Oxford Courses and Faculty

(6210) 3 Hours—Professor Kit Johnson
This course provides an introduction to U.S. immigration law, including the aspects of the law that underlie the controversies about immigration that are driving the news. The course will review the constitutional bases for regulating immigration into the United States, the contours of the immigration bureaucracy, the lawful admission of noncitizens into the U.S., the deportation and exclusion of noncitizens from the U.S., refugee and asylum law, administrative and judicial review, and naturalization. Where opportunities present themselves, we will explore aspects of U.K. immigration law and draw comparisons with the U.S. system.

(6100) 3 Hours—Professor Thomas Krebs
This course is concerned with the law of International Trade. Broadly defined, it covers transactions in which goods are transported (by ship) from one country to another. In particular, three types of transactions will be covered: (1) the shipping transaction: this involves two relationships, namely between the seller and the carrier, and between the carrier and the buyer; (2) the sales transaction: this is concerned with the relationship between the seller and the buyer; (3) the financing transaction: again, two relationships are involved: buyer/bank and seller/bank. The course will be taught by way of lectures and interactive seminars.

(6100) 3 Hours—Professor Stacey Tovino
This course will examine a variety of civil and regulatory issues pertaining to mental health care access, quality, liability, and finance. Particular attention will be given to: (1) federal and state mental health parity laws; (2) federal and state mandated mental health and substance use disorder benefit laws; (3) federal and state laws protecting the confidentiality of mental health and substance use disorder records; (4) federal and state regulation of interventions such as restraint, seclusion, and electroconvulsive therapy; (5) mental health care fraud and abuse, including prohibitions against kickbacks, false claims, and physician self-referrals; (6) civil liability and/or professional discipline for negligent failure to diagnose, negligent misdiagnosis, negligent treatment, negligent referral, injuries to patients by other patients with mental health conditions, patient injury following elopement, and patient suicide; (7) state law scope of practice issues for mental health professionals, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, advance psychiatric nurse practitioners, and licensed independent counselors; (8) state regulation of voluntary and involuntary inpatient and outpatient treatment and/or commitment; and (9) current issues in mental health law. Students who successfully complete this course will have the information and skills necessary to counsel and represent patients with mental health conditions in a variety of civil and administrative matters and to counsel and defend individual and institutional providers of mental health care as well as health insurers that provide mental health insurance benefits.

(5323) 3 Hours—Professor Tracy Pearl
This course explores the duties that lawyers owe clients, courts, adversaries, and the broader community. While the course focuses on relevant rules of professional conduct, discussion will also include other sources of lawyer responsibility, like professional negligence, criminal liability, and professional identity. This is a problem-method course. Students will be organized into “law firms” of 3-4 students and will work with their law firm throughout the program to analyze and discuss practice problems based on real cases. Most of the problems put students into the shoes of a lawyer who must deal with a situation involving both legal strategy and legal ethics.

Program Director Donald T. Bogan is the Thomas P. Hester Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma, and the Frank and Edna Asper Elkouri Professor of Law. He graduated from Brown University and the Wake Forest University School of Law. Prof. Bogan joined the OU Law faculty in 2000. He was appointed Director of Clinical Education in 2001 and served as Clinic Director through 2006. Prof. Bogan practiced law in Greensboro, North Carolina for 15 years, and in California for 5 years, specializing in health law, ERISA, and insurance litigation. Prof. Bogan teaches ERISA, Health Law, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Civil Pretrial Litigation.

Tracy Pearl is a Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma where she teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Professional Responsibility. Prior to teaching, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Stephanie K. Seymour of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and to the Honorable Richard L. Williams of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Upon completion of her clerkships, she worked as a litigation associate at Hogan Lovells LLP in Washington, DC, where she litigated a wide variety of cases at both the trial and appellate levels. She has an A.B. in Public Policy Studies from Duke University, a M.Sc from Oxford University in Comparative Social Policy, and a J.D. from Boston College Law School. 

Kit Johnson is a Professor at the University of Oklahoma where she teaches Immigration, Crimmigration, and Civil Procedure. Prior to teaching, Professor Johnson was an attorney with the Los Angeles firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, and she clerked for Judge Rymer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as well as Judge Broomfield of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. She graduated from Wesleyan University and Berkley Law.

Stacy Tovino serves as the William J. Alley Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the MLS and LLM in Healthcare Law Programs at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. An elected member of the American Law Institute and an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, Dr. Tovino is nationally and internationally recognized for her research in the areas of patient privacy, health information confidentiality, mental health law, substance use disorders and the law, and vaccine law and policy. Formally trained in both law and the medical humanities, Dr. Tovino has authored more than ninety scholarly works. A devoted teacher, Dr. Tovino has earned law school-wide teaching awards in 2009, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2020 and an Institutional Impact Award in 2021.

Professor Thomas Krebs has been a University Lecturer in Commercial Law at the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor in Law at Brasenose College, Oxford, since 2003, achieving tenure in 2008. He specializes in Commercial Law, both domestic and international. Prof. Krebs is particularly interested in the law of agency, and is also pursuing research in international trade law. He is a barrister attached to Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, London. He is married and has two young daughters.