Upper-Level Reading Groups

Upper-level JD and LLM students can enroll in reading groups led by our JSD students and one of this year's Distinguished Scholars in Residence. The groups, of no more than 12 students, will meet four times during the spring semester to discuss readings or other materials related to a topic of special interest to the JSD convener(s).

The idea is to provide small groups of students the opportunity to get to know each other, in the context of discussing interesting topics that range well beyond the Law School curriculum. Participation is, of course, entirely optional.

A description and meeting details of each Upper-Level Reading Group is provided below.

Registration

To sign-up for an Upper-Level Reading Group, please submit a response to the Spring 2026 Upper-Level Reading Groups Sign-Up form by January 23.

Higher Education in Crisis

Leader: Michael Schill, Distinguished Scholar in Residence
 

Wednesdays, 7:00-8:30 p.m.
Location: TBA
Meeting Dates: 2/18, 3/25, 4/8
 

While "crisis" is an overused term, it is hard not to characterize the state of higher education in America as in crisis.  Trust in universities and colleges has plummeted  for over a decade.  This is partly attributable to rising tuitions (at least with respect to "sticker" prices), job outcomes, and growing political polarization and a sense that universities do not reflect the views of much of American people.  With the protests and encampments that took place related to the conflict in the Middle East and outbreaks of antisemitism on campuses, the crisis has deepened culminating in President Trump's coercive efforts to freeze research funding and potentially limit institutional autonomy.
 

This reading group will be led by Michael Schill, President Emeritus  of Northwestern University and the University Oregon and former Dean Emeritus of the University of Chicago Law School and UCLA School of Law.  The readings will include chapters and articles on the forces shaping higher education, testimony before Congress, and recent court cases including President and Fellows of Harvard College v. United States Department of Health and Human Services.  

Re-Orienting the U.S. Antimonopoly Tradition

JSD Leader: Junhao Chen
 

Wednesdays, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Location: TBD
Meeting Dates: 2/11, 3/4, 3/25, 4/8
 

This reading group provides an opportunity to read, discuss, and think about the reorientation of the U.S. antimonopoly tradition. We will meet four times, with the fourth session’s topic determined by participants. The first session examines the Neo-Brandeisian movement and the America First Antitrust (as it unfolds). The second session addresses the recent antitrust debate over incorporating racial and gender equality into enforcement actions. Readings may include short excerpts from works by Hiba Hafiz, Gregory Day, and Bailey Sanders. The core question is whether antitrust law can address “democracy’s deficits” by transforming into small-c constitutional law or anti-discrimination law. Institutionally, we will consider whether “racing and gendering” antitrust can harm the agency in the long run, given the Supreme Court’s increasing skepticism toward the administrative state. The third session looks at the current administration’s efforts to vindicate First Amendment values (“competition in the marketplace of ideas”) through antitrust enforcement. We will read short excerpts from FTC’s proposed consent decree in Omnicom Group Inc., DOJ’s amicus in Children’s Health Defense et al. v. Washington Post et al., and Daniel Francis’ Post-Profit Antitrust. How do we make sense of “competition” in the marketplace of ideas? Is it the same as “competition on the merits”? If so, how do we shore up the enforcement actions to promote “competition of ideas” in the current antitrust framework? Potential topics for the fourth session include the bipartisan rhetoric of “smallness” in antitrust enforcement; antitrust and national competitiveness; green antitrust (M&A in the oil industry and ESG); the “labor antitrust paradox”; the role of presidential administration in antitrust enforcement; antitrust federalism (e.g., states’ unfair competition laws regulating global platforms; states’ challenges to national mergers); the FTC as an embattled “independent agency” and the recent proposal of “One Agency Act;” acqui-hiring, Europe’s ex ante antitrust regulations as alternatives (e.g., DMA); and, of course, the inevitable Big Tech. In addition to short excerpts from law reviews, our readings may include blog posts, case law, and current court documents. Readings will be capped at roughly 30 pages.

What Computers (and Some Lawyers) Still Can’t Do

JSD Leader: Aleksandra Wawrzyszczuk
 

Tuesdays, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Location: TBD
Meeting Dates: 2/10, 3/3, 3/31, 4/7
 

Is legal reasoning a skilled interpretive art, or is it merely a complex set of rules waiting to be processed by a superior neural network? In 2008, the idea of ‘robot lawyers’ was highly speculative science fiction. In 2025, with AI-powered tools progressing from drafting boilerplates to mimicking legal analysis, the debate has been revitalised, framing Large Language Models as an existential threat to the legal profession.
 

This group is for students interested in the intersection of technology, jurisprudence, and philosophy of mind who want to master the arguments that will define the future of legal practice.
 

Looking beyond the tech headlines, we will revisit the foundational debates in jurisprudence and philosophy of mind to understand the nature of digital disruption and its impact on the law. Starting with Hubert Dreyfus’ landmark critique of the limitations of computational logic, we will examine what might make legal reasoning an inherently humanist endeavour.
 

Readings will be curated as short excerpts from thinkers such as Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Martha Nussbaum and Lon Fuller, and podcast alternatives will be provided to ensure you can contribute to the conversation regardless of your schedule.
 

Sessions schedule (subject to change):
Session 1: The Mechanical Jurist: Can and should law be reduced to a set of if-then statements?

Session 2: Following the Rules, Interpreting the Law: What is legal intelligence (and why is it valuable)?


Session 3: Knowing ‘How’, Knowing ‘What’: On the merits of professional intuition.


Session 4: The Digital Future of Law: Empathy, Equity, Accountability.

