Submissions

Please send submissions to the editor of this site, Charles Duan.

Articles published on this site should identify a contemporary event, issue, or story, and apply a doctrine from a property law case to that topic. The intention is to provide an opportunity to connect the materials from a Property Law introductory course with outside events, and to practice writing a legal analysis.

By publishing on this site, you agree to the copyright licensing and other terms for this site.

Topics

The story can come from the recent news, or it can be from your personal knowledge. I would recommend having at least some personal connection to the subject you are writing about, because it will give you some personal investment in and intuitions about the outcome, but there are plenty of great stories in the news that would work well.

In the past, students have thought about their personal or family living situations, homeowner association disputes, issues with neighbors, family businesses, personal hobbies (intellectual property issues with cooking, for example), and neighborhood politics. Sometimes the most mundane things can be great property issues. Did your sibling borrow your car and stain the seats? That’s a bailments question. Examples from fiction are acceptable as well, provided that they are sufficiently detailed to provide a basis for analysis.

I would not recommend searching for doctrinal terms in the news—don’t go specifically looking for stories about adverse possession, for example. Journalists typically aren’t lawyers, so they don’t use terms like “adverse possession.” And it’s not terribly interesting to write an analysis of an issue that someone else already found. Instead, find a story that interests you personally, and run through property law cases to find one that relates. More often than not, at least one will.

Case

In addition to choosing a factual topic to write about, you will also choose a doctrine from a case in the Frameworks of Property Law (aka Open Source Property) textbook, to apply to that factual topic. The case should give some insight into how the law should react to your factual topic.

Argument by analogy. On exams and in actual legal practice, you generally may only apply case law and doctrines that directly apply to the relevant facts—you can’t apply real estate doctrines to copyrights or vice versa, for example. For purposes of this site, though, you are permitted and indeed encouraged to make such arguments by analogy, hypothesizing how a court might apply an otherwise inapplicable rule to a set of facts.

If you do this, you should note it in the first sentence of the case summary or analysis paragraph, whichever sounds better. One possible format for this sentence is “While courts would actually apply x law to resolve this dispute, we can nevertheless get a better understanding by looking at the dispute through the lens of y law.”

Writing Style

The writing you will produce here will be in the style of a general-audience short article of about 400 to 700 words, similar to what you might see in a blog or newsletter. It should be aimed at people with some basic understanding of how the law works, but no specific knowledge of property law or your chosen topic. This is a very common type of writing that law firm associates do for client newsletters, internal firm presentations, and summary analyses for clients or partners.

Do not use formatted legal citations. Use hyperlinks to cite any source materials.

Template

Please follow the below template for writing.

Title [Keep it short; no colons. A good title hints at an interesting problem and/or an unexpected solution. Think “This one weird case from the 1800s tells us about social media.”]

By [names]

Fact background: 1–2 paragraphs

  • First sentence should introduce the problem briefly.
  • Describe any relevant background (historical context, technology) necessary to understand the dispute.
  • Identify the relevant parties.
  • Walk through relevant events chronologically.
  • Explain the nature of the dispute, that is, what each party stands to gain or lose.

Case analysis: 1 paragraph

  • First sentence along the lines of “To resolve this dispute, it is helpful to look at the doctrine of X from the case Y.” Customize the sentence; a lot of people have used it verbatim already. If your case applies to your facts only by analogy, see above.
  • 1–2 sentences of key facts from the case.
  • 1 sentence quoting the key relevant holding of the case.
  • 1–2 sentences explaining the court’s analysis (why it adopted its holding, and how it applied the holding to the facts in the case
  • A short conclusion, often summarizing the outcome (who won).

Analysis: 1 paragraph (or more if needed)

  • First sentence is a transition like “This doctrine of X provides insights into resolving the dispute over [your fact situation].” This is the issue. Customize the sentence; a lot of people have used it verbatim already. If your case applies to your facts only by analogy, see above.

  • Restate the rule from the case.

  • For each element of the doctrine, identify the best argument for each party, and write one sentence identifying the doctrinal element and the key facts in support of the party’s position. (If an element obviously and clearly favors only one side, then you don’t need to write a sentence for the other party.) Thus, for a legal rule with n elements, you should have about 2n sentences. This is the analysis.

  • A conclusion about what, on balance, is the result of the rule.

Evaluation: 1 paragraph

  • This is the most freeform paragraph, which depends on your feelings based on your conclusion.
  • If you think the rule leads to the wrong result, explain why. Usually, you should identify a theory of property law (or some other principle of what is good), and explain why the outcome is contrary to that ethical theory. You may also provide suggestions on how the rule should be changed.
  • If you think the rule leads to the right result, you can also explain why the rule is consistent with a theory of property law or other principle of ethics.
  • You could also write about actions the parties could take. What could the losing party have done to change the result? What could the winning party do to more strongly guarantee success? (This is what law firms will include in their client newsletters.)

Closing byline: [Brief one-sentence biographies of each author.]