Return to Sports Law 2012 main page, www.uiowa.edu/~cyberlaw/sla12
 
 

[NOTE: December 14, 2011; January 4, 2012, Jan. 11. By checking these dates when you regularly return to this page you will know if it has been modified in some way since you last saw it.

Purpose, Orientation and Format of Course General Information: The Basics Grades

First Weeks' Assignments (other than readings) Readings for First Weeks' Overview Reading Assignments

What is "Sports Law"? No single law school course can give you the specialized knowledge and skills required in the practice of a given legal specialty -- the knowledge and skills that can only come from five or ten years of practice. Sports Law is no exception. Thus, the goal of this course (and the casebook we use) is simply to "demystify" the wide range of sports law subjects for you sufficiently that, if and when you decide you do need to get into some of these issues more deeply, and you've kept your casebook as a basic starting resource, you will have access to enough to know what you know, know what you don't know, and know how to proceed to find the answers. Especially if you have a willing mentor close at hand, you will be sufficiently prepared to provide useful assistance to that mentor, and to begin to include sports law in your practice.

There is no "must cover" material in this course. It is not a prerequisite for other courses, it's not part of the bar exam, and it's not a part of every lawyer's practice. As a result, there are no "must cover" portions of our casebook in terms of subject matter; obviously there is a "must cover" need to cover a semester's worth of material. Moreover, if we were to thoroughly cover "the subject" -- every page of the casebook plus more -- we would need at least two semesters.

So we have to pick and choose anyhow. Given this flexibility, you are certainly able (though not required) to have an impact on what we do, and do not, emphasize. Just pass your suggestions and preferences along to the instructor (for email see below, in General Information: The Basics, under "Office Hours and Contacts). Thus, the "Reading Assignments" are our "default" -- that is, if there are no alternative student preferences that's what we'll aim to cover (subject to possible revisions by the instructor, with advance notice).

By the time this semester is over we will have come at "Sports Law" from a number of directions. As you'll discover, "Sports Law" involves much more than "the law." Statutes, regulations and court decisions are interwoven in our casebook with the story of sports as told by authors with a detailed knowledge of the leagues, owners, coaches, players and fans over the last 150 years. In addition to the history of sports, we'll also be studying the business and economics of sports.

Sports Law offers you the opportunity to review and apply what you have learned from other courses you've already taken -- or an introduction to courses you will take. Contracts, torts, property, procedure, constitutional law, trademark, copyright, right of publicity, antitrust, labor law -- the list is long of the courses and doctrines from which lawyers have drawn in creating the otherwise unique body of material we call Sports Law.

But you'll also be introduced to, or reminded of, the fact that there are many ways in which we regulate human behavior beyond what we lawyers think of as "law" (i.e., Constitution, acts of Congress and state legislatures, decisions of courts, administrative agencies' regulations and decisions). For example, faculty and student behavior at our law school is regulated in part by the "Student Handbook." Beyond that, there are the unwritten but understood standards of acceptable and unacceptable behavior among students, or within your home town, church, or other organizations -- both face-to-face, and online. (Some of these standards are currently evolving, e.g.: Is it OK to talk on a cell phone while walking down the street? If you were walking and visiting with someone when the phone rang? To update your Facebook page during class? To text, or check your email, while sitting with a date in a restaurant, waiting to be served?)

Chapter One may be your first introduction to an illustration of a non-law "law" called "private association law." Much of what governs relationships between owners, coaches, players, and others is not what law students think of as law. It may be regulations of the NCAA, or contracts signed by schools and athletes. It comes from the "constitutions," rules, collective bargaining and other agreements among the stakeholders in professional sports. This is what we call self-made, private association law. So a part of what we'll explore in Sports Law is the extent to which legislatures and courts are willing to defer, and let the professional sports industry create its own legal system.

What we will be doing in class this semester is founded on four basic beliefs.

