Posted: April 10th, 2015

critical essay on a current real estate law issue

critical essay on a current real estate law issue

Real Estate Law Essay Assignment
RES 3000/LAW 3301
Prof. Jay Weiser
2015 Spring

•    A.    Overview    1
•    B.    Source-thesis statement    1
•    C.    Source characteristics    2
•    D.    Thesis requirements    3
•    E.    Editing assignments    4
•    F.    Essay submission    4
•    G.    Extra credit assignments    5
•    H.    Academic honesty    6

Overview
For this assignment, students are required to write a critical essay on a current real estate law issue (broadly defined) based on at least three journalistic articles that cover related issues.  This is a multipart assignment, with the dates set out in the syllabus, and with each part graded.
Source-thesis statement
Essay
Editing assignment 1
Editing assignment 2
Optional extra credit redraft
Live links to Purdue OWL writing resources discussed in class are on e-Reserve.  Additional links are in this document.
Source-thesis statement
Students will submit:
Google search grammar.
Preliminary proposed sources.
Preliminary thesis.
Like virtually all course homeworks, this must be submitted to turnitin.com.  Turntin instructions will be posted to Blackboard.
I will provide a rubric with comments within two weeks.
This assignment counts as a homework, and receives a pass-fail grade, with submissions satisfying the requirements receiving a pass.
Students receive failing grades for:
Topics that clearly do not comply with the assignment.
Nonconforming sources.
Sources that are unidentified, not cited in APA Reference List format, or lack links.
Plagiarized source-thesis statements.
Students receiving a failing grade on their source-thesis statement (other than for plagiarism) can resubmit for partial credit.
Source characteristics
Conforming publications.  Sources must be from at least two of the following sources:
New York Times
Wall Street Journal
Washington Post
Financial Times
The Economist
Bloomberg.com (credible source only for US & EU issues)
Once you have the three sources, additional sources are also acceptable.  We will discuss how to assess their reliability.
Other conforming source requirements.
No more than three months old.
Contain reporting.
Be at least 1000 words long, or about two screens if pulled up on the Web.
Nonconforming sources.  These sources are not acceptable:
New York or Tri-State area-specific articles.
Articles all focused on a single state or a single country (other than US or China)
Business-focused articles primarily concerned with the direction of the real estate market, new construction techniques or other topics with little relation to legal issues.
Opinion pieces without significant reporting.
Service articles focused on how-to issues, such as how to buy a foreclosed house or how to apply for a mortgage modification.
Soft features consisting of personal stories (e.g. interviews with people flooded out by a hurricane).
Articles assigned for class.
Court cases, including judicial opinions.
Times Topic pages.
Wikipedia.
The Real Deal (excellent publication for RE professionals, but deal- and NYC-centric).
Crain’s New York Business (excellent publication for RE professionals, but NYC-centric).
Accessing sources behind paywalls.  The bulk of the material is behind paywalls, although some sources have free limited content on the Web.  As noted in the Skills slides, all are easily accessible through the search box using your Baruch library account.
Citing sources.  Cite sources using APA Reference List format for online sources, including URLs with live links,  including:
A Digital Object Identifier (DOI),  when available.
A URL for the article, if the DOI is unavailable.
DOIs or URLs that do not direct the reader to the specific article cited, but instead to the Baruch library database homepage, database homepages within the Baruch library website (e.g. Factiva) or publication homepages (e.g. www.nytimes.com) are not acceptable.
Resources to browse for a topic.  If you are not sure of what you want to write on, you can browse high-quality articles in these sources:
New York Times Times Topics (often easier to find relevant Times Topic through a Google site search).
New York Times commercial real estate homepage.
Wall Street Journal Commercial real estate page homepage.
Thesis requirements
Argumentative thesis running 1-2 sentences.  See Purdue OWL for examples.  Make an argument, not “X is good,” or “Y is bad.”
Cover a real estate law issue, broadly defined.  Here are some illustrations of real estate law areas that may generate worthwhile theses. There are many more possible topics, and international topics are welcome.
mortgage modifications, foreclosures, servicing or insurance;
bankruptcy;
environmental law (water use, wetlands, permitting, mineral extraction);
flood insurance, coastal zone or flood plain management;
