Environmental law has failed in its most basic purpose. Even as ecosystems collapse across the globe and climate crisis intensifies, environmental agencies worldwide use their authority to permit the very harm that statutes were passed to prevent. This book exposes the dysfunction of environmental law and offers a transformative approach based on the public trust doctrine. An ancient and enduring principle, the public trust doctrine empowers citizens to protect their inalienable property rights to crucial resources. It holds government to a fiduciary obligation to protect such natural assets as generational inheritance for all citizens. Although the public trust has long offered a theoretical ideal for environmental law, until now it has lacked the precision necessary for citizens, government employees, legislators, educators and judges to apply it to a broad realm of issues. This book shows how a trust principle can apply from the local to global level to protect the planet.
• This book discusses law in the broader context of ecology, culture, and economics, but is accessible to a general educated and professional audience • Presents a new sovereign trust paradigm for environmental law, this book integrates tribal sovereigns into a governance framework • Addresses a multitude of problems within agencies, this book should be of interest to officials in local, state and federal agencies who want to reform their agencies' practices
Contents
Part I. Environmental Law: Hospice for a Dying Planet?: 1. 'You are doing a great job'; 2. The great legal experiment; 3. The politics of discretion; 4. Behind the grand façade; 5. The administrative tyranny over nature; Part II. The People's Natural Trust: 6. The inalienable attribute of sovereignty; 7. The ecological res; 8. Fiduciary standards of protection and restoration; 9. From bureaucrats to trustees; 10. Beyond borders: shared ecology and the duties of sovereign co-tenant trustees; 11. Nature's justice: the role of the courts; Part III. The Public Trust and the Great Turning: 12. Nature's trust and the heart of humanity; 13. Using Earth's interest, not its principal; 14. The public trust and private property rights; 15. The new world: a planetary trust.
Printer friendly version