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Full-Text Articles in Law
Water Law Transitions, Robert H. Abrams
Water Law Transitions, Robert H. Abrams
Journal Publications
The history of water law throughout the United States is dynamic. Beginning with the inherited doctrine of English common law natural flow riparianism, the changes in law can be described as instrumentalist in the sense that "judges and legislatures made this branch of water law an instrument of pro-developmental policy." When the natural flow doctrine's requirement that the stream flow down to lower owners undiminished as to quantity and quality clashed with the needs of the extensive utilization of water powered mills in the nineteenth century, the courts pioneered an American doctrine of reasonable use riparianism that would sustain water-dependent …
The Environmentalist Attack On Environmental Law, John Copeland Nagle
The Environmentalist Attack On Environmental Law, John Copeland Nagle
Journal Articles
This essay reviews two books written by leading scholars that express profound dissatisfaction with the ability of environmental law to actually protect the environment. Mary Wood’s “Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age” calls for “deep change in environmental law,” emphasizing the roles that agency issuance of permits to modify the environment and excessive deference to agency decisions play in ongoing environmental destruction. Wood proposes a “Nature’s Trust” built on the public trust doctrine to empower courts to play a much more aggressive role in overseeing environmental decisionmaking. In “Green Governance: Ecological Survival, Human Rights, and the Law …