The public trust doctrine was resurrected by Professor Joe Sax in a famous article a half-century ago. Sax explored the doctrine's history and maintained that it had contemporary significance at the time of the dawn of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Sax thought that the historic use...

This paper, a celebratory essay marking the 50th anniversary of the first issue of Environmental Law, the nation's oldest and most comprehensive law student-edited law review, discusses the background of the founding of the journal in 1970 and surveys the many symposia and leading articles it...

This edited speech, delivered at a land use conference shortly after the Supreme Court decided Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission in 1992, questioned several premises of the decision and criticized Justice Scalia's opinion for the Court. The essay suggested that the Court lost its way in...

Professor Blumm traces the evolution of the modern public trust doctrine in the West. He claims the doctrine is best understood by focusing on the remedies courts prescribe for trust violations. Although he sees four distinct categories of remedies in the case law, he asserts that they all...

In November 2016, just two days after the election of President Donald Trump, the federal district court in Oregon handed down Juliana v. Obama, a remarkable decision that refused to dismiss a lawsuit brought by youth plaintiffs who claimed that federal government's fossil fuel policies over the...

This article surveys the history of hydropower-salmon tradeoffs in the Columbia Basin in the 20th century. The resolution of those tradeoffs has overwhelmingly favored hydropower, as often the federal agencies running the Federal Columbia River Power System claimed a lack of authority to improve...

Resentment of the federal government's management of public lands runs deep in the arid West, where grazing, mining, and timber once predominated and remain important to rural communities. This resentment bubbled over in 2016 with the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in...

This brief to the Oregon Supreme Court supports youth plaintiffs' claims that the state's failure to develop and implement a scientifically based plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid a climate catastrophe violates the state's public trust doctrine. The brief reviews the history and...

Pacific salmon, the signature species of the Pacific Northwest, have declined across their range for well over a century, due to a myriad of human-caused effects on their habitat and the fish themselves. Restoration efforts—some successful, some halting—began earnest in the late 20th...