Question 1. Origins of English land law: What function did land play in the English feudal system? What is the doctrine of tenure? What is the doctrine of estates? How does property law both reflect and create the values of particular times and societies?
Question 2. Origins of Australian land law: What were the terms of the first land grant made in Australia to James Ruse? What is the Lockean theory of property and what is its 'proviso'? Do you find the theory persuasive? How did land grants occur in urban and rural areas in New South Wales in the late 18th and early to mid-19th centuries? What was their purpose and effect? Reading the 1845 newspaper article, "Application of British Law to the Aborigines", what ideas, (with which the author might agree or disagree), were used to justify taking land from Indigenous people? By the mid to late 19th century, how was landownership viewed in New South Wales?