![]() Students can use CALI exercises or buy supplemental texts, workbooks, flashcards, outlines, or sample problems, to help them through these rough waters, all in an effort to avoid embarrassment on the final exam or on the bar exam. Because of its complexity, the rule has generated its own set of specialized secondary study materials simply to explain how the rule works. Most property teachers gear their teaching of the rule to its basic mechanics, simply to get their students through the material, prepare them for the questions that they might face on the bar exam, and thus help them avoid embarrassment. Property texts attempt to streamline presentation of the rule more through problems than through cases. Once the text hits the Rule Against Perpetuities, however, theory apparently stops, and I suspect that theory stops in classroom instruction as well. The Dukeminier and Krier text has an excerpt of Harold Demsetz's economic account of the development of private property (along with critiques of it) Joseph Singer's text offers a good overview of the law-and-economics approach to nuisance law, as well as a critique of that approach and the Cribbet text begins with two chapters devoted to different views of what constitutes property and what are the attributes of property. Textbooks for Property offer the teacher tools for taking this approach to introducing jurisprudence. For example, nuisance provides good material to introduce students to the Coase theorem and law and economics marital property law provides good material to introduce feminist jurisprudence zoning provides good material to illustrate concepts in public choice theory. The typical courses offered in the first year lend themselves to this approach, and Property is no exception. These approaches are not mutually exclusive, and teachers often use basic courses in the first year as an introduction to a school or several schools of jurisprudence along with an introduction to doctrine and skills. Others believe that the first year should introduce students to legal skills or to legal reasoning and schools of jurisprudence more generally, giving the students a broader view of law as a whole before they leap into a specific advanced area. Some people believe that the first year should consist primarily of building-block courses, i.e., courses that introduce students to basic legal rules that will appear in private practice and on the bar exam. ![]() Of course, some might question the propriety of introducing jurisprudence into the first year. They certainly cannot explain what the rule means or does not mean from a jurisprudential standpoint-if ever they consider or are invited by their teachers to contemplate jurisprudence. In sum, students cannot understand why they have to endure the rule except as some kind of horrible historical accident of which they are the most recent victims. Graduating third-year students frequently say-in all seriousness-that they will gladly spot the bar examiners any perpetuities problems and try to gain credit elsewhere on the exam rather than try to relearn the rule. Students joke about it, have nightmares about it, and learn through rumor that the rule is so complicated that, when they are in practice, they will not be held liable for malpractice if they draft an instrument that is subsequently held void because of the rule. Arcane in origin, difficult to understand and apply, unintuitive, and seemingly random in its effect, the rule brings together many of the difficulties that students have in adjusting to the rigors of legal study. Indeed, it might rank as the most-hated doctrine studied in the first year of law school (although the Erie doctrine might give it a run for its money). Ask students what subject within property they hated most, and most will answer that it was the Rule Against Perpetuities. Students share the bad medicine view of the rule. Teachers see it as bad medicine that must be dispensed and swallowed quickly, and different teachers vary on how much of the rule's technicalities they think the student should master (or at least endure). The modern pedagogical approach to the rule treats it as an embarrassment - the difficult family problem that is not discussed in public. But this essay will outline an innovative approach to the rule that allows those who teach it to mix theory in with the difficult problems that the rule creates. At first blush, the idea that the rule can be used to advance a student's mastery or consideration of theory seems absurd. ![]() The Rule Against Perpetuities offers an opportunity for those who teach property or trusts and estates to review some of the major schools of jurisprudence and how accurately or inaccurately those schools characterize law and legal development.
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