The first-year course in property has a dreadful reputation. When the St Louis University Law Review invited four students to contribute to a symposium on teaching property, three of the four used the occasion to bash the course. One ‘began with the hypothesis’ that it shouldn’t be a required course. Another wrote, ‘I must admit my disappointment to find property on the class schedule for my first semester of law school’. And a third recalled ‘long hours desperately trying to understand the destructibility of contingent remainders, the rule in Shelley’s case, the doctrine of worthier title and the rule against perpetuities’ only to admit that her ‘memory quickly faded as to the importance of these rules’. The bar of student expectations is set so low that every time I teach property, without fail, I have students who later tell me they were surprised they didn’t hate the course … (more)
James Grimmelmann, J, Real + Imaginary = Complex: Toward a Better Property Course, 66 Journal of Legal Education 930 (2017).
First posted 2017-08-07 06:57:46
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