A Report of a Survey of Instructors Teaching the Basic Property Course

The battle over the first-year curriculum will unlikely ever end so long as there is a diversity of views as to what ought to be taught there. Because first-year courses are both a requirement (for the most part) and an initia-tion, most would probably agree that their subject matter should tend to em-phasize the fundamental and general, not the esoteric or the highly special-ized areas of legal knowledge. Nevertheless, first year subject matter should not be so abstractly "general " that it is too far removed from the real issues which a practical lawyer is likely to face. Beyond this, agreement becomes much more tenuous. The question of what should be covered in the basic property course is a subdivision of the larger question of what should be contained in the re-quired curriculum overall? To answer this larger question properly, it is not sufficient to consider merely which broad subject areas (e. g., contracts, torts, civil procedure, etc.) should receive required coverage. Rather, con-sideration must also be given to which particular subject matters merit inclu