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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in State and Local Government Law
Reconciling Police Power Prerogatives, Public Trust Interests, And Private Property Rights Along Laurentian Great Lakes Shores, Richard K. Norton, Nancy H. Welsh
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 …
Blueprint For The Great Lakes Trail, Melissa K. Scanlan
Blueprint For The Great Lakes Trail, Melissa K. Scanlan
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
The Great Lakes are vast yet vulnerable. There is a need to focus the public’s attention on the significance of the lakes for the region as a cohesive, binational whole. To address this need, build on existing water law, and engage the public, this Article provides a blueprint to establish a Great Lakes Trail on the shores of the Great Lakes. The Trail will link together 10,000 miles of coastline and provide the longest marked walking trail in the world. It will demarcate an already existing, yet largely unrecognized, public trust easement and engage the public with their common heritage …
Closing The Regulatory Gap In Michigan's Public Trust Doctrine: Saving Michigan Millions With Statutory Reform, Kelsey Breck
Closing The Regulatory Gap In Michigan's Public Trust Doctrine: Saving Michigan Millions With Statutory Reform, Kelsey Breck
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The Great Lakes are some of Michigan's most valuable and important environmental resources. The public trust doctrine requires Michigan to protect and preserve the lands along the shores of the Great Lakes for the use of future generations. Unfortunately, the public trust doctrine in Michigan is in disarray and as a result, public and private rights to the lands along the Great Lakes are poorly delineated. This Note presents an economic argument for why the public trust doctrine should be reformed to better define public and private rights to the land along Michigan's Great Lakes. It also suggests a statutory …
Walking The Beach To The Core Of Sovereignty: The Historic Basis For The Public Trust Doctrine Applied In Glass V. Goeckel, Robert Haskell Abrams
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 …
State Management Of The Environment Part One: An Evaluation Of The Michigan Experience, Geoffrey J. Lanning
State Management Of The Environment Part One: An Evaluation Of The Michigan Experience, Geoffrey J. Lanning
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Michigan's citizens, as well as its government, seem but dimly aware of the fact that Michigan-the home of America's most growth-centered industry, the automobile-lies at the very eye of the environmental storm. This article seeks to take a broad look at the shortcomings of Michigan's environmental protection in recent years. In so doing, it groups many of Michigan's recent environmental failings into broad categories which will both clarify the status of Michigan's environmental law climate and provide a basis for its reform. Parts One and Two consist of this analysis and evaluation. Part Three will examine possible solutions and offer …
State Management Of The Environment Part Two: A Continuing Evaluation Of The Michigan Experience, Geoffrey J. Lanning
State Management Of The Environment Part Two: A Continuing Evaluation Of The Michigan Experience, Geoffrey J. Lanning
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In Part One of this article, the author outlined the scope and character of Michigan's environmental problems and suggested some of the factors underlying the state's weak and bureaucratic decisionmaking process. Part Two concludes the author's analysis of the fundamental obstacles to effective environmental decisionmaking in Michigan, and Part Three will contain recommendations for reform.
The Trend In Water Law Development, Jerome Maslowski
The Trend In Water Law Development, Jerome Maslowski
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The basis of public and private rights in the waters of the State of Michigan is grounded principally in the common law. There has been a scarcity of statutory law on the subject and it is only within the last ten years that any statutes have been enacted which seek to delineate public and private rights.