Mono Lake case

Abalones and Gulls and Judges, Oh My!

Comparing the Mono Lake Committee with the Abalone Alliance

For several months now, I have been looking for a good comparison case to the Mono Lake Committee, whose work is one of the great success stories of the modern environmental movement. Why did the Mono Lake Committee succeed when other organizations failed? Lots of organizations had good causes and dedicated leaders: what made Mono …

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Yogi Berra Explains the Mono Lake Case

Or — Timing Is Everything

As part of the book I am writing on the Mono Lake case, one question stands out: how was the Mono Lake Committee able to assemble the resources to bring a lawsuit against the powerful Los Angeles Department of Water and Power? At one level, the answer is obvious: it found a Sugar Daddy, in …

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It’s a Wonderful Law?

A thought experiment about the role of the ESA in California water management

[This post is co-authored by A. Dan Tarlock, Distguished Professor of Law, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.] Remember the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which shows up on TV every year at Christmas season? In it George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, gets a great gift from Clarence, an angel-in-training who intervenes as George is …

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Why Did the Mono Lake Campaign Succeed?

What Makes for Successful Social Movements, Especially in Environmental Politics?

Environmentalists celebrate the campaign to save Mono Lake as one the iconic triumphs in US environmental history.  As well they should.  But why did it succeed?  It’s a critical question not just for environmentalists, but for any scholar or member of social movements. In a previous post, I have suggested that the identity of the …

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How CEQA Saved Mono Lake

Environmental lawyers and policy wonks know that the California Supreme Court’s famed decision in Nat’l Audubon Soc’y v. Superior Court, better known as the Mono Lake case, saved California’s second-largest lake from drying up.  And to some extent this is true: I am working on a full-length book about the case, and so far that story seems to check out.  …

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The New Public Trust Climate Cases

Per the New York Times this morning, a group of environmental organizations called Our Children’s Trust has filed a lawsuit against the state of California, arguing for protection of the atmosphere under the public trust doctrine (about which I blogged a couple of days ago).  A few preliminary reactions after having read the complaint quickly: …

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The Public Trust Doctrine: A Prophet Without Honor

  Michael C. Blumm and R.D. Guthrie of Lewis & Clark Law School have an interesting new paper soon to appear in the U.C. Davis Law Review, pointing out that the public trust doctrine has assumed enormous significance in the jurisprudence of several countries around the world, including India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Uganda, Kenya, South …

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