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 40 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

• Singer, Joseph William. Property Law: Rules, Policies & Practices (Aspen Publishers 5th ed ed. forthcoming 2010).
  Full text: AMAZON (Purchase)
  (Aspen Law & Business, 4th ed. 2006; Aspen Law & Business, 3d ed. 2002; Aspen Law & Business, 2d ed. 1997 Little, Brown & Co., 1st ed. 1993)
  
• Singer, Joseph William. Property (Aspen Publishers 3d ed. forthcoming 2010).
  Full text: AMAZON (Purchase)
  
• Singer, Joseph William. "Normative Methods for Lawyers," 56 UCLA Law Review 899 (2009).
  
• Singer, Joseph William. "Democratic Estates: Property Law in a Free and Democratic Society," 94 Cornell Law Review 1009 (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. "After the Flood: Property and Equality in Property Regimes," 52 Loyola Law Review 243 (2006).
  
• Singer, Joseph William. "The Ownership Society and Takings of Property: Castles, Investments, and Just Obligations," 30 Harvard Environmental Law Review 309 (2006).
  Full text: SSRN (Harvard Users)
  
• Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (Nell Jessup Newton, Joseph William Singer et al. eds., LexisNexis 2005).
  Full text: AMAZON (Purchase)
  (with supplements (2007, 2009) (on Executive Board of the Board of Authors and Editors))
  
• 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)
  
• Singer, Joseph William. "No Right to Exclude: Public Accommodations and Private Property," 90 Northwestern University Law Review 1283 (1996).
  Full text: WWW || HEIN (Harvard Users) || LEXIS
  

Bibliography

View bibliography