(1) No one can "teach you the law." As a drawing instructor told his class of budding architects, "I can't teach you how to draw. I can try to help you learn how to see, but you're going to have to teach yourself how to draw." The same can be said of coaching athletes -- and "teaching" law, including Sports Law. The instructor can try to help you learn how to see -- the issues, the public policy questions, the analogies and metaphors, the flow of an argument -- but you have to teach yourself Sports Law. What you will get back on your investment of time (and money!) in this class in terms of information, understanding, analytical and other skills -- things you can draw upon throughout the rest of your law school experience, bar exam, and future professional career -- are primarily determined by you. You increase your return on that investment by thinking through in advance the possible answers to questions provided in the assigned material; taking notes; coming to class prepared, recognizing the value to you of participating in class discussion, and being eager to do so; taking class notes; weaving reading and class notes into your own personal outline as soon after class as possible, preferably immediately and certainly the same day; and then regularly reviewing and revising that outline.

(2) Like regular deposits in a savings account, or dollar cost averaging in a mutual fund, the knowledge and skills you are putting away in your brain bank will also provide compound interest and a return on investment that are greater than linear. The knowledge and skills you are developing are extraordinarily valuable capital assets from which you will need to draw during the next half-century, in other words the entirety of your career. You learn better, and are able to retain and use what you've learned in law school longer, when you learn by doing -- note taking, outline creating, problem solving, speaking up, writing papers -- rather than by just listening, or memorizing. Bear in mind, you won't leave law school with a stethoscope and white coat, a tractor, or a set of dental implements. All you leave with are four skills: a professional ability to carefully read, listen, write and speak -- better than your clients can do it for themselves. The more of it you can do in law school the less concern you'll have when you're doing it with a senior partner, client, or before a judge.

Because there is no final exam, the motive for studying and attending class shift. Comprehending the material will increase your course grade -- insofar as it improves the quality of your contributions to class discussion, and the papers you write. But the primary motive for reading, note taking, and outlining is because you "want to get your money's worth" (literally as well as figuratively) from the course; you want to learn, to master the material, in order that you can increase your "return on investment" from this course over the next half-century. It's no longer because your sole motive is driven by a "grade" on a final and its impact on your GPA.

(3) Based on the instructor's personal experience in practice, and numerous interviews with practicing lawyers over the years, the most valuable thing provided by a legal education, the thing that practice cannot or does not provide, comes back to the basics: the analytical skills we call "thinking like a lawyer," being able to pull the holding from a case, a rule of law from multiple holdings, interpret (or write) legislation, structuring an argument -- or tearing one apart -- along with the basic skills of quality writing. Knowing how to find the restrooms in the courthouse, learning the preferred practices and procedures of an individual firm or court, which forms to use for routine transactions, can be learned more efficiently once on the job. In recent years, some clients have been less willing to pay for, and therefore some partners less willing to provide, on-the-job training of recent law school graduates. Solutions are in the process of being worked out. Meanwhile, results of the instructor's survey of lawyers' opinion remains relatively consistent: it is the basics that only law schools can do, must do, and do best.

Those are some of the reasons why class time will often be devoted to such analytical training, and exploration of the public policy alternatives and issues raised by, or embedded in, legislation and court decisions.

(4) It is helpful at the outset of learning any new body of knowledge and skills to have at least some sense of the entirety of the subject, how and why the pieces fit, before you begin, rather than waiting until the end of the semester when you are "studying for the final." It makes it easier to understand the material as it comes at you,  rather than having little more than a brief moment of clarity at the end. There are links here to both a "Summary of Contents" and the full "Table of Contents" from our casebook -- as well as the coverage of the Supplement from its Table of Contents. The full Table of Contents of your casebook is a great skeleton outline of the subject matter of "sports law" (whether we cover it in class or not) with which to begin your own outline, something you can then fill in as we progress through the book.

(1) Whenever possible, utilize discussion questions from the assigned reading (and occasionally additional questions distributed in advance) during class sessions. The questions are designed to aid your thinking about what you are reading while you are reading it and making reading notes, and to increase the level of your potential participation in class discussion.

