The Public Trust Doctrine: 30 years later

March 4, 2011

Joseph L. Sax

Emeritus - UC Berkeley School of Law

After working for the U.S. Department of Justice and in private practice in Washington, D.C., Joseph Sax began teaching law at the University of Colorado in 1962. In 1966, he moved to the University of Michigan, where he became the Philip A. Hart Distinguished University Professor. He joined the Boalt faculty in 1986.

Sax has been a visiting professor at Stanford University and the Universities of Utah and Paris, and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is currently a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his awards and citations include the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from the University of Michigan, the Elizabeth Haub Environmental Prize of the Free University of Brussels, the Audubon Society's Conservationist of the Year Award, the William O. Douglas Legal Achievement Award from the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Quality Award of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Sax has served as a consultant or board member of 19 different environmental public service organizations and was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree by the Illinois Institute of Technology. His major books include Mountains Without Handrails; Water Law--Planning and Policy; Water Law--Cases and Commentary; Defending the Environment; and, most recently, Playing Darts with a Rembrandt: Public and Private Rights in Cultural Treasures(1999).

From 1994 to 1996, Sax served in President Clinton's administration as the counselor to the secretary of the interior and deputy assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

William D. Araiza

Professor - Brooklyn Law School

After graduating from law school, William Araiza clerked for the Honorable William Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then for the Honorable David Souter of the United States Supreme Court. He was an associate with two large law firms in Los Angeles, an adjunct faculty member at the University of California Los Angeles Law School and a visiting professor at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Araiza has contributed to several texts on administrative and international law and is the co-editor of a casebook on constitutional law. He has been a member of the Loyola Law School faculty since 1995.

Michael C. Blumm

Professor - Lewis & Clark Law School

Professor Blumm is one of the architects of the Law School’s acclaimed Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program. He has been teaching, writing, and practicing in the environmental and natural resources law field for thirty-five years. He came to the law school in 1978 after practicing with an environmental group and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., where he helped draft the EPA’s wetland protection regulations. Initially, he was a Natural Resources Law Fellow; he was appointed to the faculty the following year. Professor Blumm’s chief interests are in the restoration of the Pacific Northwest salmon runs, the preservation of the West’s public lands and waters, the management of natural resources by Indian tribes, and governmental authority to regulate private property for public purposes.

For over a decade, Blumm edited the Natural Resources Law Institute’s Anadromous Fish Law Memo. More recently, he spent seven years co-directing, with Professor Janet Neuman, the Northwest Water Law and Policy Project. He is a prolific scholar, with over one-hundred articles, book chapters, and monographs on salmon, water, public lands, wetlands, environmental impact assessment, public trust law, and constitutional takings law, to name just a few subjects. His most recent articles concern several on the public trust doctrine, a critique of the Supreme Court’s suggestion that courts could be liable for taking private property, an analysis of a case interpreting 19th century Indian treaties to impose fish habitat protection, and two book reviews on the origins of environmental law.  Ongoing projects include articles on dam breaching, salmon protection under the Endangered Species Act, the influence of the Columbia River Gorge on natural resources law, a reinterpretation of the Indian Law doctrine of discovery, and the role of cultural change in Property law.

In 1992 and 1993, Dartmouth Publishing and New York University Press published Blumm’s anthology on environmental law, and his 2002 book on salmon law and policy, Sacrificing the Salmon (http://www.powells. com/biblio/1-9075228252- 0), met with critical acclaim. Professor Blumm is co-author of the first casebook on Native American Natural Resources Law, originally published in 2002 and now in its second edition. He is author of two chapters in the Waters and Water Rights treatise (on reserved water rights and the Columbia River Basin), and designed and taught the first  courses on Native American Natural Resources Law and Pacific Salmon Law. He works closely with students: over a recent two-year period, twelve of his students published articles, many of whom were his co-authors.

Blumm was visiting professor at the University of Melbourne in 1988, Fulbright Professor at the University of Athens in 1991, and visiting professor at the University of California-Berkeley in 2004. He has lectured on a variety of topics in Australia, Canada, and Brazil and has been a distinguished visitor at Florida State University, the University of Calgary, and Vermont Law School.  He also also served as a board member of WaterWatch of Oregon and American Rivers Northwest. In 2005-07, Blumm was Chair of the American Association of Law School’s Natural Resources Law Section.

