Over the past two weeks, Tom Merrill and I had the privilege to post on this blog a series of reflections based on our new book, Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago (Cornell University Press). I would like to do three things here in this departure post, not technically part of that series.
1. Collecting Posts
Our posts addressed standing to enforce public rights. The basic idea was that a broader look at standing than merely considering the Article III approach required in federal court (per the U.S. Supreme Court) might provide insights. We drew on Lakefront, which unpacks a century and a half of controversies over public rights in Chicago and thus provides an especially useful set of perspectives.
It may be helpful for future readers to have this table of contents, as it were:
- Standing to Enforce Public Rights—First of a Series (July 12, 2021)
- Standing to Enforce Public Rights: The Parens Patriae Approach (July 14, 2021)
- Models of Citizen Standing—Examined in and Through the Public Trust Doctrine (July 16, 2021)
- A Different Model of Citizen Standing: The Public Dedication Doctrine (July 20, 2021)
- Enforcing Public Rights—Federal Versus State Standing (Last of a Series) (July 22, 2021)
We previously had a five-part series of a different sort, on the Volokh Conspiracy, focusing not on standing but rather on the public trust doctrine more substantively:
- Lakefront and the Origins of the American Public Trust Doctrine (June 14, 2021)
- Lakefront and the Confoundments of the Public Trust Doctrine (June 15, 2021)
- Lakefront—Comparing Public Trust and Private Dedication (June 16, 2021)
- Lakefront and the Public Trust Doctrine—Enter Professor Sax (June 17, 2021)
- Lakefront and the Public Trust Doctrine Today: A Litigation Roulette Wheel (June 18, 2021)
We hope to offer one more Lakefront-based series, concerning the importance of possession in property law, on PrawfsBlawg next month. We will also discuss the project more generally as part of an October 14 event to be presented by Marquette Law School’s Water Law and Policy Initiative, as part of Chicago Water Week (details of the event will be announced soon).
2. Other Lakefront Information
Here are a few additional places drawing on Lakefront:
- Op-Ed, “The Pros and Cons of Turning Chicago’s Lakefront into a National Park,” Chicago Tribune (Apr. 29, 2021)
- WGN radio interview (May 13, 2021) (courtesy of Steve Bertrand/WGN Radio)
- WGN television interview (June 10, 2021)
- WTTW (Channel 11) Chicago Tonight segment (June 30, 2021)
- Chicago Reader article (July 21, 2021)
- ABA Modern Law Library podcast (July 21, 2021)
3. Saying Thank You—and Explaining Why
Tom and I also want to express our sincere thanks to Steve Lubet, Dan Filler, and all associated with The Faculty Lounge blog for welcoming us for this guest series. I first met Steve a number of years ago, in the late 1990s, in a faculty lounge—at Northwestern University’s law school, where he and Tom were longtime faculty colleagues. Having moved to Milwaukee in order to teach at Marquette, I would often take the train back to Chicago and meet Tom in his office to work on one project or another (including, even then, what has become Lakefront). During these visits, he had occasion to introduce me to any number of his colleagues, in the Northwestern faculty lounge, overlooking the Chicago lakefront; I appreciated and continue to remember their engagement and interest, including Steve’s.
As the years went on, I came also to admire the contributions of blogs such as the Volokh Conspiracy, The Faculty Lounge, PrawfsBlawg, and others to intelligent conversation in the legal academy. Their example is one of the reasons that I warmly endorsed the initiative of my colleague, Michael O’Hear, and other Marquette law faculty in creating our own blog in 2008.
We hear that the golden age of blogging has passed, and perhaps that is so, as Twitter and other forms of communication have developed in the intervening years. Yet I hope that The Faculty Lounge and the sort of opportunity it provides us to engage with fellow law faculty about our projects will continue for a very long time.
It was a pleasure having you join us, Joe.
Posted by: Steven Lubet | July 27, 2021 at 08:29 PM