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Intersectional Management: An Analysis Of Cooperation And Competition On American Public Lands, Robin M. Rotman, Abigail M. Hunt

Faculty Publications

The United States government holds public lands in trust for the whole of the American people. This article focuses on National Monuments under the Antiquities Act. It argues that the federal government should renew its approach to the management of these lands by incorporating principles of environmental justice and long- term environmental viability. The article begins by examining the historical and legal foundations of federal lands in the United States, with a focus on the Antiquities Act. It then reflects on recent litigation and political controversy surrounding Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, to illustrate how the …

Beyond The Antiquities Act: Can The Blm Reconcile Energy Dominance And National Monument Protection?, John C. Ruple, Heather Tanana

Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment publications

On December 4, 2017, President Donald J. Trump carved more than 2 million acres from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. He also directed federal land managers to prepare management plans for both monuments. Draft plans have been released, and the preferred alternative under both plans promotes right-of-way development, minerals exploration, livestock grazing, and other traditional uses over protection of monument resources. Our paper argues that this approach violates both the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the Omnibus Public Lands Act of 2009 because these statutes require the Bureau of Land Management to emphasize protection of …

Chapter 7: Wild Places And Irreplaceable Resources: Protecting Wilderness And National Monuments, John C. Ruple

Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment publications

This chapter is really two chapters in one in that it discusses wilderness, both as an idea that has had an evolving meaning, and as a legal construct. This chapter also discusses national monuments on our public lands, another legal construct that has been used to protect a wide range of resources, including wilderness character. To be sure, these areas overlap, but that overlap is far from complete, and the objectives underpinning these two designations, while complimentary, are not identical.

Honoring Sally Jewell, Charles Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Are Marine National Monuments "Situated On Lands Owned Or Controlled By The Government Of The United States?", Tyler C. Costello

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

The ocean offers what may seem like endless supply of natural resources, ecosystem services, or for some, simple enjoyment. Yet, in the face of climate change and overexploitation, many of these unique ecosystems and their inhabitants face an uphill battle. A president's use of the Antiquities Act establishing a national monument is an efficient and effective method of protecting these diverse ecosystems, as long as the area to be protected satisfies one of the Act's limitations that the monument be "situated on land owned or controlled by the federal government." Prior to a 2017 lawsuit concerning President Obama's use of …

Strategic Institutional Positioning: How We Have Come To Generate Environmental Law Without Congress, Donald J. Kochan

Texas A&M Law Review

The administrative state has emerged as a pervasive machine that has become the dominate generator of legal rules—despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution commits the legislative power to Congress alone. When examining legislation authorizing administrative agencies to promulgate rules, we are often left asking whether Congress “dele- gates” away its lawmaking authority by giving agencies too much power and discretion to decide what rules should be promulgated and to determine how rich to make their content. If the agencies get broad authority, it is not too hard to understand why they would fulsomely embrace the grant to its fullest. …

Strategic Institutional Positioning: How We Have Come To Generate Environmental Law Without Congress, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Whose Lands? Which Public?: The Shape Of Public-Lands Law And Trump's National Monument Proclamations, Jedediah Britton-Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

President Trump issued a proclamation in December 2017 purporting to remove two million acres in southern Utah from national monument status, radically shrinking the Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument and splitting the Bears Ears National Monument into two residual protected areas. Whether the President has the power to revise or revoke existing monuments under the Antiquities Act, which creates the national monument system, is a new question of law for a 112-year-old statute that has been used by Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama to protect roughly fifteen million acres of federal land and hundreds of millions of marine acres. …

Coloring Outside The Lines: A Response To Professor Seamon’S Dismantling Monuments, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Dismantling Monuments, Professor Richard H. Seamon defends President Donald Trump’s recent proclamations modifying the boundaries of two national monuments, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, that Presidents Clinton and Obama each designated at the ends of their Administrations. Professor Seamon is not alone in making these arguments, as I am not alone in saying that Professor Seamon’s arguments, while well-intentioned, are wrong. He exaggerates the persuasive power of congressional silence. He elevates the importance of the statute’s original intent. Professor Seamon and I read the text and legislative history of the Antiquities Act differently—he sees unlimited presidential power, I …

Slides: Flpma In Its Historical Context, John D. Leshy

FLPMA Turns 40 (October 21)

Presenter: John D. Leshy, Sunderland Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, U.C. Hastings College of the Law

36 slides

This session traces the history of FLPMA including, among other things, its legislative, administrative, and historical antecedents, including for example, the Public Land Law Review Commission’s 1970 report, One Third of Our Nation’s Lands. It then considers FLPMA’s unique public lands policies and requirements and how they are reflected in the BLM’s management of public lands today.

See: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/blm/history/contents.htm

Background Reading: Department Of Agriculture, 2013 Budget Overview, United States. Forest Service, United States. Department Of Agriculture

The Future of Natural Resources Policy (December 6)

57 pages.

"Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Overview"

"February 2012"

"Background Reading"

The Future of Natural Resources Policy: This forum will provide a post-election perspective on some of the challenges and opportunities that natural resources, public lands, and energy policymakers in Washington are likely to face in the next four years. An expert panel will discuss the dynamics in the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, and Congress, and how their evolving policies are likely to affect Colorado in the coming years.

Natural Resources Policy Under The Bush Administration: Not What It Says, But What It Has Done In Court, William Perry Pendley

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

No abstract provided.

The Monumental Legacy Of The Antiquities Act Of 1906, Mark Squillace

Publications

The Antiquities Act of 1906 authorizes the President of the United States "to declare by public proclamation, historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon [federal] lands . . . to be national monuments . . . " The law was passed during the Theodore Roosevelt administration, and Roosevelt quickly set about designating a wide range of lands and resources as national monuments, including notably, the 800,000 acre Grand Canyon National Monument. Roosevelt's expansive interpretation of the law was embraced by later presidents and ultimately by the Supreme Court. In …