COMM 170

Legal Communication

Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Review of Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, including analysis of Miranda warnings, police interrogation procedures, coerced confessions, and why innocent people confess. Examination of jury behavior, reliability of eyewitness testimony, and fair trials. Mock trial presentation. Intimate expression and right to define one's own concept of existence and meaning, using examples of evolving rulings on same-sex marriage, abortion, and right to die. Use and misuse of grand juries in police misconduct cases, including Eric Brown, Michael Garner, and Breonna Taylor cases. Questions of judicial activism, legal precedent, and standards of review. Letter grading.

Units: 4.0
1 of 1
Overall Rating 4.1
Easiness 3.0/ 5
Clarity 3.9/ 5
Workload 2.8/ 5
Helpfulness 4.0/ 5
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - [spring 2020 covid online quarter] Once Huppin subbed for one of my classes in Winter quarter I knew I had to take him. He was fantastic but I'll wager he would have been better in person. His teaching style revolves around asking students to discuss and critically think about the cases and legal debate issues he brings up in class. The same 10 students out of 100 ended up being the only ones talking week to week (you bet I was in the 90). He places an emphasis on showing up to class and engaging yourself (he only sent class recordings to students in other timezones/good reason for missing, he didn't post it for your general review/replay). If you don't listen and take notes, you will miss things, and his slides purposely only guide his lecture and cannot be relied on to help you study. That being said, idk if was because of that, or because of his engaging, very human and sensitive approach to the new circumstances of this quarter, % class attendance was really high every time. He also adjusted the class to talk about current events with COVID and BLM and stuff, very take it as you go guy. There was a good amount of reading, which I didn't do very sincerely, but if you do scan over it, it lines up with the lectures pretty well and will help you do well on the tests. (Ah, I remember he said he usually assigns a course reader which I assume would be $$ but this quarter he uploaded everything online so I escaped paying for that ig, nice.) He also assigned 2 movies which were a good time, 8/10 (also gave us off class on the days we should watch those on our own, I think he usually shows them in class). Grade was based on two tests. The questions to be honest weren't very straight-proceeding from the class material and really wanted to see whether you were thinking, which I think should be the point of school, but made it hard to figure out what to say in order to get the points. In all, definitely take this class, but know that Huppin's teaching style almost certainly suits in-person the best.
AD
1 of 1

Adblock Detected

Bruinwalk is an entirely Daily Bruin-run service brought to you for free. We hate annoying ads just as much as you do, but they help keep our lights on. We promise to keep our ads as relevant for you as possible, so please consider disabling your ad-blocking software while using this site.

Thank you for supporting us!