This class requires a lot of work, but it's very rewarding and I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you have the slightly bit of interest in the law, I think you'll like it too. He discusses very interesting and controversial topics like the right to die, the right to abortion, freedom of religion and others. There are a lot of Supreme Court readings you need to get through that you cannot leave till the last minute. If you study and understand the concepts and the legal rationale behind them, you shouldn't find the midterm or final challenging at all. It is mostly questions discussing why a certain case had a certain outcome, and one semi-essay question where you get a hypothetical scenario and you need to apply the concepts you learned in class. You get to watch movies and interesting videos and have really rich discussions in class! The professor is also pretty objective and doesn't bring in his own personal opinions to class, which is pretty refreshing at UCLA.

Good luck with this course! He’s a great professor and the cases are interesting.

Professor Huppin is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA. He's funny and truly cares about students understanding concepts well. He stays long after class to talk with students and holds consistent office hours for questions about course material and beyond. His assignments are graded generously, and midterms/finals are fair. I highly recommend taking this class to learn about legal communication with such a great professor! Take the review below me on him being patronizing and sexist with a grain of salt. As a girl of minority background, I can confidently say that he has never made any comments of that nature.

Hopefully he has changed his approach to teaching but when I took this course, he was sexist, patronizing, and degrading. He used to snap at the female students after class for asking more than one question and seemed to especially favor one male student, who had experience working for a law-affiliated organization who he would constantly mention/praise during multiple lectures (clearly he had favorites). If you are a white, heterosexual male then you should do just fine with Huppin but if not, good luck! Don't be fooled by his fake ass speech that he gives during the very first lecture of how he cares about students, he does not give a shit about the majority of his students and thinks very highly of himself.

Professor Huppin is great and the lectures are all pretty interesting. He encourages a lot of debate and discussion in class and really encourages you to think deeply about the issues you go over in the class. The material itself is not too difficult to understand, but there are some issues that are pretty detailed and require you to study them very well. Exams are tough, mostly because of the multiple choice questions, but the short answer/essay questions are pretty straightforward and should be no surprise as long as you've been attending lecture. Response papers are also pretty straightforward and are not difficult at all. Also, you NEED to do the reading because he pulls a lot of multiple choice questions from there. The online readings are pretty short and are usually just news articles, but the readings from the course reader are dense (they're chapters from a legal textbook), so don't wait until the last minute to do those because they take forever to get through! They're not hard reads, I think because it's supposed to be a pretty basic introductory legal textbook, but they're just really long and really detailed. Huppin is a little tough but he's fair and he is a great professor/person, so as long as you do your part with attending lectures, keeping up with the readings and studying you should do fine. I highly recommend taking this class!

TLDR; super interesting, great professor, but requires a lot of studying.

The grading for this class is made up of two thought papers (worth 10% each) and midterm and final (40% each). The thought papers were around 3-5 pages. The midterm and final had multiple choice (I think 25-30) and short answer/short essay questions (around 6-8).

I loved Professor Huppin and this class. The material was SO interesting, and I think that anyone, regardless of major or background, would enjoy it. You get to learn about Supreme Court decisions on things like pre-trial processes, gay marriage, abortion, and religious freedom. We also watched two movies during the quarter. Huppin is engaging and truly cares about student learning. I could tell he put in thought about how we might learn best and ways to keep class interesting and relevant.

All that being said, the class is not easy. You have to memorize a TON of court cases and what their implications for the law are. There was quite a bit of reading (from the course reader and online articles he posts), and although a lot of it overlaps with lecture, not all of it does. When Huppin says that he will test you on material from the book that's not in lecture, he's not lying. Albeit it will probably only be 2-3 multiple choice questions, so you could get by with not reading if you're okay with getting a B or C on the exams. I also used the reading to clarify cases that I didn't understand from lecture. I highly recommend making a study guide throughout the quarter from the slides and reading because if you begin studying too close to the exam you will not have enough time. It is a lot.

I think the exams were pretty fair. A couple tough/specific questions, but overall if you go to class, read, and study, you should be fine. The thought paper prompts definitely required some thinking but I don't think they graded too harshly on them.

Pro-tip: I'd recommend buying/renting the Epstein and Walker textbook rather than the course reader. The course reader is literally just specific chapters excerpted from the textbook and is more expensive. I bought the textbook and it works exactly the same and I wasn't missing any information. The page numbers he gives correspond to the textbook.

I am selling the course reader for this class for $20-- it only has 1 or 2 markings. If you're interested text me at **********

Professor Huppin was recommended to me by a senior and I'm so glad I took this course. I am interested in law school and this class helped to solidify that interest. The only required readings are online articles (fairly short) and the course reader. The course reader isn't too expensive, but it is necessary since a decent amount of multiple choice questions and a few short answer questions come directly from the reading.

Huppin is really funny and keeps the lectures interesting and engaging. If you're interested in law, you'll love this class - if not, still a really awesome class with a professor who cares about his students and will do everything he can to make sure you understand the material and can apply it well.

There is a midterm, a final, and two short papers throughout the quarter. The papers are "thought papers" based on a handful of readings or a film you watch in class. They are fun to write and easy to do well on. The midterm might be a little tough if you are taking this as one of your first upper division classes, but if you are used to upper divs it's quite manageable in terms of what he expects you to know. The final is a little trickier and requires more outside application than memorization, but I personally did better on the final since the material in the second half of the class was very interesting to me. The final is not cumulative.

Extremely challenging course. Too bad it's practically required. Otherwise I would not have taken it. Knowledgable guy but the lectures are bland.

huppin is a chill guy, but his lectures are boring as a motherfucker and it's really important to listen to them (at least for the first half of the class). some of the cases he uses aren't famous cases so it's harder to look it up -- so you need to pay attention, but it's super hard to pay attention. his tests are annoying and overly specific but if you really really study the readings it won't be that bad. the class isn't that bad, it's pretty interesting if you like law and you can definitely learn a lot, but if you want to do well you need to pay attention in class and actually do all the readings.