(2) Provide you on three occasions throughout the semester a writing exercise due one week from that day. (This time period is based on students' preferences in the past. If a majority of the class prefers some other time period that may be possible.) You will be assigned for the semester (by someone other than your instructor) a "student number," which is the only identification you are to put on each paper. (In other words, the papers will be handled under the law school's standard rules for anonymous grading of final exams.) You will send your papers as attachments to emails addressed to my assistant, Ms. Kelley Winebold. (Email in the standard University of Iowa format: firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu, using kelley-winebold). I will get the papers from her, stripped of any identifying details.

(3) Give you the opportunity to add to the "Illustrative News Stories" Web page items that you find with the aid of the "Online Resources" Web page. This is a way for all of us to relate the issues presented in the text, and class discussions, to what's going on in the world of sports this semester.

(4) To put the entire course in perspective for you, before we start going through the book in detail, the first week or two of class sessions (including the related discussion questions and any written work) will provide an orientation and overview of all of the book's chapters. For more detail on what this will involve see, "Readings for First Weeks' Overview."

Sports Law was first offered again by the University of Iowa College of Law in the spring semester 2011, after a few years' hiatus. Nicholas Johnson was the instructor. This is the IRIS site for the course. The course number is 91:346. It provides three hours of academic credit toward graduation and is again being taught in the spring 2012 by Nicholas Johnson.

Note that the College also usually offers a two-hour seminar, "Legal Issues: Intercollegiate Athletics." This is its description: "Legal issues affecting college and university athletics and athletes; includes drug testing, recruitment, gender equity (Title IX), NCAA regulations, endorsement contracts, coaching contracts, trademark licensing, and broadcasting rights." The course number is 91:661. It provides two hours of academic credit toward graduation for the seminar, and an additional hour (or more) of academic and writing credits for the seminar paper (depending on length). It is is taught by Ann Rhodes.

Although there is of necessity some overlap in the two courses, they differ in their primary focus -- in addition to the obvious distinctions between a regular, three-hour introductory course and a two-hour writing seminar. "Sports Law" primarily focuses on professional sports issues, and "Intercollegiate Athletics" (as the name and seminar description suggest) almost exclusively focuses on college sports issues.

Notice to non-law students. You may be eligible to take this course; whether you are turns on approval from both the law school and your own college or department. The Provost provides, "A student from another college must first get permission from the Dean of Students, who ascertains that the law class is consistent with the goals of the student’s degree program, and from the instructor of the course, who determines the suitability of the course for someone without previous law school experience. This course is offered by the College of Law. Class policies on matters such as requirements, grading, and sanctions for academic dishonesty are governed by the College of Law.  Students wishing to add or drop this course after the law school’s official deadline require the approval of the Dean of the College of Law. Details of the University policy of cross enrollments may be found at http://www.uiowa.edu/~provost/deos/crossenroll.doc."

Class meetings and exam schedule: The class meets Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons for 14 weeks in Room 225, BLB, from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. The first class meeting is Tuesday, January 10. There is no class meeting the Tuesday and Wednesday during Spring Break. The last class is Wednesday, April 19. If the course works out as outlined in "Purpose, Orientation and Format of Course," above, there will be no final exam. If for some reason that does not work as planned (such as students failure to turn in writing assignments, or a lack of adequate class discussion) then of course an exam will be necessary (in which case details will be provided here).

Books:  Our casebook is Paul C Weiler, Gary R Roberts, Roger I. Abrams and Stephen F Ross, Sports and the Law: Text, Cases, Problems (4th ed., 2010, West); the same authors provide Documents and Statutory Supplement to Sports and the Law: Text, Cases and Problems (4th ed., 2010, West) -- both published a year ago (November 2010). Although this Web site makes an effort to provide, on the "Resources" Web page, links to much of the material in the Supplement, it is recommended because (a) not all of its contents can be found on the Internet, and (b) many students will find the convenience of the author's editing of selections, and their collection in a single slim paperback volume, worth the extra marginal cost. Here is the Supplement Table of Contents to give you an idea of its coverage (which you can compare with the material on the Internet linked from the Resources page).

