{"id":1578,"date":"2012-08-23T20:01:42","date_gmt":"2012-08-24T00:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/hlpr\/?p=1578"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:23:09","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:23:09","slug":"finding-common-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/08\/23\/finding-common-ground\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Common Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Hudson Kingston<\/p>\n

<\/em>Last June the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics,\u00a0Elinor Ostrom<\/a>, died. She had won her award and made her career by expanding on the concept of the commons, as in \u201cthe\u00a0tragedy<\/a>\u00a0of the commons\u201d\u2014a fundamental concept to environmental law. Essentially the idea (when it is simplified for lawyers) amounts to stopping private parties from squandering a resource by making private\/public rights to exclude people from overusing\/overpolluting\/overfishing<\/a>\u00a0as none of us can be trusted to steward such resources. She brought new interpretations to the table,\u00a0arguing<\/a>\u00a0that people could figure out ways to manage their commons to make resilient systems and communities. She made it clear that there is not just one way to preserve the resources that we all rely on. Systems, she found, did not all have to be top-down command and control, and they should treat complex problems with complex,\u00a0particularized<\/em>\u00a0problem solving.
\n
\nIt may have shaken her confidence in humanity\u2019s ability to deal with such big problems to have seen this summer\u2019s record heat, largely blamed on global warming by those that go in for that sort of thing,\u00a0destroy<\/a>the farming economy of her home state of Indiana and the rest of the Midwest. On the other hand she may have found the silver lining. She may have even pointed to a new line of cases brought by\u00a0Our Children\u2019s Trust<\/a>\u00a0to protect the atmospheric commons under one of the oldest legal concepts still extant in American law.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Public Trust Doctrine<\/a>\u00a0(PTD) historically applied to submerged lands and land up to the high-water mark along rivers, lakes, and other watercourses. These areas had to be held in trust by the sovereign for the use of all people, and as such any compromise of the trust (i.e. selling the trust property to private parties) could be voided; the state had to remain a good trustee in perpetuity for our\u00a0posterity. Recently one court inTexas<\/a>\u00a0and one in\u00a0New Mexico<\/a>\u00a0have made it possible for suits premised on an atmospheric PTD to proceed. Our Children\u2019s Trust brought twelve state cases and a federal case to address global warming by asserting governments\u2019 duty to protect our atmosphere\u00a0(naturally, there have been\u00a0mixed<\/a>\u00a0results<\/a>). Depending on\u00a0who<\/a>you ask, it\u2019s possible that the expansion of the PTD to the heavens is a sure sign that the sky is\u00a0falling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If one were able to ask Dr. Ostrom she may even point out that she told us so.\u00a0Regardless of the eventual results in these cases, it remains a sterling example of how the fuddy-duddy old common law, the stuff that many assume is the defunct rubble on which our modern environmental statutes now rest, is still very much alive\u2014in legal realms where modern regulation is outdated or insufficient this complex and responsive system of law may be the quickest route to a policy solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Hudson Kingston Last June the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics,\u00a0Elinor Ostrom, died. She had won her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-ps","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}