Law Commons^™

The Birth, Death, And Afterlife Of The Wild Lands Policy: The Evolution Of The Bureau Of Land Management’S Authority To Protect Wilderness Values, Olivia Brumfield

Michael Blumm

Since the enactment of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) in 1976, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has had a troubled relationship with wild lands, the nation’s last remaining places with wilderness characteristics. Although for twenty-five years BLM recognized wilderness values as a resource it must balance and could protect consistent with the agency’s multiple use mandate, in 2003 BLM largely disclaimed that interpretation, potentially imperiling future protection of wild lands that were not designated as wilderness or wilderness study areas. Since then, the agency has made incremental – but potentially powerful – steps toward reclaiming a …

Antimonopoly And The Radical Lochean Origins Of Western Water Law, Michael Blumm

Michael Blumm

This review of David Schorr's book, The Colorado Doctrine: Water Rights, Corporations, and Distributive Justice on the American Frontier, maintains that the book is a therapeutic corrective to the standard history of the origins of western water law as celebration of economic efficiency and wealth maximization. Schorr's account convincingly contends that the roots of prior appropriation water law--the "Colorado Doctrine"--lie in distributional justice concerns, not in the supposed efficiency advantages of private property over common property. The goals of the founders of the Colorado doctrine, according to Schorr, were to advance Radical Lochean principles such as widespread distibution of water …

Lands Council, Karuk Tribe, And The Great Environmental Divide In The Ninth Circuit, Michael Blumm, Maggie Hall

Michael Blumm

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation’s largest appellate court, with jurisdiction over fifteen judicial districts and 61 million people—almost 20 percent of the nation’s population—spans from Alaska to Arizona, from Montana to Hawaii. The Ninth Circuit has a reputation for being an environmentally sensitive court, but the court is as diverse as the terrain over which it has jurisdiction. Due to its size, the court’s en banc reviews do not include all twenty-nine judges but instead only panels of eleven. Thus, en banc panels can reflect the kind of diversity of opinion they aim to reduce.

Recently, the …