Professor Jim Tierney is participating in an initiative led by Georgetown Law School Project on State and Local Government Policy and Law (SALPAL) [contact Prof. Meryl Chertoff], and with the participation and assistance of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAGTRI) [contact Faisal Sheikh].

This page of StateAG.org contains syllabi and other curricular materials being collected as part of this initiative

Collection of Sample Syllabi

Boston College School of Law
Attorney General Externship and Seminar (5 credits)
Fall 2020
Professors Thomas A. Barnico and James A. Sweeney
Download Syllabus ▷

Georgetown University
The Role of the State Attorney General
Spring 2020 (2 Credits)
Prof. Heidi Feldman
Download Syllabus ▷

Harvard Law School
The Role of the State Attorney General
Spring 2021 (2 credits)
Professors Peter Brann and James E. Tierney
Download Syllabus ▷

Scalia Law School, George Mason Unversity
Law 624: State Attorneys General Seminar
Spring 2021 (2 Credits)
Instructors Lynne Ross and David Blake
Download Syllabus ▷

University of Chicago
Spring 2021 (2 Credits)
Professors. Lisa Madigan and Michael Scodro
Download Syllabus ▷

University of Indiana
B524: Representing the State
Fall, 2017 (2 Credits)
Instructor Indiana SG Tom Fisher
Download Syllabus ▷

“The Role of the Attorney General”

New textbook on H2O OpenCasebook

August 28, 2020

Below you will find a link to my new online textbook entitled “The Role of the State Attorney General.”

The book reflects my view that the office of attorney general is a unique and positive part of our justice system. The textbook is non partisan and suitable for use on government computers. Everything in this book is free and open without attribution.

The book is twice the size of a twelve week law school course and is designed to provide trusted materials and sources and then allow the teacher to modify materials as appropriate.

For more information and to adapt this course for your own teaching, please contact me at jtierney@law.harvard.edu.

Taking states seriously: new frontiers of public law

Posting by Dan Rodriquez, former Dean of Northwestern Law School

Friday, January 3, 2020

One of the most interesting and revelatory new connections I forged during my post-decanal sabbatical adventure was with Mr. James Tierney. Teaching currently at the Harvard Law School, Jim is the former attorney general of Maine -- and not just any AG, but someone who has been described as "America's 51st attorney general." Passionate, brilliant, and energetic, Jim is an evangelist for curricular attention to state public law. He explains, rightly, that most of our students will become deeply engaged, in one way or another, with state and local legal institutions. These institutions (take the state judiciary as just one obvious example) function in the long shadow of state political institutions. Lawyers permeate these institutions and the work of lawyers on behalf of clients, whether for private pecuniary interest or the public interest broadly defined, is deeply enmeshed into state legal and political structures.

To the end of enriching student learning, both doctrinal and experiential, Jim and a number of other resolute colleagues have developed meaningful courses in this space. State constitutional law, which is experiencing a nice renaissance, and local government law are obvious examples. Less obvious are traditional courses which would benefit from such exposure to the work of, inter alia, the state executive branch and also the network of relationships among state agencies, state courts, and general purpose local governments. Students could (and perhaps should) be exposed to these issues in the first year private law core, including torts, contracts, and property.

Tierney, who has walked this walk at Columbia and Harvard Law Schools, among others, has also developed a web of resources for current state AGs. The stateag.org site … gives one a flavor of a rich bevy of programs and initiatives that assist state lawyer-leaders and also communicate, and not too subtly, the message that understanding the mechanisms of state government is increasingly important.

At the level of tactics, we ought to look for ways of connecting these professional opportunities with law school curricula, and even academic scholarship. There is, of course, imaginative and sophisticated work in local government law, some of which connects to state public law themes rather directly. And state con law, as mentioned above, is an active scholarly field with good growth potential. What Tierney's initiatives, propelled (as I can testify first-hand) by a remarkable lawyer with boundless energy, point to is a marriage between ambitious public law academics and their law school homes on one side of the aisle and seasoned AGs and other public officials who are committed to working within the domain of academic culture to fertilize this field of state public law.

Posted by Dan Rodriguez on January 3, 2020 at 12:32 PM at ProfsBlawg: Daniel Rodriguez

Panels & Talks

AALS Open Source Program

2019 AALS Annual Meeting

Panel

January 4, 2019
8:30 am - 10:15 am
Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Magazine Room, 3rd Floor

State Attorneys General focus on today’s most controversial legal issues. Beyond the headlines of state challenges to the Obama and Trump administrations, the Attorney General’s docket includes state constitutional law, federal courts, consumer protection, tort litigation, criminal justice, financial regulation, antitrust, environmental law, civil rights, nonprofit corporations, and labor law. Attorneys General and their staff also confront unique ethics issues of client identity, confidentiality, and use of outside counsel. Thus, courses on the Attorneys General offer a microcosm of the entire public law curriculum. This panel discussion will discuss ways in which law schools can integrate the role of the Attorney General into the curriculum, including full courses, clinics, and class sessions that feature this important work. It will feature advice from pioneers in the field, including former and current state officials who are bringing their experiences into the classroom.

Speakers

  • Peter Brann, Harvard Law School

  • Heidi L. Feldman, Georgetown University Law Center

  • Mr. Thomas M. Fisher, Office of Solicitor General, State of Indiana

  • Carolyn Shapiro, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology

  • Ms. Amy Tenney Curren, National Association of Attorneys General

  • Jim Tierney, Harvard Law School

Moderator: Anthony Johnstone, Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana

Download: Open Source Program Session: Resources (slides) [PDF, 10 MB]

MDL at 50

 
 

In October, 2018, the Center on Civil Justice hosted MDL at 50, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Multidistrict Litigation Statute. The conference included a panel on The State Role and State Attorneys-General with a talk by the Director of the Harvard Law School Attorney General Clinic, James Tierney, who also served as the Attorney General of Maine on the value of teaching about AG's in law school.

Moderator:

• Abbe Gluck, Professor, Yale Law School

Panelists:

• Natalie Ludaway, Chief Deputy Attorney General, Washington, DC Attorney General

• David Nachman, Senior Enforcement Counsel, New York Attorney General's Office

• Luther Strange, former Senator, United States Senate; former Attorney General, Alabama

• James Tierney, Lecturer at Law, Harvard Law School; former Attorney General, Maine

The conference was co-hosted by the Center on Civil Justice at NYU Law School and the Liman and Solomon Centers at Yale Law School.

Resources