Penn State Dickinson Law Electives (LWELA)

This course surveys U.S. health law, focusing primarily on health insurance, and the organization and regulation of healthcare providers, organizations, and industry, which are the essential areas of health law practice. The first third of the course focuses on health insurance. Public health insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are covered first before moving onto the Affordable Care Act and the regulation of private insurance. The remainder of the course covers topics such as regulation of healthcare entities and providers; tax exemption requirements for hospitals; healthcare fraud and abuse; and antitrust issues in the provision of healthcare.

This course surveys the law of unincorporated business entities. The agency law part of the course will focus on the agency relationship and, more specifically, the duties and obligations of principals and agents to one another and to third parties. Agency law concepts apply to LLCs, partnerships and other business entities. The partnership law part of the course will cover the fiduciary obligations of partners, partners' management and property rights, and partnership dissolutions. The final part of the course will examine limited liability entities, with emphasis on the formation, organization, and dissolution of limited liability companies.

This course primarily addresses organization and operation of commercial organizations in the Anglo-American community. Preliminarily, sole proprietorships and partnerships are considered, after which corporations-for- profit are emphasized with some attention to business trusts and non-profit corporations. In the corporate context, duties of promoters, directors, officers, and other insiders are considered. Availability in the U.S. of the derivative action is treated in terms of both unincorporated and corporate forms of organization. Also treated are the basics of securities regulation at the federal and state levels in the U.S. and the provincial level in Canada.

This course focuses on the law concerning the physician-patient relationship as well as bioethical issues that arise in that relationship. It covers the duty to treat, informed consent, confidentiality, medical malpractice, refusal of life-sustaining medical treatment, physician-assisted suicide, experimental medical treatment, and more.

This course will address legal and regulatory issues that arise during the process of developing land, such as using land for commercial, residential, agricultural, industrial, or other land uses. Land use law has common themes in all states, and we will address these themes by reading materials and cases from many states. Students will learn how local governments obtain authority to regulate land use and how these governments plan for the growth of a municipality and regulate that growth. We will also explore the processes that landowners and developers follow to obtain local or state government approval for land development projects and the legal tools used by opponents of land use change.

This course is designed to teach students about the veterans benefit system, by analyzing the statutes and regulations that govern that system, studying the administrative agency tasked with applying the law and distributing the benefits, and analyzing both administrative and judicial decisions interpreting those laws. Students will study the policy goals of the system, the role of attorney representation of veterans as it has changed over time, how to be an effective advocate for the veteran in this system, and the challenges the system faces due to the unprecedented number of claims filed and appealed

A listing of the major topics to be covered with an approximate length of time allotted for their discussion