Summative Essays 2019-2020
Law of Property
Instructions:
• You are required to do independent research beyond the compulsory reading given for the research seminars, although that reading is, naturally, a starting point for your research.
• Engaging with the ‘Further Reading’ on the seminar reading lists counts as independent research. You are not limited to only using materials listed under the Further Reading heading of each seminar, but nor are you required to go beyond them. Rather, you are encouraged to undertake research necessary to substantiate the argument you wish to make, wherever that lead you.
• You are not expected to cite extensive sources, only those that are particularly relevant to your answer to your chosen question.
• Each question is naturally rooted in one particular research seminar’s materials. It is a requirement of the mark scheme that in your answer to any of the questions, you draw meaningfully on material from at least one other examinable research seminar (but not research seminar 4) but there is no need to refer to more than one other unless you want to.
• Simply referring briefly or cursorily to material from your chosen ‘other’ research seminar is not drawing meaningfully upon it, and essays that do this will make it difficult for the examiners to award high marks.
• Please do bear in mind that the essay accounts for 30% of your summative grade and divide your time accordingly over the coming period when you will have to balance your research and writing with your tutorial work.
• Research essays are to be a maximum of 3,000 words, including footnotes and headings within the essay (but excluding bibliographies or essay titles. Bear in mind you do not need to provide a separate bibliography, but you may do so if you wish).
• You must use the OSCOLA citation method for your essay (which is available on KEATS): this includes a requirement of pinpoint citations to the specific page or paragraph of the source of any quotation, not just the work from which it comes.
• Note that the School’s formal policy on exceeding word counts applies to this essay: that is, for every 3.33% over the word limit, an essay is deducted 1 mark, so that in cases where the word limit is 3,000 words, for every 100 words over the limit, a mark is deducted: i.e. 3001 words is one mark deducted, 3101 is two marks, etc.
• You must indicate which question you have attempted at the top of your essay. There is no need to copy the whole question, ‘Q1’ etc will suffice.
• You are reminded of the College’s policy on Academic Honesty and Integrity https://www.kcl.ac.uk/governancezone/assessment/academic-honesty-integrity.aspx.
• Under no circumstances should you share your work at any stage with any other student. It is your responsibility to avoid the risk of plagiarism and collusion.
Property RS essay questions 19/20
1. ‘The idea that property rights ought to enjoy the status of property only if they are pigeonholed into the delimited menu of state-recognized property forms is wrong, because other factors, for example, the size of parcels or the number of co-owners, generate much more pressing fragmentation problems than those caused by unlimited property forms’.
Do you agree?
2. A new type of rare-earth element was recently discovered. This rare-earth is crucial to the production of a new type of highly efficient solar panels. A government official suggests that the best way to allocate the initial rights in this new resource is by first possession.
Do you agree with this suggestion?
3. ‘Extensive in personam liability, enacted by parliament, would lead to a satisfactory solution to the problem of sharp conduct on the part of a purchaser of property rights in registered land’.
Do you agree?