My New Syllabi For Property I and Property II This Semester

January 14th, 2013

The course home page for Property I is here, and the syllabus is here. Property I covers acquiring property, future interests, estates, and leaseholds.

Perhaps my nerdiest contribution to this semester was to time our coverage of same-sex marital property for the day after oral argument in United States v. Windsor. I had to juggle some stuff around, but I think it will be worthwhile.

I am also covering the Case of the Speluncean Explorers (which I have taught before) on the same day that we do Pierson v. Post. I think the students will appreciate it, as it provides a nice overview of how law operates in the absence of positive law. This provides a nice foray into natural law, economic efficiency, and formalism/functionalism, all issues that are discussed in Pierson (as I wrote about in this article).

Plus, this semester I get to use more props. I purchased this fine fox from Amazon. I also purchased a game of Pickup Sticks to represent my bundle of sticks. Hopefully they’ll work for the class.

And, in case you were wondering, I will teach the Rule Against Perpetuities, but not test it. This is one better than my outstanding Property Professor, Ilya Somin, who didn’t teach it at all (his reasoning is here).

The course home page for Property II is here, and the syllabus is here. Property II covers Adverse Possession, Land Transactions, Title Assurance, the Law of Nuisance, the Law of Servitudes, Zoning, and Takings and Eminent Domain. This is largely the same syllabus I used last semester, and I think it went pretty well. You can view my archived Property II course from last semester here. Lots of fun videos 🙂

Because my Property II class starts on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:00 CST/10:00 EST, I will be in an interesting position when SCOTUS opinions are issued. I very well may take the first few minutes of class to parse it and analyze it in real time. Because I stream all my classes live, this may provide those interested with the first-real-time look at a case. Fortunately  the class ends in April, so I’ll be free as a bird for the big cases in June.