Reading Assignments: Your source for anything you'd ever want to know about this class can be found through the class Web site: http://www.uiowa.edu/~cyberlaw/sla12. The reading assignments are found in links from there: "Readings for First Weeks' Overview" and "Reading Assignments." If you do not have Web access, the documents can be made available to you in hard copy from my assistant, Ms. Kelley Winebold, Room 469 . And be sure to check out "Resources" for links to online sources of general interest, relevance to our assignments, your "Illustrative News Stories" submissions -- and of potential use in looking for jobs after graduation.

Scope and Purpose:  See the first section on this Web page, above, "Purpose, Orientation and Format of Course." As the course description indicates,

"The course involves students in an exploration and understanding of the many ways in which law and lawyers intersect and impact the multi-billion-dollar industry that is high school, collegiate, and professional sports. It will provide a basic legal foundation for those who are merely curious as well as those considering legal representation of players, coaches, teams, leagues, schools, media, sports equipment companies, or other sports related institutions and individuals (or work as an agent). Examples of subjects are: common contractual processes and provisions (league-team, agent-player, player-team; "private association law"), judicial oversight of institutional self-governance and commissioner enforcement (due process), antitrust implications of leagues, labor law (player associations), gender issues, intellectual property (broadcast rights, merchandising; players’ right of publicity and endorsements; equipment), criminal and torts law (injuries; drugs; on and off field)."

Sports Law (SLA11) is one of a cluster of intellectual property courses offered at the University of Iowa College of Law that includes Copyright, Cyber and Electronic Law, Entertainment Law, First Amendment seminars, the Intercollegiate Athletics seminar, above, Introduction to Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks -- among others.  (None is a prerequisite; not all are taught each semester/year.)

Office Hours and Contacts: You should feel free to walk into the instructor's office at any time he's there and the office door is open -- which will be most of the time; appointments aren't necessary. (Of course, if for your convenience you'd prefer to make an appointment for some mutually convenient time, please do so.) The office is BLB 445, with phone 335-9146. Regularly scheduled office hours normally will be Monday, Thursday and Friday, 9:30 to 2:45 (less occasional absence for luncheon seminars). My assistant is Ms. Kelley Winebold; her office is Room 469,  phone 335-9099. The instructor maintains a general Web site, http://www.nicholasjohnson.org (with links to thousands of screens) and a Blog, http://FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com. The best means of communication is email in the standard University of Iowa format: firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu (using Nicholas Johnson).

Attendance:  You are urged to make the effort to be prepared for, attend, and participate in every class.  You probably already do that. But know that the ABA, AALS, University of Iowa and College of Law require that students be in "regular attendance."  For this course, "regular attendance" will be defined as 22 of the 28 (1.5-hour) class sessions (or roughly 78 percent). In other words, there are no "excused" or "unexcused" absences -- just absences. (As friendly advice, though not a requirement, you might want to think about saving some of the permitted absences for semester-end emergencies (e.g., funerals, weddings, fly backs or other obligations -- or fun). Participants attending less than the minimum may be dropped. And of course you cannot receive credit for your contributions to class discussion on days you are not there. An attendance sheet will be distributed each class period for you to initial.

Class Ombudsperson: Comments, suggestions, complaints? I'm available to listen in person, by phone or e-mail. But what if there's a comment or concern you'd like to get to me anonymously? You can do that, too -- by sharing it with the class ombudsperson, someone you and your classmates will elect during the second or third class session.

Exams, Grades: Your course grade will consist of the total credit received throughout the semester on your written work (70%) and your contribution to class discussion, written questions for guests, and the "Illustrative News Stories" (30%). Not incidentally, if the level of student participation and quality of writing warrant, this can enable us to eliminate the need for a final exam and remove some of the restrictions on the instructor (and you!) imposed by a mandatory curve for grades.

