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Welcome Students, Colleagues and Friends!
This website is primarily intended to support students in law/legal philosophy related courses I teach at Colorado School of Mines. This semester (Fall 2025) I am teaching “The Power of Ideas through the lens of Intellectual Property Law” for the Mines’ McBride Honors Program.
The site has attracted others too – colleagues who teach in this field, and often friends and others in the community who share an interest in these topics – all of whom are welcomed and invited to reach out to me ([email protected]) to share comments, insights, critique and friendship as peers in academic pursuits.
A Little About Me
I’ll open by sharing a little about myself, inviting reciprocity with the hope I’ll have the chance to meet my students and peers beyond the surface of academic credentials.
I’m dad of three, grandfather of one, husband, brother, son, father-in-law, friend, and various creatures that roam our home. I enjoy music, poetry, art, science, good food and bad food, the ocean (skin diving and scuba, and riding waves), hiking 14ers and anyplace in the mountains, running (well, walking and jogging a bit) in half-marathons (trails being my favorite), riding (an ebike, if I’m being honest), my friends in the Evergreen community and other places near and far. Among my guilty pleasures are beekeeping, listening to philosophy podcasts, and travel (I’ve visited Brazil, Panama, the Carribean, Russia, Israel, Egypt, nearly every western European country, Iceland, Canada, and Mexico, 44 of the 50 US states, and have lived on/near each of the coasts and have a small place in a town named Aguada in the US Territory of Puerto Rico).
As for academic credentials and experience, I received my Juris Doctorate from UC Berkeley (1986), and two bachelors of arts degrees ((i) Law and Society (ii) Sociology) from the University of California at Santa Barbara (1983). I’ve been a professor (adjunct) teaching law related courses at Colorado School of Mines for two decades and served on the faculty at the University of Denver. At Mines I have enjoyed teaching Constitutional Law, Applied Philosophy of the Constitution, Intellectual Property for Engineers, and Introduction to the Law, have presented a dozen or so lectures on campus (the annual Constitution Day presentation for more than a decade, as well as guest lectures for other courses) and have led the McBride excursion to Washington, DC.
I’m a practicing attorney and am admitted to the bar in Colorado, California, and Washington, DC specializing in civil litigation as a trial attorney, real estate, corporations, and estate planning. [My law practice in Evergreen is described at Lawrl.com.]
I currently serve as a board member of various non-profits (emeritus board member for Special Olympics Colorado and current board member of Bootstraps (scholarships)) and previously on the Board of the Mountain Resource Center, The Learning Center Preschool of Evergreen, and Congregation Beth Evergreen.
My personal sense of identity is built among family. My daughter, Michelle (Mishie), is Doctor Noodle. Mishie delivers healthcare and babies in Broomfield, and is married to our wonderful son-in-law, Pedro, who stepped away from his profession as an engineer (computer science) to give himself full-time and then some to our grandchild, Felix (now a one-year-old wonder). Our daughter Miriam lives outside Philadelphia where she is currently teaching 3rd graders science and math at Heston Elementary. Mimi works as hard as anyone I’ve met toward the highest of ends as a beloved teacher to students in a community not bestowed in daily life measured as equality or equity. Our son Jesse balances his life as a pilot instructor in Maryland while also enjoying a young pup, Zoe, and navigating his career while his partner pursues her career as an OB/GYN resident in Delaware.
So, how does this all connect to life as a professional academic? That’s a conversation that builds through entire semesters. The core principle from which I tend to reason through jurisprudence involving constitutional law is that equality of our inherent dignity should be observed if we strive to build just and equitable communities on the little Earth we share for human flourishing and respect and awareness of the natural environment and its creatures. When it comes to intellectual property, I begin from a similar philosophical point of view. What is intellect; on what grounds should the product of intellect be considered common or private; to the extent the product of intellect is privatized within the realm of commerce, where are the limits drawn so that ideas beneficial to human beings and communities broadly can be shared and enjoyed maximally.
Take care and give care!
Rich Levine
