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Regulation and Private Law: Torts, Property, Contracts

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign via Coursera

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Overview

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This course introduces the legal rules that govern regulation and private relationships in business and everyday life. You will learn how administrative agencies make and enforce rules, and how courts and transparency laws hold them accountable. You will also study private law, including negligence, intentional torts, strict and products liability, immunities, personal and intellectual property, real property, trusts, wills, and estates. Finally, you will explore contracts, business associations, antitrust, and bankruptcy, and how these doctrines shape risk, planning, and decision-making for organizations.

Syllabus

Module 1: Administrative Law
- You will learn how legislatures delegate authority to administrative agencies, how the notice-and-comment rulemaking process works, and how agencies investigate, enforce, and adjudicate disputes within constitutional due process limits. You will also learn how courts review agency action, how FOIA and the Government in the Sunshine Act promote transparency, how civil service rules govern public employees, and how agency regulation affects business planning and compliance.
Module 2: The Tort of Negligence
- You will learn how tort law protects against harm and the four elements a plaintiff must prove in a negligence claim: duty, breach, causation, and damages. You will also learn how courts apply the reasonable person standard, negligence per se, and res ipsa loquitur, and how defenses such as assumption of risk and comparative negligence allocate responsibility. Finally, you will see how negligence law shapes business risk management and insurance.
Module 3: Intentional Torts, Strict Liability, and Products Liability
- You will learn how intentional torts protect bodily integrity, reputation, privacy, and property, including battery, defamation, fraud, and trespass, and which defenses apply. You will also learn how strict liability and products liability hold parties responsible for harm regardless of fault, and how vicarious liability, negligent hiring, and premises liability extend responsibility to employers and property owners. Finally, you will explore toxic torts, workers' compensation, and civil rights claims under Section 1983.
Module 4: Special Tort Situations, Immunity, and Modern Developments in Tort Law
Module 5: Personal Property and Intellectual Property
- You will learn how private property is classified and protected, how ownership of personal property is acquired and transferred, and how the law treats lost and abandoned property and bailments. You will also learn how patents, copyrights, and trademarks protect inventions, creative works, and brands, and how these forms of intellectual property work together as a layered strategy for capturing value from innovation.
Module 6: Real Property
- You will learn how real property law developed from the English feudal system, including fee simple and life estates, and how title is transferred through deeds, mortgages, and forms of shared ownership. You will also learn how landlord-tenant law, planning, zoning, and eminent domain regulate the use and taking of land, and how externalities and the Coase Theorem explain how property law allocates rights, costs, and risks among private parties and the state.
Module 7: Trusts, Wills, and Estates
- You will learn how trusts developed and how modern revocable, irrevocable, and living trusts separate legal and equitable ownership for estate planning and asset protection. You will also learn how wills, intestate succession, and probate work, how estate, gift, and inheritance taxes apply, and why these rules affect business continuity, ownership transfers, and leadership succession.
Module 8: Contracts and Business Law
- You will learn how contracts are formed and enforced, including offer, acceptance, consideration, capacity, legality, remedies for breach, and the role of the Uniform Commercial Code in sales of goods. You will also learn about the main forms of business associations, how antitrust and bankruptcy law regulate competition and financial distress, and how information cascades and moral hazard help explain systemic business failures such as the Madoff fraud and the 2008 financial crisis.

Taught by

Jennie Pahre

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