Property Law: Cases, Problems, and Skills, Third Edition

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Renowned environmental and natural resource legal scholar Christine Klein is joined by Shannon Roesler, the Charlotte and Frederick Hubbell Professor of Environmental and Natural Resources Law at the University of Iowa College of Law, on the third edition of Property: Cases, Problems, and Skills. This comprehensive casebook combines the core, doctrinal elements of a 1L Property course with larger, more nuanced social, environmental, and ethical perspectives. This book offers a versatile, middle position in the Property market: it is straightforward and tightly-organized while also avoiding oversimplification. Property: Cases, Problems, and Skills offers a wealth of doctrinal, policy, and theoretical subtleties for professors who want to probe deeper. It adopts a modern, skills-based approach to Property Law, and includes a balance of classic and new cases, narrowly-focused skills exercises (including advocacy, drafting, client interviewing/counseling, and negotiation), and selected statutory excerpts. Chapter review problems (with answers provided in the Appendix for student self-testing) and a host of other pedagogical features—such as discussion problems that raise novel and modern challenges, “A Place to Start” doctrinal overview boxes, and “Reading Guide” boxes—aid student understanding and comprehension. A two-color interior breaks up text for easier reading, with judicious use of photographs, text boxes, and pedagogical diagrams. This clear and accessible casebook encourages students to engage with Property Law’s complexity, ambiguity, and nuance.

New to the Third Edition:

• Expanded coverage of issues of race and class as they intersect with property law throughout the book.
• Expanded coverage of pressing social issues in property law, such as the eviction crisis and the affordable housing shortage.
• Edited versions of recent Supreme Court cases such as McGirt v. Oklahoma and Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, and updates to notes discussing contemporary property issues.
• Edits to chapters on estates and future interests to facilitate a range of choices about which material to cover.

Benefits for instructors and students:

• Tightly and clearly organized, both substantively and visually, with a balance of new and classic cases
• Shorter page count than other Property casebooks—allowing it to focus on the core, doctrinal aspects of Property law
• Visual aids—including maps, diagrams, and photographs
• Clear identification of the majority/minority/trend status of each rule, as relevant
• Chapter Reviews—with concise post-case notes, multiple choice and essay questions (with answers in the Appendix), and “Bringing it Home” statutory practice (guiding students in researching their state’s statutory coverage of selected topics likely to be regulated by statute)
• Clearly-marked pedagogy—including “A Place to Start” boxes that present sufficient doctrinal background to free up precious class time for digging deeper into nuance and ambiguity
• “Reading Guide” boxes preceding cases—to guide the students in extracting contextual meaning from cases
• A skills exercise in each chapter—providing in-depth opportunities for students to develop skills related to the substantive material covered in the chapter
• A discussion problem in each chapter—providing a rich factual context to facilitate further exploration of law and policy as applied to fresh, modern contexts
• Post-case notes—including “Practice Pointers” asking students to re-draft ambiguous language in documents that precipitated litigation, to explore alternatives to litigation, and to advise clients on litigation strategy
• Notes on “The Place”—conveying background about the geographic location of the disputed property, and designed to remind students that legal disputes can be influenced by physical and human context
• Relevant statutory and Restatement excerpts—collected and presented in one location within the chapter (rather than scattered in snippets throughout)
• Periodic statutory excerpts and exercises—introducing students to the interplay of common law and statutory law
• “Test Your Understanding” sections—containing problems that the professor can work through during class (with answers in the teacher’s manual), or that can be left to the students for self-directed learning