Timeline and deadlines

January 17 to January 23. Meet with Craig to discuss paper topics.

February 4. Submit a one page or less written description of your term paper. Cite the scientific paper or report on which your paper will focus.

February 29. Submit a 2-5 page outline of your paper. Focus on the most substantive parts of your paper---not the background and introduction.

March 3, 5, 6 & 7. Meet with Craig to discuss your outline.

March 25, April 1, 8 or 15. Six days before the class discussion of your oral presentation, provide me with a draft of your paper, as well as a copy of the scientific paper or report on which it is based. I will distribute these to the class.

Week before your oral presentation. Give a dry run of your presentation to Craig.

April 1, 8, 15 or 22. Oral presentation of your term paper, and class discussion.

May 9, last day of final exams. Final paper due.

Term paper policies

Turn in your outline, rough draft and term paper by emailing it to me at cpease@vermontlaw.edu. In some circumstances, you may have hard copy material that you cannot email. For example, if the scientific paper or report you are working on is only available in hard copy. In this circumstance, turn in the material by placing it in my mailbox on the third floor of Debevoise Hall, and also send me an email stating that you have done this. If you do not send me this email, I will not know to look for additional hard copy materials.

Term paper expectations

Focus on one scientific paper.---Focus your term paper on one specific controversial scientific paper. Conversely, your term paper should not simply review a controversial scientific topic. I want you to explore your chosen scientific paper in some depth---to grapple with the science in it---and not to just report on the paper's bottom-line conclusions. Your scientific paper can either be (i) published in a peer review journal, (ii) an unpublished "gray" literature report, or (iii) a government agency or private consultant's report. You have great latitude in this choice, and please do ask me for help. The only real constraint is that the scientific paper you choose must contain some real scientific "meat." Don't choose a paper that merely superficially reviews what is reported elsewhere.

Going beyond the one scientific paper.--- I realize and expect that your term paper will go beyond this one scientific paper. These additional studies will put your chosen paper in context, and help you develop your analysis of it. Look at scientific studies published before and after it. Especially look at published critiques of your study, and at other published studies that came to a different conclusion.

The controversy.---It is easier to critique a controversial paper than a non-controversial one. The controversy itself will help you identify key issues, and will provide a framework for structuring your analysis. In the past some students have focussed on a controversy that is entirely scientific (disputes over what the data do or do not show). In other cases, the controversy concerned the economic, political or legal implications of the science (e.g. effect of energy efficiency on market prices of houses, or use of a particular study in litigation).

Content.--- Explain what is controversial about your paper. Provide a detailed critique of controversial aspects of the science. Has the controversy been resolved with further study? How might it be resolved? Use our class discussion of the Graham et al. paper as a guide to the level of detail I expect. Don't just answer the narrow questions I have posed. Rather write a paper that develops your own framework and understanding of your controversial paper.

Length.---In writing my own scientific papers, I am often faced with severe length limits from journals. These limits prohibit papers greater than a certain length. Thus, the common law school practice of requiring term papers to be at least a certain length simply does not make sense to me. I am much more concerned with content than with length. That said, good term papers in the past were often 15-20 pages long.