Well, the pre-registration window has opened, and I've got a month to pick the classes I'll try to sign up for next semester. From what I understand, picking the courses involves choosing ten courses plus ten alternates (there can be duplication between the alternates and the choices).
It works something like this: Say you pick Course A as your first choice with Course B as an alternate. You select Cource C as your second choice. When your lottery number gets pulled, they check to see if there's room in Course A. If there isn't, they check Course B. If there's no room there, they go to Course C, and so on. On the other hand, if there is room in Course A, you get put in Course A. When they go to the next round in the lottery, they start with your second choice, Choice C. Choice B is cut out because it was your alternative to A, and you got A. This is why they allow duplication; if you really want to get into A and also want to get into B, you can set A as your first choice, B as your alternate first choice, and B as your second choice so that you're still trying for B even if you get A, and so that B is the first thing you try for if you can't get A.
This is all a wordy way of saying: Columbia Law's course selection system is incredibly dumb and poorly handled, and it is to their ever-lasting discredit that they have a course registration system that is inferior in every conceivable way to that implemented at UC Berkeley, a huge state school with about 40,000 students.
But that's neither here nor there. I'm browsing through the curriculum guide and will be using the rest of this post as a note to myself about what classes look interesting. So, classes I might want to take (note that this includes both classes I'm interested in taking and classes I don't want to take, but kind of have to thanks to the Bar/desires of future employers):
Administrative Law
Anthropology and the Law
Antitrust and Trade Regulation
Copyright Law
Corporations
Criminal Investigations
Employment Law
Environmental Law
Evidence
Federal Courts
Federal Income Taxation
Ideas of the First Amendment
International and Comparative Criminal Law
Intensive Professional Responsibility
Jursiprudence of War
Labor Law
Law and Educational Institutions: Issues of Authority
Law and Educational Instituions: Equity Issues
Law and Legal Institutions in China
New Forms of Public Interest Advocacy
Patents
Professional Responsibility
The Connection of Law and Literature
Trusts, Estates, and Estate Planning
State and Local Government Law
Seminar on Biblical Jurisprudence
Seminar on Big Cases: Tactics and Strategy
Seminar: Black Letter Law/White Collar Crime
Seminar on Church and State
Seminar on False Advertising
Seminar on Legislative Drafting
Seminar on Liability and Insurance
Seminar on Mental Health Law
Negotiation Workshop
Seminar on Problems in Legal Philosophy
Seminar on Public Benefit Laws in Changing Times
Seminar on Regulating Sex and Sexuality
Seminar on Reproductive Health and Human Rights
Seminar on Sexuality, Gender, Health and Human Rights
Well, that's all I see so far. Note: I know this is more classes than I can sign up for, and I know that there's no way I'll get into some of these classes. This is just the Big List of all the classes I could possibly be interested in.
There's an Anthropology and the Law (or possibly Anthropology of the Law) class offered here next semester. I'm sure it'll be much drier than it sounds, but it's still intriguing.
Anthropology of the Law makes more sense than Anthropology and the Law, at least in the case of the class I can take; "of" implies that the class uses anthropology as a lens through which to examine the law, whereas "and" implies that we'd be examining the relation between two different fields, for example, the legal implications of various practices used in anthropology. The course description makes it clear that the class being taught is the former. So even law professors can be sloppy about word choice.