financial regulation (reserve requirements, consumer lending rules, mortgage broker regulation)
Not on:
A Tri-State area topic.
An issue relating to a single state or country, other than the US or China (comparisons across several states or countries are welcome).
Eminent domain.
Squatters’ rights or adverse possession.
Real estate market-oriented issues.
Dodd-Frank’s Qualified Mortgage or Qualified Residential Mortgage regulations.
A topic you are writing or speaking on for another course.
Editing assignments
These will be separately posted.
Essay submission
Grading.  This assignment is graded on an A-F scale.  Submissions on topics that clearly do not comply with the assignment, or with nonconforming sources, will receive a grade between C and F.
Length.  Your essay should be between 1000-2500 words long.  One double-spaced 8 1/2″ x 11″ page is about 250 words.  Longer is not necessarily better, although if you are considering applying to graduate school, a more in-depth treatment is helpful for recommendation and admissions purposes.
Structure.  Your essay will be what Purdue OWL calls an argument paper, and should have this structure:
Interesting introduction in first 1-3 sentences.  Often, a lively example drawn from your selected articles will work.  The Purdue OWL example of an introduction  isn’t the goal here – that example is more applicable for a quasi-abstract of a longer paper.
Argumentative thesis statement in the first paragraph, running 1-2 sentences.  See Purdue OWL’s examples.
Analyze,  synthesize and comment on the articles, including:
Implications (this should be your focus).
How the articles relate to each other.
Source and evidence quality.
Potential author biases.
Purdue OWL discusses the general challenges  in evaluating sources as well as specific questions to ask yourself while reading .  The assignment is directing you to sources that are generally high quality, without the problems of many internet sources , but you should take everything with a grain of salt.
Brief conclusion.
Your essay must state that you have:
Taken the Baruch plagiarism tutorial (including the interactive test available by joining the Blackboard Organization titled Plagiarism and Other Tutorials.
Reviewed the Purdue OWL plagiarism materials.
Complied with Baruch’s academic honesty rules (see Part H below).
Citations.
Within your text, cite your sources using APA in-line text style (see Purdue OWL).
At the end of the essay, provide a reference list at in APA Reference List format for online sources , including URLs with live links.
Editing and proofreading.
Edit and proofread to eliminate spelling and grammatical errors, and to tighten your argument.
Use Word grammar check before submitting.
Nonconforming essays.  Your essay should not be:
A summary of the articles;
Your predictions about the real estate market;
Whether you think that the subject of your paper is good or bad; or
A string of quotes.  You can briefly quote from the articles, but your essay should mainly consist of your thoughts.
Rubric.  I will post a writing rubric showing items and weighting for grade.
Extra credit assignments
Writing Center or SACC visit.  A visit to the Writing Center or SACC after submission of your final source-thesis statement earns extra credit equal to one notch on your grade.  (e.g. moving a B paper to B+).  You must do the redraft to earn the extra credit.
Redraft
A serious redraft of your paper in response to the essay rubric earns extra credit equal to one notch on your paper grade (e.g. moving a B paper to B+).  In addition, the paper will be regraded.
If the essay originally submitted is excellent, the grade will reflect this, and no redraft is necessary.
Academic honesty
Your submission must comply with Baruch’s Academic Honesty Rules.  Detail is provided in the Course Information, which students are responsible for reading.  Key items are reproduced here:
Cheating and plagiarism are serious offenses.  The following definitions are based on the College’s Academic Honesty website:
Cheating is the attempted or unauthorized use of materials, information, notes, study aids, devices or communication during an academic exercise.  Examples include but are not limited to:
Submitting substantial portions of the same paper to two classes without consulting the second instructor;
Allowing others to research and write assigned papers including the use of commercial term paper services.
Plagiarism is the act of presenting another person’s ideas, research or writing as your own:
Copying another person’s actual words without the use of quotation marks and footnotes (a functional limit is four or more words taken from the work of another);
Presenting another person’s ideas or theories in your own words without acknowledging them;
Using information that is not considered common knowledge without acknowledging the source.