The program is open to students who have completed all first-year day courses and who are in good academic standing at an ABA-accredited law school.(Hofstra students must have at least a 2.2 GPA.)

All students will take three one-credit courses, with no prerequisites. There will also be required field trips to local legal institutions. Both courses will focus on international and comparative law.

Hofstra Law School grading standards apply, and Hofstra transcripts will be distributed. Acceptance of credits earned during the program is subject to the determination of your home school.

Grades are based on an examination in each course. The grading policy in the program is the same as in the regular course of study at Hofstra Law School. The grade scale is: A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D and F.

If you attend a law school other than Hofstra, you must submit a letter from your law school verifying that you meet the above requirements.

The Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna is accessible to students with disabilities; however, some aspects of the program may not be accessible to people with certain disabilities.

Module I Course Offerings

All three courses will be co-taught by Professors Comandé and Walker.

Comparative Health Care Liability: Compensation for Medical Accidents 1 credit/cfu

This intensive course will compare the legal rules governing compensation of patients for medical accidents in the United States and Italy. It will also compare how tribunals assess the probative value of evidence in compensation cases, as well as the principles and policies used to justify the legal rules. This course will also incorporate and use the methods and materials developed in the concurrently taught course on “Technology-Based Analysis of Legal Reasoning.” Topics will include: adequacy of informed consent; standards of medical care; factual and legal causation; loss of opportunity or loss of chance; and damages, especially non-economic damages. The approach will be to examine and compare the reasoning of US and Italian judges in deciding cases with similar fact patterns.

Comparative Health Care Regulation 1 credit/cfu

This intensive course will compare the governmental approaches to regulating health care services in the United States and Italy, within the context of broader EU legislation and other EU countries. Given the complexity of the two national systems and the EU context, the goal is not to survey these regulatory systems, but to examine a few topics that will highlight differences in the regulatory solutions to the same health care problems, as well as differences in the principles and policies invoked to justify those solutions. The focus will be on the reasons given for different approaches to dealing with similar problems. This course will also incorporate and use the methods and materials developed in the concurrently taught course on “Technology-Based Analysis of Legal Reasoning.” Topics will be selected from a range of areas and problems, including regulation of the quality and costs of health care, as well as regulation of reimbursement for services and access to health care.

Technology-Based Analysis of Legal Reasoning 1 credit/cfu

This course will provide both theory and practice in developing the logic skills needed to analyze legal reasoning in domestic, foreign and international legal decisions. The focus on the logical structure of judicial reasoning enables decisions in different languages and different legal systems to be compared within a single, common framework. In addition, the logical analysis enables portions of the task to be automated using computer software, and communicated using the Internet. Students will learn how to use the Legal Apprentice^TM software to model judicial reasoning. Topics will include the logical modeling of legal rules, the assessment of evidence and proof, and the analysis of justifications involving legal principles and policies. The substantive examples used will supplement the materials studied in the courses on “Comparative Health Care Liability” and “Comparative Health Care Regulation.”