Here is the cover of a great new book by Joseph Kearney (law school dean at Marquette) and Thomas Merrill (my former colleague, now at Columbia), Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago.
This is a terrific book, and not only for Chicago people and expats. The story of the lakefront is also the story of the origin of the public trust and public dedication doctrines in property law, as developed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The chapter on the Streeterville neighborhood -- where Northwestern Pritzker Law School is located -- is fascinating, separating legend from fact and fact from law. (Note: there is some truth to the legend of Cap Streeter.)
Cribbing from the Cornell University Press flyer:
How did Chicago, a city known for commerce, come to have such a splendid public waterfront—its most treasured asset? Lakefront reveals a story of social, political, and legal conflict in which private and public rights have clashed repeatedly over time, only to produce, as a kind of miracle, a generally happy ending.
Joseph D. Kearney and Thomas W. Merrill study the lakefront's evolution from the middle of the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Their findings have significance for understanding not only Chicago's history but also the law's part in determining the future of significant urban resources such as waterfronts.
The Chicago lakefront is where the American public trust doctrine, holding certain public resources off limits to private development, was born. This book describes the circumstances that gave rise to the doctrine and its fluctuating importance over time, and reveals how it was resurrected in the later twentieth century to become the primary principle for mediating clashes between public and private lakefront rights. Lakefront compares the effectiveness of the public trust idea to other property doctrines, and assesses the role of the law as compared to more institutional developments, such as the emergence of sanitary commissions and park districts, in securing the protection of the lakefront for public uses.
By charting its history, Kearney and Merrill demonstrate that the lakefront's current status is in part a product of individuals and events unique to Chicago. But technological changes, and a transformation in social values in favor of recreational and preservationist uses, also have been critical. Throughout, the law, while also in a state of continual change, has played at least a supporting role.
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