Course Section | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

Property is a fundamental concept in America law. It deals with the relationships among people with respect to things, the rights people can have in things, and the way those relationships and rights have developed over time. In this course,we will consider a number of basic issues in the law of property: What do we mean when we say something is "property'"? How do we decide whether something can be "property"? How do we decide whose property something is? What are the legal consequences of calling something "property"? What is the relationship between private property and public values? More specifically, we will look at the different forms of property ownership; the creation of multiple property interests in the same thing; property interests in ideas and intangibles, property interests in land; and constitutional protection of private property under the Takings Clause.