Area of Interest Property

At Harvard Law School, students learn from leading scholars about how scarce resources are used, who controls them, and how entitlements to them are distributed, structured, and transferred. What we can own, what would be better left unowned, and what is immoral for us to own – these ideas make all the difference as to where we can live, what we can say, and whether we have any freedom at all. In our society, decisions at the level of entitlements – the relations of persons with respect to their rights to resources – lie at the root of our market economy and determine whether we can participate on equal terms in society.

By studying property, students are better equipped to engage with a wide range of areas, including bankruptcy, commercial law, corporate law, environmental law, family law, natural resources, nonprofits, and taxation. The study of property can encompass housing law, zoning, federal public lands, intellectual property rights like copyrights and patents, official records of various kinds of rights, legislative and constitutional antidiscrimination laws, and constitutional provisions relating to takings. Property thus introduces the interplay and intertwining of the public and private.