This site will work and look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.

Requirements for Certification Studies

All requirements for the degree are subject to change at any time by the faculty. Successful completion of a certificate program will be so marked on a student’s official transcript.

Intellectual Property

To be eligible for the certificate in Intellectual Property, students entering and within their first year of study must make formal application and be accepted in to the Intellectual Property program. Application procedures and deadlines are established by the Intellectual Property Program faculty.

All candidates for the certificate in Intellectual Property Studies must complete:

1. 15 credit hours of courses, including the introductory Intellectual Property Course plus at least one regime class (Patents, Copyright, Trademark) or, alternatively, two regime classes. Students may include in the 15 credit hours one class from a list of adjacent field courses.
2. An intellectual property seminar.
3. At least nine credits in listed courses must be taken by the end of the fourth semester in order for students to be eligible to receive a certificate upon graduation.
4. A supervised writing (which meets the Law School's upperclass writing requirement) project under the direction of a member of the Intellectual Property faculty or, alternatively, a supervised externship in intellectual property, with a significant writing component.

Intellectual Property Courses:

Please see the Courses in Intellectual Property.

Tax

There is no application procedure for the certificate in Tax Studies. Additionally, students are not required to begin taking their tax courses in a certain point during their law study.

All candidates for the certificate in Tax Studies must complete:

1. Successful completion of 15 credit hours of tax courses, including the introductory survey class and the writing project, clinic or externship described below. The list of tax courses may be modified upon the recommendation of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
2. A supervised writing project (which meets the two draft requirement of the upperclass writing requirement) on a tax topic, a tax clinic, or a supervised externship in tax with a significant writing component.

Tax courses:

• Business Entity Taxation (655)
• Business Planning (807)
• Clinic: Tax (626)
• Clinic: Tax, Advanced (646)
• Estate Planning (853)
• Federal Estate and Gift Taxation (660)
• Federal Income Tax (661)
• Federal Tax Practice and Procedure (669)
• Federal Taxation of Partners and Partnerships (668)
• Government Regulation of Employee Benefits (866)
• Income Taxation of Corporations and Their Shareholders (667)
• Insurance Taxation (779)
• International Aspects of United States Income Taxation (676)
• International Tax Policy (780)
• Legal Accounting (701)
• Legal History of American Taxation (670)
• Multistate Taxation in the New Millennium (728)
• Quantitative Methods (782)
• Tax Court Advocacy (778)
• Tax Policy (932)
• Taxation of American Indians (713)
• Taxation of Business Entities (768)
• Taxation of Non Profit Organizations (671)
• Trusts and Estates (742)

Law & Public Policy

The certificate in Law & Public Policy requires course work at both the Law School and the Department of Public Policy (DPP) in West Hartford. To be eligible for this certificate, students must make formal application to, and be accepted in, the Law & Public Policy program. (Law students do not need to be admitted to the DPP.)

All candidates for the certificate in Law & Public Policy must complete:

1. A 3-credit course in Administrative Law, which is a pre- or co-requisite for the program.
2. 12 credit hours of course work, which must include 2 courses at the DPP and 2 policy-related courses at the Law School.
3. Either a supervised writing project (sufficient to fulfill the Law School's upperclass writing requirement) on a public policy-related topic, or a supervised externship in public policy, with a significant writing component.

Law & Public Policy courses

Rather than selecting from a menu of designated courses, students in the Law & Public Policy program design their own curricula in consultation with, and subject to the approval of, a Faculty Advisor. All courses at the DPP are eligible for credit toward the certificate, as are all law school courses with a significant public policy component.

Courses taken at the DPP are graded under ordinary DPP standards but recorded on a student's Law School transcript on a pass/fail basis. Up to 6 credits of DPP course work may be counted toward the 86 credits required for graduation. Such credits are not included when calculating a student's GPA and do not count as against the 12-credit limit on pass/fail grades. Students may request a transcript from the DPP with their actual (letter) grade on it, which upon request will be included in the student's Law School academic record.

Application Procedure

Interested students should submit an application to the Law & Public Policy Faculty Advisor, preferably before the start of registration for their third semester—i.e., by late March of their first year. The application should consist of a brief essay describing why the student is interested in public policy or non-profit management and laying out a proposed course of study that satisfies the requirements for the certificate. A current transcript is also required. Students are strongly encouraged to consult with the Faculty Advisor (and/or his or her counterpart at the DPP) before planning their application.

Human Rights

The Graduate Certificate in Human Rights is designed for graduate students in good academic standing enrolled at the Law School or in College of Liberal Arts and Sciences PhD programs. Students must apply to the Certificate program and provide relevant documentation requested therein.

Law School Pre-Requisites and Eligibility

Law School students are strongly encouraged to apply by March 1 in their first year of study. Law School students are required to take the Law School course "Constitutional Law" as a pre/co-requisite when embarking upon the Graduate Certificate in Human Rights.

Course Offerings

The Graduate Certificate in Human Rights requires a minimum total of twelve credits, consisting of one core course and three electives, as detailed below. It is recommended that students take core courses first before moving on to elective courses. Core courses cover the main historical, philosophical and legal questions in human rights. Elective courses allow students to branch out into the various subfields of human rights such as indigenous and cultural rights, economic rights, human rights in Latin America and Europe, and so on. Certificate courses do not require pre-requisites, except for "Advanced Constitutional Law" as indicated.

Core Courses

• HRTS 301: Contemporary Debates in Human Rights
• LAW 878: International Human Rights

Electives

• ANTH 315: Gender and Culture
• ANTH 390: Cultural Rights
• ANTH 377/PH 497: Anthropology and International Health
• BLAW 375: Business Ethics
• HIST 382: Historical Literature of Latin America: Human Rights in the late Twentieth Century
• HRTS 390/ECON 390: Economic Rights
• PHIL 315: Seminar in Moral Philosophy
• PHIL 352: Feminist Theory: Gender and Rights
• POLS 397: The Politics of Human Rights in Contemporary Europe
• POLS 301: Political Theory: Theories of Rights
• SOCI 362: Gender, Politics and the State
• WS 395: Sexual Citizenship
• LAW 653: European Human Rights
• LAW 679: International Law
• LAW 883: Human Rights and Post Conflict Justice
• LAW 831: Comparative Constitutional Law
• LAW 838: Advanced Constitutional Law: Individual Rights (pre-requisite Constitutional Law)
• LAW 767: Critical Identity Theory
• LAW 609: Asylum & Human Rights Clinic [open only to Law School students. only 3 credit classroom component counts towards Certificate]
• LAW 759: The Nuremburg Trials
• LAW 872: Latin American Law
• LAW 722: International Law and Human Rights Clinic (only three credit classroom component counts towards Certificate)