This is subject to the following qualification:

The instructor reserves the right to evaluate throughout the semester how well this innovative, experimental approach is working. If in his judgment it is not, there will be a final exam, with advance notice (probably made up of closed book short answer questions and open book essay question/s). It is the instructor's hope and goal that this will not be necessary. If it is necessary, each student's course grade will consist of [i] a proportion determined by the grades on the written work and contributions to class (discussion and news stories), and [ii] the remaining proportion from the student's final exam grade. The proportions of the course grade represented by [i] and [ii] will be determined by the number of weeks during which the written work and class participation approach was working for the entire class, as determined by the instructor, divided by the number of weeks in the semester.

And see "Purpose, Orientation and Format of Course; Grades" and "Class Meetings and Exam Schedule," above. In the event there is a final exam, students in this class may choose, but will not be required, to write their final exams on laptop computers.

Final exam laptop option, per law school administration: "The College of Law offers the option of taking your exams on your laptop. Availability of this option is determined by the instructor for each course. If you have further questions, please see your course syllabus, the Laptop Exam Policies and Procedures document, or the Frequently Asked Questions Web Page.

Software. The College of Law adopted the SofTest software offered by ExamSoft Worldwide. The software is available for purchase at the ISBA Bookstore, room 218.

Reservation:  An effort will be made to provide advance notice of assignments and exams, respond to reasonable suggestions, and minimize changes.  But the instructor reserves the right to make changes believed to be of benefit to students.

Make sure you've carefully read "Purpose, Orientation and Format of Course; Grades," above.

See, "Readings for First Weeks' Overview,"

and don't forget . . .

Your Email Address: Please provide me your preferred (a) first name, and (b) e-mail address (either confirm that you prefer we use your default UI e-mail address, or provide your preferred alternative email address). Email is the quickest and surest way to get class information to you. (If you are unable or unwilling to receive email, other arrangements can be made.)

Personal Bio Writing Assignment (Due: January 16, 2012)

Among the greatest resources of any law school are not only the intellectual quality of its students, but also the diversity of their background and experience. We are particularly blessed at Iowa in that respect. The more we can all know about each other, and the resources we bring to the classroom, the more each of us can take from it. Besides, it's more fun knowing who these folks are with whom you are about to spend 42 hours and more of your life.

So, please hand in (or email) to Ms. Winebold or me before January 16, 2012, 11:30 a.m., a brief, one page essay about yourself that can be shared in a "bio booklet" with other members of the class. This is something that has proved popular with prior classes and that I think you'll also find interesting and worthwhile.

You need not, but may, examine examples of what other students have written in past classes, available from Ms. Winebold. You'll see that some are humorous, most are serious, many use the entire page, others are more brief. We'll put together a comparable booklet for our class, make copies, and give you one -- but limit the distribution to hard copy and for our class members only (i.e., it won't be posted on the Web or otherwise made available to the public).

Obviously, if there is anything you want to keep to yourself you are a skillful enough writer to do so.  There's nothing you must include.

But while you wait for the muse to strike, be aware that the following kinds of things might be interesting and useful:

(1) something of your family, community and upbringing,

(2) early ambitions, goals or professional interests,

(3) college majors, intellectual interests, sports and other activities,

(4) work, travel or other job related experiences,

(5) your current obligations and environment outside of law school (e.g., marital and parental status or other family responsibilities; nature and demands of outside employment; hobbies or other activities),

(6) areas of specialization in law school, student activities, or legal internships,

(7) any experiences working for (or dealing with) professional or intercollegiate sports (as an athlete, other athletic department or professional team role, league, sports media, sports medicine, equipment manufacturer)

(8) future goals, expectations and plans for using your legal education in general and Sports Law in particular,

Format Request.  Please use (1) one page maximum, (2) single spaced, (3) one inch margins, (4) a heading that at least includes your name and date, and (5) any reasonable font.