Water Law

Semester: Spring 2014
Course ID: 479M
Credit Hours: 4
Unique: 29623

Course Information

Registration Information

Upperclass-only elective

Meeting Times

Day	Time	Location
TUE, WED, THU	10:30 - 11:37 am	JON 6.257

Evaluation Method

Type	Date	Time	Location
Paper

Description

WATER LAW AND POLICY: THE INTRODUCTORY COURSE Water is essential to all of life. Its ceaseless movement, known as “the hydrological cycle”, is governed by global forces and conditions. Yet our domestic legal regime, governed by federal, state, tribal, and local sources of authority, was developed largely in ignorance of the water cycle on the basis of practices and demands that differed historically and regionally in marked ways. This does not make for a legal system that is well-adapted to the changes in private rights and obligations or public policies that are wheeling into focus on account of contemporary conditions that include developing scarcities, major population shifts, pitched conflicts between and among water rights holders, and severe weather events —including the extreme drought that Texas, among other states, is in. These conditions, the conflicts they are inspiring, and the difficult decisions that they will engender will deeply affect everyone, not only those who may intent to practice law in this field. To develop an introductory understanding of the stabilizing and de-stabilizing forces within water law and policy, we will examine both water law as it has come to be and the pressures on it that are being created by water issues that are the subject of new or renewed conflicts, and we will explore one or more of the scientific discoveries about the water cycle that could provide the basis for major policy shifts. For some of these purposes, Texas will be our living laboratory. We will learn about its current water crises from local experts in the field. This course does not conflict or overlap with "Smnr: Water Law & Policy for the 21st Century". In other words, students who took "Smnr: Water Law & Policy for the 21st Century" may also take this course for credit.

Textbooks ( * denotes required )

Modern Water Law: Private Property, Public Rights, and Environmental Protections *

Robert Adler, Robin Craig, Noah Hall

Foundation Press
ISBN: 978-1609302320

Instructors

Cohen, Jane M.