From Ely to Dixon: Navigating the Democratic Dilemmas of Judicial Review

JSD Leaders: Mateo Merchán Duque & Jorge Gaxiola Lappe
 

Wednesdays, 7:00-8:30 p.m.
Location: TBD
Meeting Dates: 2/18, 3/4, 3/11, 4/1
 

The purpose of this reading group is to explore the contemporary discourse surrounding the role of courts in enforcing democracy. The longstanding debate over the legitimacy of judicial review often falls short of addressing the current challenges courts face in balancing their responsibility to protect democracy with the risk of undermining and encroaching on the democratic process through adjudication. The traditional procedural and substantive divide between political constitutionalists and constitutional legal scholars proves limited in determining both what courts should do as enforcers of democracy and how they should fulfill that role. This connects to questions about reasoning and remedies, as well as broader themes concerning institutional capacity, tone, and voice.
 

In this context, the seminal work of John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust, has garnered increasing attention from scholars worldwide, prompting a comparative examination of this theory that emphasizes the role of courts as protectors of political participation channels and minorities insulated from the political process. One of the most recent and substantive accounts building on Ely’s work is Rosalind Dixon’s Responsive Judicial Review (RJR), which seeks to articulate a delicate balance between judicial reasoning and remedy design, as well as the dysfunctions of democracy that courts must confront.
 

In this reading group, we will explore the theoretical foundations of RJR, starting with Ely’s work and systematically addressing each argument Dixon presents and the criticisms they have received. We will place these ideas within the context of current court practices and critically analyze Dixon’s proposals, aiming to better understand the role of courts in addressing democratic dysfunctions and the institutional features—such as rules of appointment and accountability mechanisms—needed to accomplish this. In this way, we will examine the preconditions for the theory, its limitations, and question how the theory applies or needs to be adapted to various contexts and jurisdictions, including supranational courts.
 

Session 1: Ely and the representation-reinforcement approach

In this session, we examine Ely’s core proposal in Democracy and Distrust, addressing questions like its main argument, whether it offers a normative theory of constitutional adjudication, its limitations, and its influence beyond the US.
 

Session 2: Dixon’s Responsive Judicial Review – Democratic Foundations

This session examines Dixon’s Responsive Judicial Review in detail. Key questions include: What democracy conception underpins her theory? How does it influence her judicial approach? Is RJR neo-Elyan? Does it shed light on current democracy and courts debates?
 

Session 3: Dixon’s Responsive Judicial Review – Courts and Democratic Responsiveness

In this session, we explore Dixon’s core argument in RJR, examining its application in courts’ reasoning and remedy design. We also consider whether cases like Dobbs, the Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments doctrine, and South African structural litigation truly exemplify responses, non-responses, and unresponsiveness within her theory.
 

Session 4: Dixon’s Responsive Judicial Review – Responsive Judging and Comparative Constitutional Theory

In this session, we will discuss the preconditions for the judicial review involved in RJR and recent scholarly challenges, especially from critics who analyzed her work in symposia across Australia, India, Europe, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina. We will examine Roberto Gargarella's critique and Dixon's recent responses.

LPE of International Economic Law

JSD Leader: Henry Federer
 

Tuesdays, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Location: TBD
Meeting Dates: 2/10, 2/24, 3/10, 3/24
 

The international economic order is in crisis. Tariffs and trade wars have taken center stage, long-rejected policies have become new again, the WTO is under attack, and tensions between the world’s superpowers are rising. At the same time, the old status quo is being rejected; free markets and free trade have come under criticism for deepening inequality, accelerating the climate crisis, and failing to provide the promised material benefits to Global South countries. The Law and Political Economy (LPE) movement aims to understand how law has shaped existing political and economic frameworks, and how law can be used to create new ones. It has two main prongs. The first prong identifies and challenges the “neoliberal” premises that undergird many fields of law. The second prong presents an alternative legal agenda that is focused on creating a more egalitarian and democratic society. In this reading group, we will apply the LPE approach to international economic law, with a focus on international trade law. Materials will include articles, blog posts, and book chapters covering legal, historical, and political topics. Throughout, we will consider questions about the relationship between international economic law and contemporary issues. We will also discuss what an alternative vision for international economic law looks like.

Law, Technology and Nature

JSD Leaders: Ally Potamianos & Lauren Pavli
 

Thursdays, 7:00-8:30 p.m.
Location: TBD
Meeting Dates: 2/26, 3/12, 3/26, 4/9
 

In this reading group we will read interdisciplinary texts to (re)think the relationship between law, technology and nature. Law often assumes that humans have the potential to control technology and the natural world. But scholarly interventions from non-legal perspectives challenge that assumption. We plan to read the below texts to open up a discussion about law and human relationships with nature and technology. 1. Nature/technology/society Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1990). Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, "Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation,” 3 Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1 (2014). 2. Mapping as technology, mapping as law Shannon Mattern, “Mapping’s Intelligent Agents,” Places Journal, September 2017. https://doi.org/10.22269/170926. Surabhi Ranganathan, “Visualizing Climate Loss: The Law of the Sea,” https://histecon.fas.harvard.edu/climate-loss/lawofthesea/sinking_states.html 3. Technology, conflict and change in the energy transition Elizabeth Fisher, Environmental Law as ‘Hot’ Law, 25 Journal of Environmental Law 247 (2013). Alison Gocke, Public Utility’s Potential, 133 Yale Law Journal 2773 (2024). Read pgs. 2790-2799, 2805-2813 only. 4. Beyond technology and technocratic fixes Sheila Jasanoff, Just Transitions: A Humble Approach to Global Energy Futures, 35 ENERGY RES. & SOC. SCI.