The overarching objective of this course is to introduce you to the basics of property law in an exciting and engaging way, so that you’ll want to learn more about it throughout law school and your professional career.
So, we:
Confront the meaning of and justifications for property. The theoretical what and why questions may seem practically unimportant at first. They are not. We’ll see many concrete examples of cases that turn on judges’ views about such matters, or statutes that embody an attitude about property’s philosophical purposes. Solid theoretical understanding also facilitates critical evaluation of the law, and encourages positive legal reforms.
Introduce legal rules governing property in Canada and elsewhere. An introductory course can’t exhaustively cover all the interesting and important property issues, but it can lay a foundation for future study and practice in wide variety of legal fields, in provinces across Canada or even other common law countries. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish through this course.
Develop some property-based practice skills. You will not learn the intricate logistics of closing real estate transactions or drafting wills. But you will get to dig into some documentary analysis and even legal drafting, as well as practical litigation strategy. We will stress a general approach to the practice of property law in everything that we do.
Evaluate law’s impacts on social justice. This involves critical analysis of property-related issues of race, class, and gender (all defined broadly). We examine aboriginal, feminist and other critical perspectives on the law. Doing so requires exploration of linkages between property law and other disciplines. It also highlights linkages between property and other courses you’ll study in first-year law school.
To see how we’ll accomplish all these objectives, read on to the next posting on the course page.