Pappas, Richardson, and Gerhart's Property: Principles, Values, and Tradeoffs

Property: Principles, Values, and Tradeoffs introduces fundamental principles and concepts of American property law, offering a sophisticated examination of property law while remaining clear and approachable for first-year law students. In doing so, it connects for students the basic property doctrines that all law students should learn by offering an overarching explanation of property law as a response to core issues of social organization, namely who ought to make decisions about resources and how ought those decisions be made? As the textbook explains, the legal responses to these questions yield our modern concept of “ownership” that creates the body of law known as property law.

Through its careful editorial discussions and explanations linking case law and statutory materials, Property: Principles, Values, and Tradeoffs introduces students to a wide variety of recurring values that inform American property law doctrines. These values include concepts like individual autonomy, social welfare, stability, adaptability, predictability, labor theory, distributive justice, market efficiency, and natural law, among others. By introducing these ideas and demonstrating how they may influence different property doctrines, the textbook allows students to learn what the law is and why the law developed in such a manner.

The textbook also provides students and professors with the additional resources necessary for studying property law in the modern age. The book has extra questions, both multiple choice and essay, that allow students to gauge their proficiency throughout the course. And the book has teaching aids for professors, including sample syllabi, in class presentations, supplemental news articles to share, and much more, all updated in real time so that professors adopting Property: Principles, Values, and Tradeoffs have the latest materials they can use in the classroom.