To view or download the 2019 Supplement to this book, click here. The public trust doctrine (PTD), an ancient anti-monopoly precept of property law inherited from Roman and civil law, exists in every United States jurisdiction and several international ones. The PTD, originally concerned with navigation and fishing, has emerged as an organizing principle for natural resources management in the twenty-first century, for it posits government trustees as stewards for both present and future generations. This casebook examines the role of the public trust doctrine in managing waterways, wetlands, water rights, wildlife, the atmosphere, and uplands like beaches and parks. The materials are suited for either an upper-division environmental or natural resources law course or a seminar. The second edition includes important new cases, including the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's landmark Robinson Township decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court's narrowing of the public trust doctrine in Rock Koshkonong, and several recent cases in the atmospheric trust litigation.

This coursebook examines the public trust doctrine (PTD), an ancient anti-monopoly precept of property law, inherited from Roman and civil law, which exists in every United States jurisdiction and several international ones. The PTD, originally concerned with navigation and fishing, has emerged as an organizing principle for natural resources management in the twenty-first century, for it posits government trustees as stewards for both present and future generations. The text examines the role of the public trust doctrine in managing waterways, wetlands, water rights, wildlife, the atmosphere, and uplands like beaches and parks. The materials are suited for either an upper-division environmental or natural resources law course or a seminar.

This book exposes the dysfunction of environmental law and offers a transformative approach based on the public trust doctrine. An ancient and enduring principle, the public trust doctrine empowers citizens to protect their inalienable property rights to crucial resources. This book shows how a trust principle can apply from the local to global level to protect the planet.

Hardbound - New, hardbound print book.

How did Chicago, a city known for commerce, come to have such a splendid public waterfront—its most treasured asset? Lakefront reveals a story of social, political, and legal conflict in which private and public rights have clashed repeatedly over time, only to produce, as a kind of miracle, a generally happy ending. Joseph D. Kearney and Thomas W. Merrill study the lakefront's evolution from the middle of the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Their findings have significance for understanding not only Chicago's history but also the law's part in determining the future of significant urban resources such as waterfronts. The Chicago lakefront is where the American public trust doctrine, holding certain public resources off limits to private development, was born. This book describes the circumstances that gave rise to the doctrine and its fluctuating importance over time, and reveals how it was resurrected in the later twentieth century to become the primary principle for mediating clashes between public and private lakefront rights. Lakefront compares the effectiveness of the public trust idea to other property doctrines, and assesses the role of the law as compared with more institutional developments, such as the emergence of sanitary commissions and park districts, in securing the protection of the lakefront for public uses. By charting its history, Kearney and Merrill demonstrate that the lakefront's current status is in part a product of individuals and events unique to Chicago. But technological changes, and a transformation in social values in favor of recreational and preservationist uses, also have been critical. Throughout, the law, while also in a state of continual change, has played at least a supporting role.

Hardbound - New, hardbound print book.