The Juris Doctor Program Thesis

J.D. students are required to prepare and defend a thesis on a subject of law, which must deal with a legal issue which has not been resolved by the courts and requires extensive discussion and analysis of laws, legal principles, and jurisprudence relevant to the thesis proposal. The preparation of the thesis is supervised by a thesis adviser chosen by the student who is a member of the ALS faculty.  The J.D. thesis must be based on a thesis proposal previously approved and must contain at least 13,000 words excluding footnotes. Once the thesis is completed and certified by the thesis adviser as ready for defense, the student is required to defend his or her thesis before an oral defense panel of three (3) persons knowledgeable in the relevant field of law.

The Thesis course, which includes preparation and defense, is graded numerically and carries an academic credit of six (6) units, computed as part of the student’s quality point index (QPI) upon graduation.