The sitcom television show Friends, follows a group of friends in their twenties living in New York City. Much of the show’s comedy stems from the group’s struggle to make money in NYC. A main character, Monica, was trying to make it as a chef, going through a variety of low paying jobs, like waitressing. However, much of the show is filmed in her large, two-bedroom, West Village apartment. It begs the question, how can a twenty-something waitress in NYC afford a huge West Village apartment? The answer was given when her landlord, Treeger, threatened to evict Monica because she was illegally subletting the apartment from her grandmother to keep a rent-controlled price. Monica had lived there for five years at this point and because she was never allowed to live in the apartment, was a trespasser. However, when Joey taught Treeger to ballroom dance, he let her continue to live there for over ten years. Does Monica have a claim for adverse possession?

Taken in 1801 by Lord Elgin, then British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, the Parthenon Marbles remain encased in the British Museum, nearly 2,000 miles away from their original home in Athens, Greece. In a lost firman (permit), Elgin allegedly obtained permission from the imperial Ottoman Authorities to cast, draw, and erect scaffoldings of the Parthenon’s statues. However, debate surrounds whether he was actually authorized to remove the Marbles, including almost half of the famed frieze. After falling into severe debt, Elgin sold the sculptures to the British government in 1816.

The high cost of medicine affords wealthier people a better opportunity for health than others. The recent “trend” of using Ozempic and other GLP-1 medications for weight loss highlighted this disparity. To prevent increasing costs, should pharmacies and physicians be allowed to compound ingredients of patented drugs owned by pharmaceutical companies even when there is no drug shortage?

The year is 2045, Blue Ivy Carter releases her third studio album, and space suits are in. Elon Dusk and a Jehovah’s Witness land on Mars.

Dusk’s landing on the planet is the first in a series of missions planned by his company SpaceZ that he hopes will make humans an interplanetary species. Dusk’s expansive career as a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and political benefactor has been characterized by an ethos of bare metal efficiency that his detractors have called a ruthless pursuit of the future at the expense of people. Yet, this ethos has served Dusk well and he has now carried it to the nascent Mars Colony One (MC1) where he hopes to build a long-term settlement. Dusk’s companion is Ann Marsh, great-granddaughter of prominent Jehovah’s Witness Grace Marsh. Marsh has agreed to accompany Dusk as part of his efforts to promote MC1 as a base of intergalactic religious freedom.

In 1899, Isabella Stewart Gardner purchased a strip of marshland to house the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Ninety-one years later, the Gardner hosted the most infamously expensive museum heist ever—$500 million worth of art including a Rembrandt seascape, Degas sketches, a Vermeer, and ancient Chinese pottery was stolen over St. Patrick’s Day weekend in 1990. Despite a Netflix documentary and substantial increases of reward money, the trail remains frigid. To this day, the museum has empty spaces where the art once was, “placeholders” representing the hope that the paintings will return.

Can a single farmer hold a multinational energy company accountable for climate change? That’s the question at the heart of a lawsuit brought by Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya against German energy giant RWE. Lliuya, whose home in the Andean city of Huaraz is threatened by glacial melt linked to global warming, argues that RWE, one of Europe’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, should pay for part of the costs needed to protect his town from catastrophic flooding.

Pierson v. Post is perhaps the most celebrated case in American property law, and scholars have delighted in debating its history and theory. Among other things, research has shown that the case’s presentation of the facts is incomplete and likely misleading. This post collects some of the academic literature to reconstruct a brief history of events, challenging the presentation of the facts as recited by the court.

Property surrounds us. Literally. The buildings we occupy, the electronic screens we read from, the ground we stand on, the things of our daily lives are all the subject matter of the law of ownership. Of the classic subjects of the first year of law school, property law is perhaps the one that every person relies on and interacts with on a constant basis.