The Law of Property (Hornbook Series and Other Textbooks)

Undeniably, Professor Stoebuck is one of the brightest scholars around in Property law, but this book misses its mark for what it was intended for. West's Hornbook series are designed to be used by first year law students learning the law, non-legal scholars who need a quick reference for whatever they are working on, or the practicing attorney who doesn't have the time or money to use one of West's multi-volume practicioner series treatises.

This volume is tremendous in the area of land use law, which is about 60-75% of what a first year law student will spend their property class discussing. However, Professor Stoebuck's hornbook does not cover any of the fundamentals of property law that any One-L will encounter on their exam (and, consequently, the multi-state bar exam). For example, Professor Stoebuck does not mention personal property at all - gifts, purchases, discovering property, rules of finders, and the rule of capture - and he discusses intellectual property even less.

The scope of the book (real estate and land use) is useful to the practicing attorney, but they are likely to already know a great deal about the subject matter, especially if they specialize. Here, I would recommend One-Ls and non-lawyers skip this book and instead purchase Lexis-Nexis's "Understanding Property Law" by John G. Sprankling or Joseph Singler's "Introduction to Property." Both of those treatises are as comprehensive and scholarly as Stoebuck's book, but they cover more subjects that are useful to those unfamiliar with the law.

ALthough this text contains about 10x what the average 1L will need for a Property exam, it was a very helpful guide through a very difficult subject. It will remain on my shelf just in case I change the very core of my being and someday become a real estate lawyer. Students of Property: this is the ONLY text that will help you outside of the classroom.

This is an excellent treatise covering the major areas and topics of property law. It is sighted often by leading casebooks, including Singer's Property Law. I highly recommend this book to law students as the other secondary sources in this area of law are woefully lacking.