessing the situation, and developing a strategy in the first workshop.  And the course will explore concrete methods to assess the value of data, calculate various risks, measure and report program results.  Overall, students will be exposed to real-life organizational issues from global business, legal, and IT perspectives and will learn how to succeed at Data Governance.

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