J. Peter Byrne

Professor - Georgetown University Law Center

Professor Byrne joined the Law Center faculty in 1985. After graduation from the University of Virginia law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Frank Coffin and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell and then worked as an associate with the D.C. firm of Covington & Burling. He teaches and writes in the areas of Property, Land Use, Constitutional Law, and Higher Education Law and Policy. He served as Associate Dean for the JD Program from 1997 to 2000. He was John Carroll Research Professor in 1996-97.

Hamilton Candee

Partner - Altshuler Berzon LLP

Hamilton Candee is a partner at Altshuler Berzon LLP. He is a graduate of Princeton University and New York University Law School, where he was a Root-Tilden Scholar. He served as a law clerk to Judge Thelton E. Henderson of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and as a legislative assistant in the United States Senate. He was formerly a Senior Attorney in the San Francisco Office of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Co-Director of NRDC’s Western Water Project. He has been involved in a variety of efforts to restore ecosystems, protect endangered species, encourage water conservation, and promote other environmental reforms in federal and state water policy. He received a CLAY Award as one of California’s "Lawyers of the Year" in 1999 for his work pursuing restoration of the San Joaquin River and received the Bay Institute's Carla Bard Bay Education award in 2008. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the NRDC Action Fund.

John D. Echeverria

Professor - Vermont Law School

Professor Echeverria joined the Vermont Law School faculty in 2009. He previously served for twelve years as Executive Director of the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to that he was General Counsel of the National Audubon Society and General Counsel and Conservation Director of American Rivers, Inc. Professor Echeverria also was an associate for four years in the Washington, D.C. office of Hughes, Hubbard & Reed. Immediately after graduating with joint degrees from Yale Law School and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Professor Echeverria served for one year as law clerk to the Honorable Gerhard Gesell of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. Professor Echeverria has written extensively on the takings issue and other aspects of environmental and natural resource law. He has frequently represented state and local governments, environmental organizations, planning groups and others in regulatory takings cases and other environmental litigation at all levels of the federal and state court systems. In 2007, Professor Echeverria received the Jefferson Fordham Advocacy Award to recognize outstanding excellence within the area of state and local government law over a lifetime of achievement. Professor Echeverria is married and has two sons.

Richard Frank

Professor - UC Davis School of Law

Richard M. Frank returned to King Hall as Visiting Professor of Law in January 2010. In Fall 2010, he was named the director of the Law School's new California Environmental Law and Policy Center. Formerly the executive director of the Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley School of Law, Frank leads the new center and teaches classroom courses in the environmental law curriculum.

Brian E. Gray

Professor - UC Hastings College of Law

Professor Gray is the author of numerous books and articles in the fields of environmental law, water resources, public lands and natural resources, property rights and the constitution, and related subjects.  He also has argued environmental and water resources cases before the California Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and other courts.  Professor Gray is a recipient of the William Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Hastings Outstanding Teacher Award, and the Nature Conservancy's Volunteer Service Award.

Professor Gray currently is working on a series of interdisciplinary studies of California water policy with scientists, economists, and public policy specialists from the University of California, Stanford, and the Public Policy Institute of California. The first two publications from this study are California Water Myths (PPIC 2009) and Managing California’s Water: From Conflict to Reconciliation(PPIC 2011).

Professor Gray serves as a tutor and president of the board of directors of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit organization that provides after school tutoring, in-school assistance, and other educational services to students in the San Francisco schools.  He also is a member of the board of directors of 826 National.

James Huffman

Emeritus - Lewis & Clark Law School

Professor Huffman joined the law school faculty in 1973, was appointed Acting Dean in 1993 and Dean in 1994, and returned to full time teaching in 2006. Born in Fort Benton, Montana, Jim graduated from Montana State University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and the University of Chicago Law School. He has been a visiting professor at Auckland University in New Zealand, the University of Oregon, the University of Athens in Greece and Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala. He was also a fellow at the Humane Studies Institute and a Distinguished Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation. Jim serves on the boards of the National Crime Victims Law Institute, the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, the Classroom Law Project, and the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. He is a member and former Chair of the Executive Committee of the Environment and Property Rights Practice Group of the Federalist Society. He is a member of the Montana Bar Association and is admitted to practice before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. He is the author of more than 100 articles and chapters on a wide array of legal topics.

