In America, we are eager to claim ownership: our homes, our ideas, our organs, even our own celebrity. But beneath our nation’s proprietary longing looms a troublesome question: what does it mean to own something? More simply: what is property? The question is at the heart of many contemporary controversies, including disputes over who owns everything from genetic material to indigenous culture to music and film on the Internet. To decide if and when genes or culture or digits are a kind of property that can be possessed, we must grapple with the nature of property itself. How does it originate? What purposes does it serve? Is it a natural right or one created by law? Accessible and mercifully free of legal jargon, American Property reveals the perpetual challenge of answering these questions, as new forms of property have emerged in response to technological and cultural change, and as ideas about the appropriate scope of government regulation have shifted. This first comprehensive history of property in the United States is a masterly guided tour through a contested human institution that touches all aspects of our lives and desires. Stuart Banner shows that property exists to serve a broad set of purposes, constantly in flux, that render the idea of property itself inconstant. Despite our ideals of ownership, property has always been a means toward other ends. What property signifies and what property is, we come to see, has consistently changed to match the world we want to acquire.

As a part of our CasebookPlus offering, you'll receive the print book along with lifetime digital access to the eBook. Additionally you'll receive the Learning Library which includes quizzes tied specifically to your book, and outline starter and digital access to leading study aids in that subject and the Gilbert Law Dictionary. This casebook continues its traditional approach to the teaching of property law. The new edition features new cases inserted into almost every chapter of the book, with appropriately updated notes and comments. The opening chapter includes a section of cases designed to hone a student's skill in close case analysis. In its entirety, the book introduces students to a broad spectrum of material traditionally covered in a first-year property course. A voluminous teacher's manual accompanies the book, with briefs of every principal case and extensive notes designed to aid the teacher in advancing classroom discussion on nearly every note in the casebook. For the first time, the teacher's manual includes additional problems and other materials designed to develop professional skills.

How American colonists laid the foundations of American capitalism with an economy built on credit Even before the United States became a country, laws prioritizing access to credit set colonial America apart from the rest of the world. Credit Nation examines how the drive to expand credit shaped property laws and legal institutions in the colonial and founding eras of the republic. In this major new history of early America, Claire Priest describes how the British Parliament departed from the customary ways that English law protected land and inheritance, enacting laws for the colonies that privileged creditors by defining land and slaves as commodities available to satisfy debts. Colonial governments, in turn, created local legal institutions that enabled people to further leverage their assets to obtain credit. Priest shows how loans backed with slaves as property fueled slavery from the colonial era through the Civil War, and that increased access to credit was key to the explosive growth of capitalism in nineteenth-century America. Credit Nation presents a new vision of American economic history, one where credit markets and liquidity were prioritized from the outset, where property rights and slaves became commodities for creditors' claims, and where legal institutions played a critical role in the Stamp Act crisis and other political episodes of the founding period.

Buy a new version of this textbook and receive access to the Connected eBook with Study Center on CasebookConnect, including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities; practice questions from your favorite study aids; an outline tool and other helpful resources. Connected eBooks provide what you need most to be successful in your law school classes. Learn more about Connected eBooks This hugely successful cases-and-problems book is acclaimed for its textual clarity, evenhanded perspective, and contemporary, up-to-date character. Easily distinguished from other property casebooks for its clear descriptions of legal doctrine and its variations; its explanations of the social ramifications of property law; its emphasis on both statutory and regulatory interpretation; its comprehensive treatment of public accommodations and fair housing law, current tribal property issues, and property in human bodies; and its use of the problem method to teach legal reasoning andlawyeringskills. Thoroughly updated to reflect significant changes in the law of property, the Seventh Edition incorporates multiple new Supreme Court cases, including:Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.,Obergefellv. Hodges, andReed v. Town of Gilbert, and 3 decided or pending cases with implications for regulatory takings,Horne v.Dep’tof Agriculture,Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, andMurrv. State. Key Features: Updated to reflect significant changes in the law of property to help professors keep current and be aware of emerging disputes. These include multiple new Supreme Court cases: Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2507 (2015), upholding disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act; Obergefellv. Hodges, 123 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage; Reed v. Town of Gilbert,135 S. Ct. 2218 (2015), broadly applying the First Amendment’s free speech clause to sign regulations; and three decided or pending cases with implications for regulatory takings,Horne v.Dep’tof Agriculture, 135 S. Ct. 2419 (2015),Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 1257 (2014), andMurrv. State, 359Wis.2d675 (Wis. Ct. App. 2014), cert. granted sub nom.Murrv. Wisconsin, 136 S.Ct. 890 (2016). New materials and problems have been included in several areas: Collisions between the sharing economy and servitude, zoning, and landlord-tenant law; Questions of the inheritance rights of children born through assisted reproductive technology; Continuing litigation over the Rails-to-Trails Act conversion of abandoned railroad tracks into recreational trails Invalidation of the copyright on the Happy Birthday song; Commonwealth v.Magadini, 52 N.E.3d 1041 (Mass. 2016), upholding a necessity defense to a trespass charge against a homeless man; and The Revised Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, adopted in 2015.

The easy way to make sense of property law Understanding property law is vital for all aspiring lawyers and legal professionals, and property courses are foundational classes within all law schools. Property Law For Dummies tracks to a typical property law course and introduces you to property law and theory, exploring different types of property interests—particularly "real property." In approachable For Dummies fashion, this book gives you a better understanding of the important property law concepts and aids in the reading and analysis of cases, statutes, and regulations. Tracks to a typical property law course Plain-English explanations make it easier to grasp property law concepts Serves as excellent supplemental reading for anyone preparing for their state's Bar Exam The information in Property Law For Dummies benefits students enrolled in a property law course as well as non-students, landlords, small business owners, and government officials, who want to know more about the ins and outs property law.

In the end, the book provides a fresh, comprehensive overview of an intriguing subject, accessible to anyone with a minimal background in economics. (An introductory chapter introduces the handful of assumptions embedded in the text's economics and law).

Women and the Law of Property in Early America

Basically a revised edition of [the author's] A preliminary survey of the law of real property.

US Intellectual Property Law and Policy provides a selection of well-written essays critically examining the direction of US IP law. Simon Teng, Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice . . . an interesting, informative, and enjoyable book. It may be of special interest to Australian students, scholars and practitioners seeking to undertake comparative analysis between Australian and US IP law, particularly in view of the recent Free Trade Agreement. Louise Buckingham, Copyright Reporter The challenging and insightful essays in US Intellectual Property Law and Policy, a compilation by six of the best, if not the best, professors of intellectual property law in the United States . John A. Tessensohn, European Intellectual Property Review This book identifies and addresses the key principles and policies with regard to the protection of intellectual property in the United States. A select group of highly-regarded contributors illustrate several themes which are recurrent in the many debates concerning US law and policy on intellectual property. The need for a constant expansion of protectable subject matter is critically analyzed, especially in relation to trade mark and patent laws. The chapters within the book discuss a question of critical jurisprudential importance: have the legislature and the judiciary taken sufficient consideration of the different economic and constitutional rationales of intellectual property protection when extending the scope of intellectual property protection? A tentative agenda as to the future direction for both Congress and the courts to adopt, in light of the new technological changes which have affected all areas of intellectual property protection equally, is also suggested. Policymakers will find this book of great interest as will academics and students of intellectual property law and international law.