Introduction

This book explores the development of one of our oldest legal principles – the public trust doctrine – which holds that some natural resources are so important to everyone that they cannot belong to anyone, and so the government must protect them for the benefit of all the people. Framing the core public trust principle as a partnership of sovereign obligations and environmental rights, it examines how trust principles fill an important gap in environmental law – and perhaps even constitutional law. The book highlights the epic tale of the fall and rise of Mono Lake – the strange and beautiful Dead Sea of California – and how groundbreaking litigation protecting it became an inflection point in the development of the trust as a tool of environmental law. It explores how the common law doctrine became tasked with protecting environmental interests, and how public trust principles have been instantiated in wider legal frameworks to protect an even broader array of natural resources, including climate stability. The Introduction traces how the doctrine buttresses inherent weaknesses in the foundations of U.S. environmental law, providing needed support for environmental governance.