Alexandra B. Klass

Professor - University of Minnesota Law School

Professor Alexandra B. Klass teaches and writes in the areas of environmental law, natural resources law, tort law and property law. Her articles have appeared in Iowa Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, University of Colorado Law Review, Ecology Law Quarterly, Harvard Environmental Law Review, Emory Law Journal, and William & Mary Law Review, among others. Professor Klass was named the Stanley V. Kinyon Teacher of the Year for 2009-2010.

Prior to her teaching career, Professor Klass was a partner at Dorsey & Whitney LLP in Minneapolis, where she specialized in environmental law and land use cases. During her years in private practice from 1993-2004, she handled cases in federal and state trial and appellate courts in Minnesota and other states involving contaminated property, wetlands, environmental review law, environmental rights law, zoning, eminent domain, and environmental torts. She continues to represent clients pro bono in cases involving environmental law and land use matters. She was an Associate Professor of Law at William Mitchell College of Law from 2004-2006.

Professor Klass received her B.A. degree in political science and French with distinction from the University of Michigan in 1988, and her J.D. cum laude from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1992, where she was an articles editor for the Wisconsin Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. She clerked for the Honorable Barbara B. Crabb, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, from 1992-1993.

Professor Klass has served in leadership positions in state and national bar organizations. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and is on the Governing Council of the Environmental and Natural Resources Section of the Minnesota State Bar Association. She served as co-chair of the Environmental Law Section of the Hennepin County Bar Association from 2000-2006. She is a Member Scholar at the Center for Progressive Reform, and a Resident Fellow at the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment.

Martha Lennihan

Principal - Lennihan Law APC

No Bio Provided

Alan B. Lilly

Partner - Bartkiewicz, Kronick & Shanahan, A Professional Corporation

Alan Lilly has worked with Bartkiewicz, Kronick & Shanahan since 1990 and has been a partner of the firm since 1991. He specializes in representing and advising public agencies and private parties in water-rights matters before the State Water Resources Control Board and in related proceedings involving the California Environmental Quality Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the federal and California Endangered Species Acts. Mr. Lilly also advises and represents clients in civil litigation, administrative proceedings and contract negotiations involving surface water, groundwater, water-service, water-quality, environmental and eminent-domain issues. Before working with the firm, Mr. Lilly worked as a law clerk to a United States District Court judge, as a Deputy Attorney General with the California Attorney General’s office, and as an attorney at Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard. Mr. Lilly has been a speaker at several conferences and meetings on water resources matters. Mr. Lilly received his B.A. degree in physics and biology (with highest honors) from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1975, and his M.A. degree in physics (1977) and his J.D. degree (1981) from the University of California, Berkeley.

Albert C. Lin

Professor - UC Davis School of Law

Albert Lin is a Professor of Law at the UC Davis School of Law, where he specializes in environmental and natural resources law and also teaches evidence. His research interests include toxic torts and the relationship between technology, the environment, and law. Prior to joining the UC Davis faculty, Professor Lin was a trial attorney for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. A graduate of the UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to the Honorable James Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He is the co-author of a widely used environmental law casebook and has published articles in the Southern California Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, and Harvard Environmental Law Review, among other journals.

Daniel J. O’Hanlon

Shareholder - Kronick, Moskovitiz, Tiedemann & Girard

Mr. O’Hanlon is a shareholder in the firm whose practice emphasizes environmental law and includes litigation, counseling and permitting in the areas of water resources, remediation of contaminated property, endangered species, and wetlands. He serves as manager of KMTG’s Water Law and Natural Resources practice areas. His clients include both public and private entities. He serves as special counsel to a number of public agencies and associations in the water resources area, including the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, Westlands Water District, and the State Water Contractors.

David Owen

Associate Professor - University of Maine School of Law

Dave Owen specializes in environmental law. His research interests range from ecosystem restoration to climate change, and he is particularly interested in legal responses to environmental uncertainty and change. He teaches courses in environmental law, natural resources law, water law, and administrative law. Dave is also a faculty member of Maine's Sustainability Solutions Initiative and is a lead researcher on an interdisciplinary project considering the water quality impacts of urbanization.

Dave teaches courses in environmental law, administrative law, natural resources law, water law, and coastal zone law.  He also is the faculty advisor to the Maine Law Review and serves on the Board of Directors of the Maine Bar Foundation.

Prior to joining the Maine Law faculty in 2007, Dave practiced with a small San Francisco firm specializing in environmental, land use, and water law, and he clerked for Judge Samuel Conti of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Before attending law school, Dave worked as a geologist and environmental auditor with an environmental consulting firm.

