The Columbia River Gorge, a spectacularly beautiful canyon along the border of Oregon and Washington, has for the past two decades, been the scene of a largely unnoticed experiment in land-use federalism. In 1986, to protect the Gorge from unwise development, Congress enacted the Columbia River...

This essay, written for a symposium commemorating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Charles Reich's famous article, quot;The New Propertyquot;, maintains that the 1964 article, which argued for procedural protection for government benefits like social security and unemployment...

The saga of Columbia Basin salmon recovery is one of the foremost natural resource restoration efforts in the United States over the last quarter-century. Although development of the world's largest integrated hydroelectric system crippled the Columbia's salmon runs, Congress declared in 1980...

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...

The Klamath River, draining some 12,000 square miles in southern Oregon and northern California, was once the third largest salmon stream on the West Coast, the life force of Native Americans. The river runs 263 miles from headwaters in Oregon and flows through the Cascades to the Pacific Ocean...

Among the most innovative provisions of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976 were those called for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)to designate public lands as “areas of critical environmental concern” (ACECs) for protective management. In fact, FLPMA made it quite...

Chile, whose public has experienced widespread dissatisfaction with Chilean environmental policies, seems poised to use the ongoing redrafting of its constitution to entrench the public trust doctrine in its fundamental charter. The ancient doctrine, emanating from Roman law and reflected in the...

Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago is Joseph Kearney and Thomas Merrill’s engaging account of how public law affected the development of the Chicago lakefront, is a meticulously detailed history of a century-and-a-half of law and urban affairs. The authors center the book...