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This book follows the rise of the public trust doctrine-which obligates government to protect critical natural resources-from its ancient Roman origins to a modern force of environmental law. Focusing on California's enchanting Mono Lake, it tells the story of a group of everyday people who used the law to save it, spawning a legal revolution that reverberates globally. Their case pitted local advocates against thirsty Angelenos hundreds of miles away, in a dispute that stretches back to the dawn of Western water woes. Their story exemplifies the challenges of balancing legitimate needs for public infrastructure with competing environmental values, within systems of law still evolving to manage conflicting public and private rights in natural resources. Today, public trust principles infuse both common and constitutional law to protect water, wildlife, ecosystems, and climate-marrying sovereign obligations with environmental rights, and raising open questions of legal theory, strategy, and meaning.
List of contents
Introduction - The public trust doctrine and the foundations of environmental governance; 1. The historical origins of the modern public trust doctrine; 2. Building the Los Angeles aqueduct; 3. The Mono Basin extension; 4. Saving Mono Lake: the political mobilization; 5. National Audubon Society: the 'Mono Lake Case'; 6. In the wake of Audubon: the legal and political aftermath; 7. The Mono Lake doctrine; 8. Beyond Mono Lake: public trust development across the United States; 9. Public trust principles, environmental rights, and trust-rights climate advocacy; 10. Environmental rights around the world: public trust principles and the rights of nature movement; Conclusion a quiet revolution in environmental law.
About the author
Erin Ryan is an internationally regarded expert in environmental law, constitutional law, negotiation, and collaborative governance. She is the Atkinson Professor and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs at Florida State University College of Law, joining University of South California Gould School of Law in 2026. She presents widely in the US, Europe, and Asia and has served as a fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Research Project, at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, and as a Fulbright Scholar in China. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she clerked on the Ninth Circuit and practiced environmental law in San Francisco. Before law school, she was a USFS ranger at Mono Lake.
