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Chapter 2: Western Public Land Law And The Evolving Management Landscape, John C. Ruple

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

Our nation’s history, and the history of the lands that we inhabit, are inextricably intertwined. Ranchers, miners, loggers, and intrepid homesteaders of the Old West embodies manifest destiny era ideals that set our nation on a trajectory which continues to shape the choices we make today. Laws enacted to speed westward expansion and resolve land ownership indelibly marked the Western landscape, where the vast majority of our public lands are found today.

The US government acquired the Western frontier with federal blood and treasure, and then enacted laws conveying much of that landscape to states, railroads, and the indomitable men …

42nd Annual Foulston-Siefkin Lecture: The Next Wave Of Fourth Amendment Challenges After Carpenter, Matthew Tokson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This is an edited and adapted version of the 42nd Annual Foulston Siefkin Lecture, delivered at Washburn University School of Law.

The lecture discusses the future of Fourth Amendment law following the Supreme Court’s enormously important decision in Carpenter v. United States. It analyzes Carpenter and argues that its detailed account of the privacy harms caused by government surveillance will be its most important legacy. Moreover, the Court’s emphasis on the risk of privacy harm is not a one-off or a sharp break from previous practice. Carpenter is consistent with a long line of Supreme Court decisions ignoring or reshaping …

George Perkins Marsh: Anticipating The Anthropocene, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This chapter, part of the forthcoming volume PIONEERS OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW, explores the vision of humanity's influence on social-ecological systems that George Perkins Marsh provided to the world in his 1964 work, MAN AND NATURE, OR PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION, republished in 1874 as THE EARTH AS MODIFIED THROUGH HUMAN ACTION. In addition to tracing how Marsh and these publications influenced nature resources and environmental law in the United States well into the 20th century, this chapter also argues that Marsh anticipated, in many respects, the environmental legal and policy issues of the Anthropocene by tracing clearly …

Translational Ecology And Environmental Law, Robert W. Adler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Translational ecology is a comparatively new approach to the pursuit of ecology and other environmental sciences, the implications of which for environmental law have not previously been explored significantly. Emulating the concepts of translational medicine, proponents of transactional ecology seek to increase the relevance of their research to important environmental problems by improving how effectively they communicate research results to end users of that science, collaborating with those end users to identify research that is “actionable” rather than purely “curiosity-driven” or theoretical, recognizing that values as well as science have a legitimate role in environmental decisions, and engaging in ongoing …

Professional Identity Formation Through Pro Bono Revealed Through Conversation Analysis, Linda F. Smith

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Law school is supposed to teach legal analysis and lawyering skills as well as mold law students’ professional identities. Pro Bono work provides an opportunity for law students to use their legal knowledge and skills and to develop their identities as emerging legal professionals. As important as both pro bono work and identity formation are, there has been very little research regarding how pro bono contributes to students’ identity formation. This paper utilizes a data set of over forty student-client consultations at a pro bono brief advice clinic that have been recorded and transcribed. It uses conversation analysis to study …

Water Law And Climate Change In The United States: A Review Of The Scholarship, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Climate change’s effects on water resources have been some of the first realities of ecological change in the Anthropocene, forcing climate change adaptation efforts even as the international community seeks to mitigate climate change. Water law has thus become one vehicle of climate change adaptation. Research into the intersections between climate change and water law in the United States must contend with the facts that: (1) climate change affects different parts of this large country differently; and (2) United States water law is itself a complicated subject, with each state having its own laws for surface water and groundwater and …

Learning From Our Mistakes: Conversation Analysis Reveals Best Practices For A Student-Staffed Pro Bono Project, Linda F. Smith

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Law schools make “pro bono” opportunities available to students to introduce them to the responsibilities of the profession. Often these pro bono law students help in “brief advice” projects staffed by volunteer attorneys. This staffing-supervision structure presents challenges in ensuring clients receive competent, individualized advice and the students receive adequate oversight so that this is a positive learning experience for them. This paper analyzes transcripts from 46 recorded student-client interviews and 35 student-attorney consultations. It focuses on those cases where there were “errors or omissions” -- either the client got some erroneous advice or the client did not receive complete, …

Second Amici Curiae Brief Of Law Professors Et Al., Pine Mountain Preserve, Llp V. Commissioner, Filed In The U.S. Court Of Appeals For The Eleventh Circuit, Nancy Mclaughlin

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Second Amici Curiae Brief of Law Professors et al., filed in support of the government in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Pine Mountain Preserve, LLP v. Commissioner, on appeal from U.S Tax Court No. 8956-13, 151 T.C. 247 (2018).

Amici Curiae Brief Of Law Professors Et Al., Pine Mountain Preserve, Llp V. Commissioner, Filed In The U.S. Court Of Appeals For The Eleventh Circuit, Nancy Mclaughlin

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Amici Curiae Brief of Law Professors et al., filed in support of the government in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Pine Mountain Preserve, LLP v. Commissioner, on appeal from U.S Tax Court No. 8956-13, 151 T.C. 247 (2018).

The Drive To Advise: A Study Of Law Students At A Pro Bono Brief Advice Project, Linda F. Smith

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Law school aims to teach lawyering skills as well as legal analysis. While all students must acquire the skills of legal analysis, research and writing, law schools may decide what other skills to teach. Students also acquire skills and habits in informal ways, through clerkship experiences or pro bono volunteer work. However, there has been almost no study of what “skills” students pick up in these informal ways, and whether there are skills that would better be learned as part of the curriculum. This study looks at the skill of legal interviewing employed by students in a pro bono brief …