First Year: Property Law

We regularly invoke the idea of property to defend or contest entitlements in society. We might
say, for instance, “that’s my parking spot” or “I own this taxi license” or “nature belongs to everyone.”
Social and moral norms about property sometimes overlap and sometimes diverge from legal norms and distinctively legal modes of reasoning about property problems. In this course, our focus is on property law and how it shapes legal entitlements to use and control resources.

Property law is often described as the law of things: it is a system of rights, accompanied by
duties, privileges and powers, in respect of specific things in the world, tangible (like land or goods) and intangible (like your bank account). A system of property rights authorizes private use and control of different parts of our usable environment. This course will examine the central features of this system of property and will take up such fundamental questions as: what are the essential features of a property right in law? What does and does not count as a ‘thing,’ i.e., an object of a property right, for the purposes of property law? How do we legally acquire, transfer, or divest ourselves of property rights? How does the law resolve inconsistent claims of right to the same thing? What tools does the law make available to us to share control and use of things with others? Does property law build social responsibility into property rights?

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Understand the key features of property rights;
• Understand how property law relates to adjacent areas of law (e.g., contract law, tort law,
equity, bankruptcy law, and administrative or regulatory law);
• Identify property problems as they arise in cases and novel fact patterns as well as the legal
or equitable tools for resolving them;
• Critically analyze the extent to which property is a tool for achieving social aims;
• Deploy core lawyering skills, e.g., interpreting case law; spotting legal problems; identifying legal
authorities relevant to resolving those problems; identifying and resolving ambiguities, complexities, and gaps in a body of law; developing and evaluating the strength of arguments for and against a legal
position.