Associate Justice Ronald B. Robie

California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District

Ronald B. Robie has served as an Associate Justice on the California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, since January 2002. Previously he served from 1983 as a Judge of both the Sacramento Superior and Municipal Courts. He was presiding judge in 1994-95. He was named "Judge of the Year" by the Sacramento County Bar Association in 2002.

Justice Robie currently is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Center for State Courts. He is the Chair for 2010-2011 of the California Commission on Access to Justice and the California Supreme Court Committee on Judicial Ethics Advisory Opinions . He served as a member of the Chief Justice's Commission for Impartial Courts and Chair of its Task Force on Judicial Selection and Retention. He formerly was a member of the Judicial Council of California, the governing body for California Courts, and the Federal-State Judicial Council.

Education is a special interest of Justice Robie. He has taught water law and environmental law at the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, since 1970. He is Chair of the Governing Committee of the California Center for Judicial Education and Research (CJER) and has taught at many institutes and programs conducted by CJER, including a course on the California Environmental Quality Act..

Prior to assuming the bench, Justice Robie was a leader in California Water matters. He served from 1975 to 1983 as Director of the California Department of Water Resources and from 1969 to 1975 as a member and Vice Chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board. This followed service as a Legislative Intern and Committee Consultant to the California Legislature, Assembly Committee on Water from 1960 to 1969 where he wrote many significant water laws. In 1975 he served as Chair of the Water Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. Since 1974, Justice Robie has been the California Reporter for the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute's Water Law Newsletter and is a co-author of California Civil Practice, Environmental Litigation, first published in 1993 by Thomson-West Publishing Co. He is a co-convener of "Dividing the Waters," an educational project for water judges, masters, and referees affiliated with the National Judicial College. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Water Education Foundation.

Justice Robie received Bachelor of Arts (1958, with Honors) and Master of Journalism (1960) degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Juris Doctor degree from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law (1967, With Highest Honors). He is a native of Oakland, California. Justice Robie and Lynn DeForest married in 1958 and they have two children, Todd Robie and Melissa Robie and four grandchildren, Charles and Zoey Robie and Dylan and Megan Reid.

Barton H. Thompson, Jr.

Professor - Stanford Law School; Director - Woods Institute for the Environment

A leading expert in environmental and natural resources law and policy, Barton H. “Buzz” Thompson, Jr., JD/MBA ’76 (BA ’72), has contributed a large body of scholarship on environmental issues ranging from the future of endangered species and fisheries to the use of economic techniques for regulating the environment. He is the founding director of the law school’s Environmental and Natural Resources Program, Perry L. McCarty Director and senior fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment, and a senior fellow (by courtesy) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. In 2008, the Supreme Court appointed Professor Thompson to serve as the special master in Montana v. Wyoming (137 Original). Professor Thompson is chairman of the board of the Resources Legacy Fund and the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, a California trustee for The Nature Conservancy, and a board member of both the American Farmland Trust and the Natural Heritage Institute. He also serves as a member of the Science Advisory Board for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1986, he was a partner at O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles and a lecturer at the UCLA School of Law. He was a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist ’52 (BA ’48, MA ’48) of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Joseph T. Sneed of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Mary Christina Wood

Professor - Oregon School of Law; Faculty Director - Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program

Mary Christina Wood is Philip H. Knight Professor of Law, Faculty Director for the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program, and a 2007-08 Luvaas Faculty Fellow at the University of Oregon School of Law. She teaches property law, natural resources law, public trust law, federal Indian law, public lands law, wildlife law, and hazardous waste law. She is the Founding Director of the school's Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program and is Faculty Leader of the Program's Conservation Trust Project, Sustainable Land Use Project and Native Environmental Sovereignty Project. After graduating from Stanford Law School in 1987, she served as a judicial clerk on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She then practiced in the environmental/natural resources department of Perkins Coie, a Pacific Northwest law firm. In 1994 she received the University's Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching and in 2002 she received the Orlando Hollis Faculty Teaching Award. Professor Wood is a co-author of a leading textbook on natural resources law (West, 2006) and has published extensively on climate crisis, natural resources, and native law issues. She is a frequent speaker on global warming issues and has received national and international attention for her sovereign trust approach to global climate policy. Professor Wood is currently working on a book entitled, Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age.

Karrigan Bork, JD

PhD Candidate, Ecology - UC Davis, Department of Animal Science

No Bio Provided