Property law tends to be regarded by students as both dull and difficult. The main objective of this book is to demonstrate that it is neither. The book is based on the Property Law seminars we devised and taught in the Faculty of Laws at University College London. Like the seminar course, the book looks at the nature and function of property rights in resources ranging from land to goods and intangibles, and provides a detailed analytical exposition of the content, function and effect of the property rules which regulate our use of these resources, and the fundamental principles which underpin their structure.

We draw on a wide range of materials on property rights in general and our property law system in particular, including core legal source materials on selected topics as well as readings from social science literature, legal theory and economics. Inevitably the coverage is not comprehensive, but we have included notes, questions and suggestions for further reading to provide a starting point for anyone wanting to take matters further. As in any other property law book, we draw on a lot of material from decided cases, but to keep the book at a manageable length we have put most of the edited case extracts we use, together with some other materials, on the associated website, www.cambridge.org/propertylaw/ rather than in the book itself. This has enabled us to use much longer extracts than would otherwise have been feasible, and also to introduce a much wider range of materials.