"Common to many of the topics we will cover are notions of “ownership” and “entitlement.” We will see that these concepts are not self-defining. Instead, what it means to own something will depend entirely on how we resolve cases in which owners’ rights are contested. It will never be good enough to respond to an argument that, say, a landowner should be stopped from making some use of his or her land by asserting that the landowner should win because it’s his or her property. Whether property ownership includes a right to make such a use is the very issue being contested. Ownership or entitlement is a critical element in just about every legal dispute. In many cases, though, it doesn’t come up. The point is only that the issue of entitlement or ownership is critical to just about every contract, tort, and criminal case, even if it is often not disputed. This textbook and course focus on areas of the law in which what it is that the law protects, what the entitlement is and who has it, is at issue."