Information Sheet for LS 140
Property and Liberty
Fall 2018
Professor Ben Brown
Office hour: Tuesday from 10:00 to 10:45 in room 212 in the Legal Studies building, 2240
Piedmont. Also after class by appointment.
e-mail - rbbrown@berkeley.edu
Materials: Perspectives on Property Law, 4th edition, 2014 **
Website: http://www.benbrownshistoryandlaw.com/
Grades will be based on four factors:
Mid-term exam - 20% - October 16 in class
Paper or presentation - 25% - You have a choice of writing a paper or making an in-class
presentation on one of five sources. The sources and the details of the paper assignment are
described below. As an alternative to writing a paper, you may volunteer to join another student
to make an oral presentation to the class on one of the five sources, maximum two students per
source. The group will present in class on the date that the papers are due. If you desire to
explore the presentation option, please meet with me.
Participation in discussion section - 15% - Your GSI will assign written work as preparation
for discussion sections. Your performance on these assignments will be part of your discussion
section grade.
Final exam - 40% - Wednesday, December 12, 8:00 p.m. – 11:00 a.m.
**Make sure you purchase the fourth edition of Perspectives on Property Law.
Paper Assignment on an Outside Source
Twenty percent (20%) of your grade will be based on an analytical paper of 5-6 pages. The
papers covering each source will be due on the date that source is discussed in class. You will
choose one of the following five sources on which to write your paper:
Valerie Martin, Property - due October 3.
George Akerlof, Robert Shiller, Phishing for Phools – due Oct. 26.
Patrick Beach, A Good Forest for Dying – due November 2.
Charles Reich, “The New Property” – due November 9.
Lawrence Lessig, Remix – due November 16, 2015.
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LS 140 Property and Liberty
Information Sheet Fall 2017
The purpose of the assignment is to have you think independently about the themes of the course
and use what we have been learning in the course to analyze a relevant source. Choose an aspect
of the author’s argument or narrative and react to it. You may agree or disagree with the author.
A good paper presents a thesis about the source, and supports that thesis with evidence and
analysis. Although you will have to summarize portions of the source in order to support your
analysis, a mere summary of the source will be insufficient. You do not have to discuss the
entirety of the source. Better papers will be very focused on specific arguments or incidents and
the meaning of those for our study of Property and Liberty. While you are not required to use
other material, you may do so as long as you cite any such use appropriately.
Present your analysis in an essay format. State your thesis clearly and support it with logical
arguments. Write in well-organized paragraphs and grammatical sentences. Your paper should
be from five to six pages with ordinary formatting.
Please feel free to discuss your analysis with me or your GSI. I am available in office or by
appointment after class. I will also respond to emails that propose possible arguments or ways to
support those arguments. I hope that you have fun applying the ideas we develop in class to these
intriguing sources.
As an alternative, a maximum of two students may make a presentation in class on each source.
See me if you want to explore this option.
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LS 140 Property and Liberty
Information Sheet Fall 2017