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Okay, I'm halfway through first semester, and many of my classes are coming together nicely (except LRW, where getting back a memo where the few corrections on my memo were the things I was advised to change after my draft ).

However, I can't seem to make sense out of Property. In Civil Procedure, I have the chronological procedure of the lawsuit, in Torts, the elements of intentional and negligent torts and the policies behind them, in Contracts, the major elements of every contract or their excepted replacement. In property I have distinct concepts which seem fairly close to unbridgeable, except through the undergraduate econ courses I took on incentivization. Is there any way of making sense of the overall framework of property, so I don't feel like I have to learn to separately apply 50 discrete pieces of black letter law to fact patterns?

probably depends on the professor but ours is very policy oriented. As a result there is usually an overarching policy that supports a section of the law, rules, and then exceptions to those rules which may seem to go against the policy (or more likely, support some other one that the court thought more important).

There are a lot of policies that repeat over and over again (security of property, ease of application, encouraging flow of property, protecting labor etc.). Generally if you understand the policy underling the rules, it seem to make more sense overall. hth

Sign me up... I hate property. I think a lot of it is because the terminology is still kind of new to me and I'm having to learn a lot of new things. My prof doesn't help the situation either

Oh also, if you use the Krier casebook I cant recommend Gilberts outline enough. Written by the same author and I swear sometimes it seems like our professor uses it as the lesson plan for class (although I'm sure thats not the case). It sometimes lacks in-depth analysis but still very, very helpful

GeePee wrote:Okay, I'm halfway through first semester, and many of my classes are coming together nicely (except LRW, where getting back a memo where the few corrections on my memo were the things I was advised to change after my draft ).

However, I can't seem to make sense out of Property. In Civil Procedure, I have the chronological procedure of the lawsuit, in Torts, the elements of intentional and negligent torts and the policies behind them, in Contracts, the major elements of every contract or their excepted replacement. In property I have distinct concepts which seem fairly close to unbridgeable, except through the undergraduate econ courses I took on incentivization. Is there any way of making sense of the overall framework of property, so I don't feel like I have to learn to separately apply 50 discrete pieces of black letter law to fact patterns?

curious, what general topics has your section's property prof covered so far? ours is a cold call machine...which i thought id dread at first, but ive come to really enjoy it haha. im always focused and we spend a lot of time on 1 case/topic so there arent that many concepts covered.

DoubleChecks wrote:

GeePee wrote:Okay, I'm halfway through first semester, and many of my classes are coming together nicely (except LRW, where getting back a memo where the few corrections on my memo were the things I was advised to change after my draft ).

However, I can't seem to make sense out of Property. In Civil Procedure, I have the chronological procedure of the lawsuit, in Torts, the elements of intentional and negligent torts and the policies behind them, in Contracts, the major elements of every contract or their excepted replacement. In property I have distinct concepts which seem fairly close to unbridgeable, except through the undergraduate econ courses I took on incentivization. Is there any way of making sense of the overall framework of property, so I don't feel like I have to learn to separately apply 50 discrete pieces of black letter law to fact patterns?

curious, what general topics has your section's property prof covered so far? ours is a cold call machine...which i thought id dread at first, but ive come to really enjoy it haha. im always focused and we spend a lot of time on 1 case/topic so there arent that many concepts covered.

We've covered Original Acquisition (first possession, discovery, creation, accession), Chain of Title, Adverse Possession, and Limits of Sovereignty (licenses, bailments, self-help, public trust, custom). If I had to list some themes of our class, I would make them out to be:

When does an owner have a right to exclude?
What rights does the public have to property vs. a private owner?
Why do we have property rights?
Ease of application vs. substantial justice

But they all seem fairly nebulous and only apply to smaller subsets of topics. Oh, and we're exactly the opposite on classroom administration -- hardly any cold calling, tons of ridiculous questions, tangents galore. Everything that really makes you want to turn on g-chat and turn your brain off, even though I resist....

abudaba wrote:Oh also, if you use the Krier casebook I cant recommend Gilberts outline enough.

+1

Although it's Krier that is teaching my course, so maybe my value of its perception is higher than it otherwise would be. The Gilberts for that course has been invaluable, especially with all that present/future interest crap that we've been dealing with the past couple weeks.

GeePee wrote:

DoubleChecks wrote:

GeePee wrote:Okay, I'm halfway through first semester, and many of my classes are coming together nicely (except LRW, where getting back a memo where the few corrections on my memo were the things I was advised to change after my draft ).

However, I can't seem to make sense out of Property. In Civil Procedure, I have the chronological procedure of the lawsuit, in Torts, the elements of intentional and negligent torts and the policies behind them, in Contracts, the major elements of every contract or their excepted replacement. In property I have distinct concepts which seem fairly close to unbridgeable, except through the undergraduate econ courses I took on incentivization. Is there any way of making sense of the overall framework of property, so I don't feel like I have to learn to separately apply 50 discrete pieces of black letter law to fact patterns?

curious, what general topics has your section's property prof covered so far? ours is a cold call machine...which i thought id dread at first, but ive come to really enjoy it haha. im always focused and we spend a lot of time on 1 case/topic so there arent that many concepts covered.

We've covered Original Acquisition (first possession, discovery, creation, accession), Chain of Title, Adverse Possession, and Limits of Sovereignty (licenses, bailments, self-help, public trust, custom). If I had to list some themes of our class, I would make them out to be:

When does an owner have a right to exclude?
What rights does the public have to property vs. a private owner?
Why do we have property rights?
Ease of application vs. substantial justice

But they all seem fairly nebulous and only apply to smaller subsets of topics. Oh, and we're exactly the opposite on classroom administration -- hardly any cold calling, tons of ridiculous questions, tangents galore. Everything that really makes you want to turn on g-chat and turn your brain off, even though I resist....

wow thats a lot -- wont lie, i think we've covered half as many topics -- GP, what section were you in again? but your property sorta sounds like our K class, where we go through like 8 cases a day lol

I'm in Section 2. We spend 1 day on things a lot of other sections spend at least a week learning. 1 day on adverse possession, 1 day on present and future interests next week. Yet, I feel like any one of them could get an exam question that demands a knowledge as if we spent that long learning.

I've got a really good Property outline. It's geared toward my prof, but it covers a lot of what you are going over.

PM me if you want it.