Joseph William Singer

Bussey Professor of Law

Biographical Statement

Professor Joseph William Singer began teaching at Boston University School of Law in 1984 and has been teaching at Harvard Law School since 1992. He was appointed Bussey Professor of Law in 2006. Singer received a B.A. from Williams College in 1976, an A.M. in political science from Harvard in 1978, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1981. He clerked for Justice Morris Pashman on the Supreme Court of New Jersey from 1981 to 1982 and was an associate at the law firm of Palmer & Dodge in Boston, focusing on municipal law, from 1982 to 1984. He teaches and writes about property law, conflict of laws, and federal Indian law, and has published more than 50 law review articles. He was one of the executive editors of the 2005 edition of Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law. He has written a casebook and a treatise on property law, as well as two theoretical books on property called Entitlement: The Paradoxes of Property and The Edges of the Field: Lessons on the Obligations of Ownership.

Appointments

• Associate Professor of Law, Boston University, 1984-1991
• Visiting Professor of Law, 1991
• Professor of Law, Boston University, 1991-1992
• Professor of Law, 1992
• Bussey Professor of Law, 2006
• Frank Boas Visiting Professor of Law, William S. Richardson University of Hawai'i School of Law, 2006

Research Interests

• American Indian Law
• Conflict of Laws
• Property

Education

• Williams College B.A. 1976, Political Economy
• Harvard University A.M. 1978, Political Science
• Harvard Law School J.D. 1981

Subject Areas for Supervising Written Work

• American Indian Law
• Conflict of Laws
• Property

Representative Publications

• Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (Nell Jessup Newton, Joseph William Singer et al. eds., LexisNexis 2012).
  Full text: AMAZON (Purchase)
  ((on Executive Board of the Board of Authors and Editors))
  
• Singer, Joseph William. "Original Acquisition of Property: From Conquest and Possession to Democracy and Equal Opportunity," 86 Indiana Law Journal 1 (2011).
  
• Singer, Joseph William. "The Anti-Apartheid Principle in American Property Law," 1 Alabama Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review 83 (2011).
  
• Singer, Joseph William. "Normative Methods for Lawyers," 56 UCLA Law Review 899 (2009).
  
• Singer, Joseph William. "Critical Normativity," 20 Law and Critique 27 (2009).
  
• Singer, Joseph William. "Democratic Estates: Property Law in a Free and Democratic Society," 94 Cornell Law Review 1009 (2009).
  
• Alexander, Gregory S., Eduardo M. Peñalver, Joseph William Singer & Laura Underkuffler. "A Statement of Progressive Property," 94 Cornell Law Review 743 (2009).
  
• Singer, Joseph William. "Things That We Would Like to Take For Granted: Minimum Standards for the Legal Framework of a Free and Democratic Society," 2 Harvard Law & Policy Review 139 (2008).
  
• Singer, Joseph William. The Edges of the Field: Lessons on the Obligations of Ownership (Beacon Press 2000).
  Full text: AMAZON (Purchase)
  
• Singer, Joseph William. Entitlement: The Paradoxes of Property (Yale University Press 2000).
  Full text: AMAZON (Purchase)
  

Bibliography

View bibliography