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 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...

The public trust doctrine is an ancient doctrine of public property law that governs sovereign stewardship of natural resources. The doctrine both promote public access to trust resources and requires sovereign protection of them for the benefit of the public, including future generations. The...

This article is the second part of a two-part analysis exploring how Native Americans and landowners can use conservation trust mechanisms to protect tribal interests on privately held lands in the United States. Part I suggested four models of tribal engagement in private conservation. This...

This article is the first part of a two-part analysis that maps out a tribal role in the growing conservation trust movement, which uses transactional property mechanisms to achieve natural resource protection on private lands. Since conquest, tribes have been divested of their traditional...

Modern environmental law has proved a colossal failure, despite the good intentions and the hard work of many citizens, lawyers, and government officials. Notwithstanding the most extensive and complex set of legal mandates the world has ever known, government is driving runaway greenhouse gas...

Environmental law has failed in its most basic purpose: to keep human activities in compliance with nature’s requirements. Ecological systems are collapsing across the globe, and climate crisis threatens the continued viability of human civilization as we know it. Across the United States,...

Leading climate scientists warn that Earth is in “imminent peril,” on the verge of runaway climate heating that will impose catastrophic conditions on generations to come. In the face of government recalcitrance this article proposes atmospheric trust litigation which would force carbon...

The legal “cornerstone” of federal Indian law is the federal trust obligation. The duty was formulated by courts long ago to protect native nations against federal actions that harm the retained tribal property and resources. Yet in recent years, courts have diminished the force of the...

This article examines the judicial role in the intensifying climate emergency. In the leading American climate case, Juliana v. United States, a Ninth Circuit panel recognized that the world is approaching “the ‘eve of destruction’” in which extreme climate disruption threatens to...