The fifth edition of “Property: A Contemporary Approach” was published earlier this year by West Academic. All five editions of the casebook were authored by McGeorge School of Law Professor John Sprankling and Professor Emeritus Ray Coletta.

This new edition of the text expands the book’s coverage of race and social justice issues, including excerpts from Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. (Fair Housing Act), Shelley v. Kramer (discriminatory covenants), and Southern Burlington NAACP v. Township of Mount Laurel (exclusionary zoning).

“Property: A Contemporary Approach” was the first property text to be published in both hard copy and electronic formats. As part of West Academic’s Interactive Casebook Series, students using the e-book have access to the full text of cited cases and more than 200 photographs, maps, diagrams, original documents, and audio clips that were selected by Sprankling and Coletta to help students better understand the material.

“My wife and I crossed the nation three times to visit the sites of most of the cases we cite to take photos, most of which are in the casebook,” said Sprankling of many of the photos in the book.

Since its first publication, the casebook has been adopted by more than 100 U.S. law schools, including the University of California, Los Angeles and Yale, and is generally the second or third most used property casebook in the United States. “Property” has also been adopted by a law school in China.

Sprankling has been a part of McGeorge since 1992, when he joined the faculty as an associate professor. His forthcoming law review article, “The Constitutional Right to ‘Establish a Home’” is slated to be published next year in the George Washington Law Review.