End-of-Term Rapid Review

End-of-Term Rapid Review

We will use our time in class to do a help identify key gaps in your knowledge and understanding in the course this term, with an emphasis on the weeks since our last review. To that end, I have provided a list of "rapid review" questions for you to read and consider. I don’t suggest that you address them all in full detail. Instead, read each and consider your answer for no more than a minute or two. You can come back to these questions in more detail as part of your exam preparation--their purpose at this point is only to provide a check on what you've learned so far and to help you to discover where you can most effectively focus your studying.

Week 7: Alienation, Exit and Control #

  • How do restrictive covenants “run with the land”?

  • What is the function of the common law doctrine of estates?

  • Compare the common law’s approach to restraints on alienation as applied to the fee simple estate and to Aboriginal title.

  • Explain the challenge of interpreting the following clause in a will: “All my property to the Ecology Action Centre (an environmental charity in Atlantic Canada) and then to my daughter in fee simple.” How would you propose to interpret this clause if the will also contained the following preamble: “My dearest wish is that my property be used in some way to conserve and steward Nova Scotia’s natural places and that my daughter be able to enjoy those places to the fullest extent”?

  • Describe the influence of the classical legal style on the following statement by Justice Mills in Blackburn v McCallum: “It is reasonable to say that where an estate is bestowed, of which the power of alienation is an incident, that one conveying such an estate to another shall not have the power to alter its character, and to make it something wholly different from what it has been made by the law. To do so is to assume the power to make an estate unknown to the law. It is an attempt not simply to convey away an estate, but to exercise a legislative power, and to create a new form of property in land.”

  • Do you think the following restraint on a transfer of land would be valid: “To A, on the condition that, within the next 30 years, if A chooses to sell the land they can only sell it to someone with a degree from Dalhousie University”?

  • From the perspective of intergenerational wealth and inequality, how can the tension between testementary freedom and the interests of future owners be understood as an example of the fundamental liberal dilemma?

Week 8: Trusts, Property and Citizenship #

  • Who owns property placed in trust?

  • Explain the significance and function of the distinction between “law” and “equity” using trust and the restrictive covenant as examples

  • In Iwasaki v R, the Court finds that “the powers, and particularly the discretionary powers of the Custodian are inconsistent with any trust.” Do you agree? Explain.

  • Why do you think the claimant in Iwasaki v R omitted any claim that their property was unlawfully expropriated?

  • In her letter to Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King, Toyo Takahashi urges that, “[a]fter all our efforts in good citizenship we do not deserve to have our retirement jeopardised by the liquidation of our properties.” Are the assumptions behind this statement consistent with the classical style we have studied this term?