Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor D. Epstein

J.D. Seminar 436 | 2 credit hours

This is a great second Property course. The "Baseballs" is the litigation over Barry Bonds' recording setting baseball - a dispute between the person in possession of the ball and the person who claimed that he caught the ball. This case is used to re-introduce students to labor and possession as the bases for property rights.

We then move to the world of art and the competing property rights of artists (labor) and the owner (possession). Art is also used to reintroduce the interests of society or the state as impacting individuals' property rights. That reintroduction of society or the state provides a nice transition into current issues regarding copyrights and patents, including the patentability of genes which leads into the Body Parts part of the course.

The "Body Parts" part of the course explores the historical treatment of corpses in England the US and moves from there to current issues such as 1) sale of body parts, (2) sale of baby parts, and (3) various forms of "surrogate" or science-aided parenting.

Moving from the tangible parts of a person to intangible aspects of personae leads to Rosa Parks and the rap song invoking her name and reputation and the issues of publicity and privacy rights.

The constant theme of the course is the evolution of law -- how the law adopts and adapts existing legal concepts as well as concepts from other disciplines to deal with the problems of a changing world.