Property (LAW-518-001)
Anderson
Meets: 10:00 AM - 11:50 AM (TF) - Yuma - Room Y400
Enrolled: 86 / Limit: 95
Notices
The fun starts January 12th!
Description
Property is the queen of subjects. No other law school course is as broad as Property while remaining unhinged to any textual source. Property relies almost exclusively on the common law and history to provide answers. We will cover dozens of legal areas in this course (including wills and estates, intellectual property, land use, racially restrictive housing, marriage, divorce, landlord-tenant), all while asking one question: what does it mean to own? The answer to this question involves many more questions: what rights do I have as an owner; what types of things can I own; is possession equivalent to (or relevant to) ownership; how long does my ownership last? We will attempt to tackle all of these questions (and a few more) over the semester. This class will truly be a survey of American property law. There are topics to which we will devote one class session which merit an entire semester's course. Things like Wills and Trusts, Land Use Planning, and Intellectual Property are entire fields of study and this class will not be able to cover all of them with any sort of depth. For that, I am sorry. But what makes property challenging and confounding is that there is no overriding "story" to be told about the topic. Unlike torts, civil procedure, and contracts which have an overriding theme, property lacks such a unifying goal and in its place has a rich history from which to draw guidance. Students struggle with this aspect of the course, but history's influence on property law is what makes this course both the most challenging course for 1Ls and the most satisfying to those that master it.
Textbooks and Other Materials
The textbook information on this page was provided by the instructor. Students should use this information when considering purchases from the AU Campus Store or other vendors. Students may check to determine if books are currently available for purchase online.
DUKEMINIER, KRIER, ALEXANDER & SCHILL, PROPERTY (7TH ED. 2010). Note that this is NOT the most current addition of the textbook. I assign an old edition for two reasons: (1) property is old (some would say ancient) law and doesn’t change much (if at all) from edition to edition, and (2) to allow you to save a little money. There are currently 534 7th edition books for sale on Amazon starting at $1.97, whereas the new edition will set you back $200. There is little value added in the new edition, and it certainly doesn’t get anywhere near justifying the price. If you have to buy the newer 8th edition, there will just be some extra time spent cross-referencing the page numbers in the syllabus with text.
First Class Readings
Dukeminier 3-18; 39-46; 88-92
Syllabus
Use your MyAU username and password to access the syllabus in the following format(s):
Microsoft Word 2007 (DOCX)