Law for the Land

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.

Author: Erin Ryan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 03/12/2026
Pages: 494
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.04d
ISBN: 9781316622858

About the Author
Ryan, Erin: - Erin Ryan is an internationally regarded expert in environmental law, constitutional law, negotiation, and collaborative governance. After long service as the Atkinson Professor and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs at the Florida State University College of Law, she joins the faculty at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law in 2026. She presents widely in the United States, 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, just east of Yosemite National Park.