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.

'Human laws must be reformulated to keep human activities in harmony with the unchanging and universal laws of nature.' This 1987 statement by the World Commission on Environment and Development has never been more relevant and urgent than it is today. Despite the many legal responses to various environmental problems, more greenhouse gases than ever before are being released into the atmosphere, biological diversity is rapidly declining and fish stocks in the oceans are dwindling. This book challenges the doctrinal construction of environmental law and presents an innovative legal approach to ecological sustainability: a rule of law for nature which guides and transcends ordinary written laws and extends fundamental principles of respect, integrity and legal security to the non-human world.

Reflecting a global trend, scores of countries have affirmed that their citizens are entitled to healthy air, water, and land and that their constitution should guarantee certain environmental rights. This book examines the increasing recognition that the environment is a proper subject for protection in constitutional texts and for vindication by constitutional courts. This phenomenon, which the authors call environmental constitutionalism, represents the confluence of constitutional law, international law, human rights, and environmental law. National apex and constitutional courts are exhibiting a growing interest in environmental rights, and as courts become more aware of what their peers are doing, this momentum is likely to increase. This book explains why such provisions came into being, how they are expressed, and the extent to which they have been, and might be, enforced judicially. It is a singular resource for evaluating the content of and hope for constitutional environmental rights.