Students in the Certificate Program must complete four courses and a research project.

The four courses must include substantive coverage of the general field of law & social science (a perspectives component) and a methodological approach to law & social science (the methodology component). Often, these two requirements may be satisfied by one course. For the 2003-04 academic year, the Colloquium on Empirical Legal Studies will satisfy both the perspectives and methodological requirements. The Colloquium meets on Thursdays at 4:15 at the Law School, beginning on Thursday, September 4, 2003. The instructors for the Colloquium are Professors Janice Nadler and James Lindgren. The following speakers are scheduled for the Colloquium:

Sept 18: Randy Roth, Ohio State University
Oct 2 John Monahan, University of Virginia, "Risk and Race"
Oct 16 Robert MacCoun, University of California, Berkeley
Oct 30 Gary Wells, Iowa State University
Nov 13 Gregory Caldeira
Dec 2 Lisa Bernstein, University of Chicago

You may take this course for credit either by enrolling directly in the course, if you are in the Certificate Program, or by enrolling in a 477 with Professor Robert Nelson and participating in the course as if you were enrolled. See [*] for more information and instructions on enrolling through the 477 route. In addition, students who are interested in auditing the Colloquium should contact the Professor Nadler directly, at jnadler@law.northwestern.edu.

In Perspectives on Law and Social Science, students examine the ways in which social science contributes to the study of law, using a casebook of materials specially designed for the course by the ABF research staff.

A description of the Research methods course is available here; a description of the Perspectives course is available online

Students may enroll in the topical seminars offered by the Program each year, and these courses vary (view a description of courses offered in past years) Students interested in particular substantive areas may make special arrangements to take another course at the Law School in lieu of one of the two topical seminars.

In addition to these four courses, the program provides instruction on the basics of legal research. Participants will receive training on LEXIS and/or Westlaw, electronic databases used by law students. We also will arrange for students to be instructed on the principles of basic case and statutory legal research.

During the academic year of the Certificate Program, students are expected to engage in a research project. The project may be undertaken initially in satisfaction of course requirements for one of the four courses or may be the result of individual research supervised by a faculty member. The research product may take the form of a paper of publishable quality or a dissertation proposal.