Professor Neil Duxbury and Professor Charlie Webb

This course is compulsory on the BA in Anthropology and Law. This course is available on the LLB in Laws. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

Property examines principles of Land Law and the Law of Trusts. Land Law is taught in the first term and Trusts in the second term.

The Land Law component of Property is designed to introduce students to the principles of the law of real property (i.e., land).  The course examines estates and interests in land, legal and equitable ownership, title registration, and trusts of land (including constructive trusts). It also considers the law governing specific third party interests – licences, proprietary estoppel claims, easements, freehold covenants and mortgages.

The Trusts component of the course focuses on general principles of trusts law and examines the circumstances in which trusts arise, the obligations of trustees, and the remedies available to beneficiaries when these obligations are breached.  It also considers the nature and classification of trusts, including resulting and constructive trusts, and how the law of trusts relates to and impacts on the law of contract, wrongs and unjust enrichment.

The course has at least two hours of teaching content each week in the Autumn and Winter terms. In both terms, Week 6 is a reading week.

Two formative (unassessed) essays per term.

Advice on reading, including textbook recommendations, will be provided at the beginning of the first and second terms. An essay which students might profitably read before the commencement of the course (available on the course page) is Peter Birks, ‘Before We Begin: Five Keys to Land Law’, in Land Law: Themes and Perspectives, ed. S. Bright & J. Dewar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 457-86.

Exam (100%, duration: 3 hours and 30 minutes) in the spring exam period.