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Natural Resources Law Commons

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Property Law and Real Estate

University of Michigan Law School

Private property

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Natural Resources Law

Reconciling Police Power Prerogatives, Public Trust Interests, And Private Property Rights Along Laurentian Great Lakes Shores, Richard K. Norton, Nancy H. Welsh May 2019

Reconciling Police Power Prerogatives, Public Trust Interests, And Private Property Rights Along Laurentian Great Lakes Shores, Richard K. Norton, Nancy H. Welsh

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

The United States has a north coast along its ‘inland seas’—the Laurentian Great Lakes. The country enjoys more than 4,500 miles of Great Lakes coastal shoreline, almost as much as its ocean coastal shorelines combined, excluding Alaska. The Great Lakes states are experiencing continued shorefront development and redevelopment, and there are growing calls to better manage shorelands for enhanced resiliency in the face of global climate change. The problem is that the most pleasant, fragile, and dangerous places are in high demand among coastal property owners, such that coastal development often yields the most tenacious of conflicts between public interests …


The Public Trust In Surface Waterways And Submerged Lands Of The Great Lakes States, Bertram C. Frey, Andrew Mutz Jul 2007

The Public Trust In Surface Waterways And Submerged Lands Of The Great Lakes States, Bertram C. Frey, Andrew Mutz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The modern public trust doctrine compels each Great Lakes state to protect the sustainable future of the Lakes and to preserve traditional public uses. At the same time, the doctrine constrains the states' powers to allow exploitation of trust resources. This Article provides a brief historical overview of the public trust doctrine in waterways and their submerged lands. It next explores how the eight Great Lakes states have applied the doctrine, discusses the surprising number of differences in the doctrine's development from state to state, and provides comparison charts. After analyzing the variety of approaches used by the eight states …


Walking The Beach To The Core Of Sovereignty: The Historic Basis For The Public Trust Doctrine Applied In Glass V. Goeckel, Robert Haskell Abrams Jul 2007

Walking The Beach To The Core Of Sovereignty: The Historic Basis For The Public Trust Doctrine Applied In Glass V. Goeckel, Robert Haskell Abrams

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In 2004, a split panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals announced its conclusion that Michigan littoral owners of property owned to the water's very edge and could exclude members of the public from walking on the beach. In that instant almost 3300 miles of the Great Lakes foreshore became, in theory and in law, closed to public use. The case became the leading flash point of controversy between the vast public and ardent private property rights groups. A little more than one year later, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed that ruling as errant on public trust grounds and returned …