Teaching Property Law in Australia in the Twenty-First Century: What we do Now, What Should we do in the Future?

The teaching of property law has a particularly important — perhaps even central — role in forming the mind-set not just of the law student, but also of the lawyer, and, in some degree, of the thoughtful and responsible citizen. The teaching of property law implants tremendously structural features in the mind of the student, and here can be included rigour of thought and analysis, the capacity for abstract manipulation of complex ideas, and some sense of the workability of entire bodies of statutory machinery. It is in property law that consciously or unconsciously the student learns a basic competence in a number of skills which are of immense importance in later life. Indeed, most of the classic dilemmas of private law are here - all human life is here, if we only choose to look.’ (K Gray, ‘The Teaching of Property Law’, in P Birks (Ed), Examining the Law Syllabus: The Core, Oxford University Press, 1992, p 15.