Environmental Policy Commons^™

Whether you agree with government intervention, or with the specific form of gov- ernment intervention applied, it is a fact that government becomes involved in environ- mental issues because, to date, we have failed to fully inter- nalize the costs of our actions toward the environment in our market systems. So this is why government becomes involved in the first place, to correct existing and recurring market failures. Knowing this important fact helps us better understand, and judge, envi- ronmental laws and policies.

The purpose of this article is to highlight some of the roles government can take on that exist outside the traditional regulatory powers of government. Two such nonregulatory roles include the rights of government as the property owner of submerged lands, and the rights/ obligations of government as trustee of the public trust under the public trust doctrine that exists at common law and also statutorily in many coastal states. The reasons these nonregulatory roles are important considerations is because of the reasonable argument that a government that is not acting in a regulatory capacity cannot be said to be …