Spotlight on Sections: Property Law | Association of American Law Schools

By Zaena Ballon and Madelyn Osgood

As part of the ongoing “Spotlight on Sections” series, AALS sat down with the leadership of the Section on Property Law for a Q&A.

AALS Sections provide opportunities for law school faculty and staff to connect on issues of shared interest. For a full list of sections and information on how to join, visit www.aals.org/sections.

The Section on Property Law promotes the communication of ideas, interests and activities among members and considers and makes recommendations on matters of interest in the teaching and improvement of the law relating to property interests.

Chair: Andrea J. Boyack, Washburn University School of Law
Chair-Elect: Jill Fraley, Washington and Lee University School of Law

Andrea J. Boyack, Washburn University School of Law

Jill Fraley, Washington and Lee University School of Law

What made you get involved with the section on property law and why did you decide to join the leadership team?

Andrea J. Boyack: I’ve been involved in the Section on Property Law ever since I joined the academy more than 10 years ago. The section always had interesting programming, so I thought that I should become more involved. I joined the executive committee and then our officer ranks. In this section, members can move up the chairs, much like other sections. It’s been an interesting growing experience and I’ve enjoyed my role at each level.

Jill Fraley: From my perspective as a historian, my research is done alone in an archive or at my computer. You can spend an extraordinary amount of time by yourself in this process. So, it’s very gratifying to be able to connect with colleagues who share your interests. It’s especially true when it’s something like property, which although it impacts the larger population enormously, it’s technical enough that most of the public don’t understand the role. This section allows us to interact with other experts and to talk about our work.

What is the section’s leadership structure?

AJB: We have an executive committee. The committee is consulted about programming choices and the call for papers. The more frequent decisions are made by the board. We have a Chair, Chair-Elect, Secretary, and Treasurer. The Secretary puts together the annual newsletter, which is an opportunity to update our members and highlight scholarly work within the section. The Chair and Chair-Elect focus on the programming for the Annual Meeting. So, by the time a member gets to be the Chair or Chair-Elect, they’ve already been involved for several years. I think that helps with institutional knowledge getting passed on.

What are your goals for this section for this year?

AJB: One of our big focuses is to have thought-provoking, quality programs at the Annual Meeting. Last year, we innovated a pedagogical program, which Jill thought of, and it was such a great hit that we’re going to continue iterations of it. In addition, we’re going to do a joint program with the Section on State and Local Government Law on the kinds of decisions being made that govern where and how people live in their communities. We’re also going to have a New Voices program. One thing that I would like to see the section do is have more connection with some of the lawyer groups that are not necessarily staffed exclusively by law professors, because one of the ways forward in the academy is having better bridges into practice.

JF: The pedagogy session is something that we dreamed up last year when we were talking about how to incorporate more topics, such as race and gender within the classroom. I came up with the idea of calling it “Stuff You Want to Steal,” with the idea that it should just be essentially your lesson from class, that you are inviting other professors to just take and incorporate in their own way in their own classroom. Attendance was great at the session this past year. I spoke about one of the things that I do with my students. I got an enormous number of emails later about that and other people incorporating it as well. It went really well the first time and we’re going to continue to do it.

AJB: We had a lot of positive feedback and I specifically love the title, “Stuff You Want to Steal,” because it’s property, right? Many times, in property law, we’re worried about erecting boundaries and holding onto our stuff. By inviting people to steal, borrow, adapt, and collaborate together to make a better product, we are looking at a less theorized aspect of property, which is property used not to exclude, but to collaborate and bring together.

The Property Law session at the virtual 2022 AALS Annual Meeting, “Stuff You’ll Want to Steal.”

What are the best ways for faculty to get involved with this section?

AJB: The best way for interested faculty to get involved is to attend our programs throughout the year as well as at the Annual Meeting. Put in a proposal call for papers so that people can hear your ideas and be a part of the conversation. Participate in the Q&A after programs, the business meeting, the Property Section Breakfast, and the New Voices panel. Get in touch with officers if you’re interested in joining the section leadership.

It’s energizing to collaborate with people who are working on similar issues as you. There are a lot of opportunities to get involved. This section is very broad, so you don’t have to necessarily be teaching first-year property law. If you’re teaching anything that has to do with property, you can be a part of the section.

What kind of work do your section members do?

AJB: There are members whose primary focus is constitutional law, while others focus on development issues, such as affordable housing and zoning. We have members that focus on property rights and racial and social justice issues, which are also involved with poverty. We also have members that specialize in natural resource allocation. Our members contribute to work in many different areas of property law.

JF: Our members are legal historians, like myself, who focus on real estate transactions, mortgages, financing and fair financing of housing, and homeowner’s associations. We also have a lot of members who are interested in the intersection of property and environmental law.

How do your section members interact and collaborate outside of the Annual Meeting?

AJB: We have a discussion list for members to interact. You can change your notification settings so that you can get messages either as emails or as a digest. The sections where I’m the most involved, I get individual emails. The section discussion lists that I like to keep track of, but I’m not as intimately involved in, I get a digest. It’s a great tool for keeping up with sections.

