Spring 2026
Professor(s):
Lonny Hoffman (FACULTY)
Credits: 3
Course Areas: Law And Society/ Interdisciplinary
Time: 12:00p-2:00p M Location:
Course Outline: Course Description and Learning Outcomes:
The Colloquium is an attempt to create a cooperative scholarly enterprise in which students and faculty from other schools work collaboratively. Each week, the invited faculty speaker presents a work in progress to the class. Prior to class, students read the paper and come prepared to discuss and critique it. We meet on Mondays from 12:00-2:00 pm and serve a catered lunch to all participants. (I will ask you at the start of the semester for any dietary restrictions/preferences.) Along with the students enrolled in the class, the audience will also include UHLC faculty who attend the weekly talks.
As for learning outcomes, the course teaches skills in legal analysis, reasoning, and legal communication by deepening our ability to understand, identify, and engage with the kind of policy arguments that many lawyers are asked to take on. In doing so, students can more fully develop themselves professionally through the practice of forming and offering well-informed opinions, both descriptively and prescriptively.
Course Syllabus: Syllabus draft date as October 20, 2025
Course Notes: (Face-to-Face) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.
Quota = 15
Grading.
There are three components to grading in this class:
Weekly submissions. Each week, students will submit two or three questions or issues that the paper for the week raises. The questions/issues are things that you might ask or bring up when the speaker is here. These short submissions are meant to show me that (1) you’ve read the paper carefully and (2) are ready to engage in the discussion when the speaker is here (though you aren’t required to read your question/comment during class). These weekly submissions are due prior to the start of class each week. They are worth, collectively, 30% of the final class grade.
Class Engagement. In addition, 20% of your final grade will be based on class engagement. Although this is more commonly referred to as class participation, I believe engagement is a better term because it is meant to be broader than rewarding students for speaking in class. Examples of what qualifies as constructive class engagement include constructive contributions to the class discussion on Mondays and/or participating in office hours/meetings with me to discuss the course material. My expectation is that for all or nearly all students, class engagement can only enhance a grade, but it is possible that I could assess your class engagement poorly if, for instance, you missed more than the max 20% of classes that UHLC (and this syllabus) permit you to miss.
Final Exam. The remaining 50% of the grade will be based on an in-class, open book final exam. The exam will consist of between eight to ten questions that I will craft based on the weekly discussions. Students will choose to write on three of the questions. The final exam will be graded anonymously. Although I do not have prior final exams for this class to show you, in the first few weeks of the semester I will offer a few examples of the types of questions I expect to include on the final and will do my best to communicate my expectations about student answers.
For Spring 2026, we have a very special lineup of speakers: all are Deans at other law schools. The topics each week will cover a wide range of different subject matter.
Spring 2026 UHLC Colloquium/External Speakers Series:
January 26-Dean Marc Roark (University of Tulsa)-TBA
February 2-Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig (Boston University)-The Trauma of Resiliency
February 9-Dean Danielle Conway (Penn State Dickinson Law)and 2025 AALS President-Elect -A Look Back on the Foundations of Government Procurement of Intellectual Property in the New Era of “America First IP Ideology, Policy, and Legislation”
February 16-Dean Stefanie Lindquist (WashU) -The Vanishing Appeal
February 23-Dean Sophia Lee (University of Pennsylvania) (via Zoom)-TBA
March 9-Dean Rachel Rebouche (previously Dean, Temple University; now on faculty at UT Austin)-Fragile Networks: The Movement of Patients, Pills, and Physicians Post-Dobb
March 23-Dean Leah Grinvald (University of Nevada Las Vegas)-TBA
March 30-Dean Lolita Buckner Inniss (University of Colorado)-Law Schools: Why Regulate, and How?
April 6-Dean Julie Hill (University of Wyoming)-Governmental Debanking
April 13-Dean Neel Sukhatme (University of Michigan)-Judges for Sale: Campaign Contributions and Corruption in Criminal Courts
Prerequisites: None
First Day Assignments: First paper will be distributed by January 12.
Final Exam Schedule:
This course will have:
Exam: Yes
Paper:
Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: No
Experiential Course Type: simulation
Bar Course: No
DistanceEd ABA:
Pass-Fail Student Election: Conditional Availability (not for required credits)
