New law school courses across the country are tackling some of the hottest topics, including the publishing phenomenon, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” by Thomas Piketty. According to the Wall Street Journal, these off-the-wall courses are becoming very popular at law schools these days.
Law students at Georgetown University can take a seminar that discusses the regulation of ‘autonomous agents.’ Students at Pepperdine University can study video games as a course in law school. Law schools are trying to expand their curriculum beyond torts and transactions.
Yale Law School is offering Theories of Distributive Justice, according to the professor for the course, John Roemer. Roemer told the Wall Street Journal the following:
“A good portion of this seminar will be spent reading and discussing Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the most important book on income distribution in some years. It will survey the main theories of distributive justice proposed by economists and political philosophers since 1950.”
At Pepperdine University School of Law, a Video Game Law course will be offered this fall. According to the Wall Street Journal, the course will cover issues involving “asset acquisition, intellectual property issues, trade secrecy, contracts and licenses, end-user rights, anti-competitive practices, and governmental regulation of games with respect to sex, nudity, and violence.”
At Harvard Law School, a course called Law and Neuroscience will be available. This is a two-week seminar led by Nancy Gertner. The students will discuss ideas of the brain being criminally violent and the psychopathology of crime.