Last year, we hosted webinars during lunchtime in the spring and summer. We just started a mentorship program where we are trying to connect junior professors with someone who’s senior in the academy to get advice. If anyone is interested, contact me because we could push this idea further. There’s another group, Association of Law Property and Society, that is academic focused.

How did you get interested in property law

JF: I tell my students all the time that I was genetically destined to do property law. I was born and raised in Eastern Kentucky in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains in a community that was mostly farming families, like my family. At the same time, the area was surrounded by strip mines and environmental devastation. From the earliest age, I can remember my family teaching me how valuable land was and how much it mattered for my family. My grandfather would tell me about living through the Great Depression. Despite never having cash, my family survived because they lived off the farm. They would dry, freeze, and can the produce and share with their neighbors. On the contrast, these farms were surrounded by mining companies that destroyed everything. Hearing and seeing this as a kid, it gave me the understanding that land means everything but also that land means nothing. I was left trying to figure out the truth. That question became the organizing framework for how to think about things in my life.

AJB: I came into property by accident. I was interested in other cultures and languages in school and I had majored in Russian and International Relations. I went to the Fletcher School at Tufts University before law school and I studied international relations, particularly international law.

One of the most interesting parts of international law was disputes over resources and boundaries. It’s a different sort of property law because you don’t have an overarching legal enforcement system, there are just negotiations. Then when I was in law school, I thought I would do international law. I ended up doing private international law, which is another word for New York law with international clients. I had a lot of clients that were from different countries, but the law that was applying was New York finance law. My favorite part of what I was doing were the transactions that had to do with real property assets. I liked that there was something tangible involved in those transactions, as opposed to ones that just involved transferring money.

Then, I became an in-house counsel with a developer and we were focused on real property law. This involved common interest communities, land purchases, and land development issues. It wasn’t until I got into teaching property and real estate that I discovered additional issues that come from the way we allocate power and property. That is why I try to focus on those issues in my research. I never would’ve predicted when I was in law school that I would be a property teacher, but I love it. It’s a great class to teach and a great area to focus on.

What is your section planning for the 2023 Annual Meeting?

AJB: We are doing a joint session with the Section on State and Local Government Law. We’re doing a session that is called “Neighborhoods and Future of Residential Land Use, Who Should Decide Where and How we Live?” We’re excited about this session because there are a lot of things that are being determined right now in terms of housing supply, climate change, post-pandemic property, and the issues of evictions, racial equity, homelessness, and much more. The real question is who decides; is it state or local? We don’t have pre-selected speakers so we can invite a lot of input. We’re putting out a call for papers under this broad rubric as well. We are hosting the “Stuff You Want to Steal” pedagogy session again this year. This session allows professors to share something they created in their classroom for other professors to then use in their teaching. We are also hosting a New Voices session. This session invites anyone who is new to the academy to share their work. We are working on co-sponsoring sessions, such as panels with the Section on Environmental Law and the Section on Real Estate Law.

How has property law and your approach to teaching changed over time?

JF: I have moved more to teaching current issues more than traditional rules over time.

Even if those are things that I won’t test, I still like to make sure that my students are aware of what’s happening in developing issues. I still use a basic textbook from Aspen, but I find that I give the students more materials that are from a case that’s just been decided. I also spend time incorporating other perspectives on property into my class. For example, I was sharing with my class an email I received from a friend in Ukraine where she said, “This is my land and it’s the only thing that I have so I’m not leaving.” In sharing this, I tried to give my students a perspective on why property matters in a scheme of democracy, citizenship, and social responsibility. Property law is entangled with racial and social justice, too. I try to incorporate these perspectives into my teaching. Over time, I have switched books when teaching property. I am on my fifth book. As any teacher knows, changing books makes it harder to teach because you have to learn the new content. This has helped me become a more complete professor.

What do you think are the long-term and short-term effects of COVID-19 pertaining to property law?

AJB: I think that we’re seeing a big disruption in a lot of areas with real estate. I think that there’s some disruption in how we use commercial property and office space. There’s also been a big disruption in the commercial leasing and retail leasing markets. I think one of the biggest disruptions is now we’re starting to rethink our assumptions about housing and the impact that has in our community.

As a country, I think we have been so wedded to the idea that housing is a private issue and its private benefits being traded. With this long eviction moratorium and the focus on the impacts to the community of unhoused people during the pandemic, I think it has destabilized enough that perhaps there’s going to be a reconsideration of things that have been suggested by the academy for a while, but have really been on the outskirts of political consideration, like housing being more of a public good and housing being more of a right. It will be interesting to see if there can be some long-term impacts, which I think would be for the better for our society. If we provide adequate shelter and a place for people to be in our society, it benefits us all.

In addition, there were a lot of social justice and racial justice discussions as a country during the pandemic and I think it’s going to change perspectives on property law as well.

What makes your section unique?

AJB: The Section on Property Law is unique because of how broad it is. There are so many unique aspects and components of property law. We have diversity among the membership in terms of what we do and focus on. That creates a lot of opportunities for our members to learn from each other.