I took Voting Rights with Katz last year and thought it was a great class. The material is very compelling, and Prof. Katz is both a fantastic lecturer and seems to be quite committed to the subject. Also, the exam, though not easy, was extremely fair. Hope that helps.
I took voting rights last year as my 1L elective. I thought it was an excellent class overall and liked Katz as a professor, but I actually would not recommend it as your 1L elective. If you’re in con law and like the subject, then you should find a lot of the material very interesting. However, note that a good portion of the time is devoted to the case law interpreting sections of the Voting Rights Act, which I thought could get extraordinarily tedious. That’s not really a criticism of Katz; the law on the subject gets difficult to slog through at times. Also, there are some practical concerns for 1L’s. While the class often is not curved (almost everyone who took it for a grade last year got at least a B+), Katz assigns a fair amount of reading and expects you to do it, notwithstanding her occasional jokes about how no one reads. I’d say the amount of work per credit that I did was the same as in any other 1L class I had, so you’d probably end up doing about 3/4 as much work as in one of your core classes. You might be fine with that, but I thought it was a bit much to take on as a 1L.
Voting Rights is TOUGH. As stated above, Katz seems quite committed to the subject, but not as committed to teaching her students it. It is almost continual ball hiding, which I truly believe is unintentional, making it even harder to follow. The first class in law school where I felt that actually going to class taught me nothing. The actual material can be interesting (even if it makes you never want to vote again), just plan on teaching it to yourself. Exam also had some surprises and somewhat misleading prompts. All in all, one of the hardest classes I’ve taken for the reasons above.
Voting rights is tricky. Katz, while wonderful, can be somewhat hard to follow in her lectures. Exam was totally fair and the material was really interesting. She’s great in office hours and really cares about people learning the material and she’s pretty accessible.
I took Employment Discrimination with Katz during the Pass/Fail COVID semester. Katz was great both in person and online. When we switched online she was very understanding and it was clear that she was concerned about everyone’s well-being. Her cold-calls (when we were in person) were pretty standard, but there was also a lot of space for class-wide discussion. My only criticism is sometimes she moves through the material pretty quickly because she has so much to say, but she was always receptive to questions/clarification.
I took Katz for Gender and the Law. It’s not a class she normally teaches, but she taught it very well. Her strengths are encouraging students to think deeply about theory and connecting cases together as well as inviting students to offer their own opinions. Class was very discussion based which can be frustrating at times since I would like to hear more from her and perhaps have a bit more direction. The exam was pretty fair and what you might expect. It did not include a lot of the theory stuff and was more a straightforward issue spotter. She also is incredibly accessible to students with about five hours of office hours a week.
MLaw Prof Reviews
I took Voting Rights with Katz last year and thought it was a great class. The material is very compelling, and Prof. Katz is both a fantastic lecturer and seems to be quite committed to the subject. Also, the exam, though not easy, was extremely fair. Hope that helps.
I took voting rights last year as my 1L elective. I thought it was an excellent class overall and liked Katz as a professor, but I actually would not recommend it as your 1L elective. If you’re in con law and like the subject, then you should find a lot of the material very interesting. However, note that a good portion of the time is devoted to the case law interpreting sections of the Voting Rights Act, which I thought could get extraordinarily tedious. That’s not really a criticism of Katz; the law on the subject gets difficult to slog through at times. Also, there are some practical concerns for 1L’s. While the class often is not curved (almost everyone who took it for a grade last year got at least a B+), Katz assigns a fair amount of reading and expects you to do it, notwithstanding her occasional jokes about how no one reads. I’d say the amount of work per credit that I did was the same as in any other 1L class I had, so you’d probably end up doing about 3/4 as much work as in one of your core classes. You might be fine with that, but I thought it was a bit much to take on as a 1L.
Voting Rights is TOUGH. As stated above, Katz seems quite committed to the subject, but not as committed to teaching her students it. It is almost continual ball hiding, which I truly believe is unintentional, making it even harder to follow. The first class in law school where I felt that actually going to class taught me nothing. The actual material can be interesting (even if it makes you never want to vote again), just plan on teaching it to yourself. Exam also had some surprises and somewhat misleading prompts. All in all, one of the hardest classes I’ve taken for the reasons above.
Voting rights is tricky. Katz, while wonderful, can be somewhat hard to follow in her lectures. Exam was totally fair and the material was really interesting. She’s great in office hours and really cares about people learning the material and she’s pretty accessible.
I took Employment Discrimination with Katz during the Pass/Fail COVID semester. Katz was great both in person and online. When we switched online she was very understanding and it was clear that she was concerned about everyone’s well-being. Her cold-calls (when we were in person) were pretty standard, but there was also a lot of space for class-wide discussion. My only criticism is sometimes she moves through the material pretty quickly because she has so much to say, but she was always receptive to questions/clarification.
I took Katz for Gender and the Law. It’s not a class she normally teaches, but she taught it very well. Her strengths are encouraging students to think deeply about theory and connecting cases together as well as inviting students to offer their own opinions. Class was very discussion based which can be frustrating at times since I would like to hear more from her and perhaps have a bit more direction. The exam was pretty fair and what you might expect. It did not include a lot of the theory stuff and was more a straightforward issue spotter. She also is incredibly accessible to students with about five hours of office hours a week.