Property

The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property seeks to bring comprehensiveness and coherence to American property law. Subjects to be covered include: the classification of entitlements, possession, accession, and acquisition; ownership powers; protection of and limits on ownership; divided and shared ownership; title and transfer; easements, servitudes, and land use; and public rights and takings.

Tentative Table of Contents

VOLUME 1: THE BASICS OF PROPERTY
VOLUME 2: INTERFERENCES WITH, AND LIMITS ON, OWNERSHIP AND POSSESSION
VOLUME 3: POWERS AND DUTIES ASSOCIATED WITH OWNERSHIP
VOLUME 4: DIVIDED AND SHARED OWNERSHIP
VOLUME 5: TITLE AND TRANSFERS OF OWNERSHIP
VOLUME 6: SERVITUDES
VOLUME 7: PUBLIC LOCAL LAND-USE REGULATION
VOLUME 8: PUBLIC RIGHTS AND TAKINGS

Reporters

Henry E. Smith

Reporter, The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property

Henry Smith is the Fessenden Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he directs the Project on the Foundations of Private Law. Professor Smith has written primarily on the law and economics of property and intellectual property, with a focus on how property-related institutions lower information costs and constrain strategic behavior.

Maureen E. Brady

Associate Reporter, The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property

Maureen (Molly) E. Brady is an assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches property law and related subjects. Her scholarship uses historical analyses of property institutions and land use doctrines to explore broader theoretical questions. Her current research projects involve the evolution of nuisance rules, the privatization of public space, and state constitutional takings law.

Sara C. Bronin

Associate Reporter, The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property

Sara Bronin is a Professor at Cornell University and Associate Member of Cornell Law School. She is a Mexican-American architect and attorney whose interdisciplinary research focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places. 

Richard R. W. Brooks

Associate Reporter, The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property

Richard R.W. Brooks is the Emilie M. Bullowa Professor of Law at New York University. He focuses his scholarship on contracts and agency, among other forms of business and social organization. Brooks’ work also includes articles about contract law and theory, experimental economics, the economics of environmental law, fairness, and perceptions of the legal system.

Yun-Chien Chang

Associate Reporter, The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property

Yun-chien Chang is the Jack G. Clarke Professor in East Asian Law and director of the Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture at Cornell Law School. He previously served as a Research Professor at Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, Taiwan and as the Director of its Empirical Legal Studies Center.

R. Wilson Freyermuth

Associate Reporter, The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property

R. Wilson Freyermuth joined the University of Missouri Columbia School of Law faculty in 1992. He teaches in the areas of Property, Real Estate, and Secured Transactions, and has co-authored widely-used texts in all three areas. He received MU’s William T. Kemper Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching in 2007, and was appointed a Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2009. Professor Freyermuth is active in law reform efforts, currently serving as the Executive Director of the Joint Editorial Board for Uniform Real Property Acts.

John C. P. Goldberg

Associate Reporter, The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property

John C.P. Goldberg, an expert in tort law, tort theory, and political philosophy, joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 2008. From 1995 until then, he was a faculty member of Vanderbilt Law School, where he served as Associate Dean for Research (2006-08). He is co-author of a leading casebook, Tort Law: Responsibilities and Redress (4th ed. 2016), as well as The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Torts (2010).

Brian A. Lee

Associate Reporter, The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property

Brian Lee is a Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. His principal research interests are in property and intellectual property, focusing on the intersection between moral reasoning and economic analysis in the law.

Thomas W. Merrill

Associate Reporter, The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property

Thomas W. Merrill is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He writes widely in the fields of property and administrative law. Professor Merrill served as the deputy solicitor general for the Department of Justice in the late 1980s. He previously worked for the firm Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood in Chicago.

Christopher M. Newman

Associate Reporter, The Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property

Christopher M. Newman is an associate professor Scalia Law. Prior to joining the law school, Professor Newman served an Olin/Searle Fellowship in Law at the UCLA School of Law, where he focused on his research and writing in the areas of property theory and intellectual property. Before that, he was a litigation associate with Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles, where he represented clients in disputes involving contracts, business torts, intellectual property, corporate and securities litigation, and appellate matters.