Land and Water Workshop: Uses, Choices, and Conflicts: Perspectives and Interventions

• Semester: Spring 2026
• Course ID: 196V
• Credit Hours: 1
• Unique: 29790

Description

Data-centers, including their extreme water-use, in the Arizonan desert or in arid West Texas or in rural Tennessee or in all of the above?

Alfalfa grown west of Phoenix for export for Saudi cattle or the Minnesota dairy industry or metastatic residential development?

Groundwater retention for East Texas communities or the long-haul conveyance of massive groundwater volumes from there to Dallas-Fort Worth and the north?

West Texas frack water ("produced water") for irrigation re-use? Fracking or watershed protection in Pennsylvania and New York?

Hydropower for Idaho and Nevada or dam removals for the long-delayed benefit of certain tribes?

Extravagant land and water uses for industrial hog and poultry production in Iowa, Maryland, North Carolina, and Texas or potable water protections (and clean air) for cities and towns?

Off-shore "farming" or pollution controls in the sea?

Compact- and treaty-based water entitlements or the radical remaking of rights regimes from the past? "Buy-and-dry" covenants, silent deeds, tort invocations, statutory restrictions, Commerce Clause delineations--new-fangled legal strategies or nay?

As you can see, the dominant speech-part powering these capsule illustrations of our field of inquiry in this Workshop is the conjunction "or". It is here to reflect that land and water use in our times is, increasingly, and at an accelerating pace, the site of conflicts arising from lessening supplies against increasing demands for land and water: This is a story of our times and, as the outcomes of these conflicts shape alternative paths of growth and development for localities and regions, of the future, as well.

In grappling with the attendant issues, we'll make use of familiar conceptual and practical frameworks: visions pertaining to social and economic welfare, global capital markets and their influential appetites, private versus public goods, states' versus federal rights, the quickening pulse of populist preferences and the failing pulse of regulation; technocratic problem-solving-- and the shifting dynamics of conflict-resolution and justice-seeking that are playing out in many of these settings on account of the sought-for interventions of  public and private law.   

As to the law: I have conceived of this short course as a miniature capstone for law students, as our subjects will mirror the kaleidoscopic ways that law, its ideals and structures and institutions (note the use of "and"), come to bear on the infinite doings of everyday, conflict-generative life.

Beyond the law: I have also conceived of this short course as a welcome landing place for insights and knowledge from a diversity of the disciplines outside of the law from which our appreciation of these challenging social, economic, and geophysical issues might gain.  

                                  I hope the work will be interdisciplinary to the core. That's why students from other university departments and units are being invited to join.

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Course requirements:

1--The class will meet in four Friday sessions of three hours each. Full attendance at every class is mandatory.

     "Full attendance" includes reasonable attentiveness to the contributions of others involved in class discussions, as well as active participation in them on a reasonable basis that consists of apt commentary clearly informed by the course readings. The sharing of pertinent outside knowledge, such as that derived from other courses, other readings, and from volunteer and professional experience is encouraged.

2—For Law students, the course is offered pass/fail.

3—Students from non-Law departments and programs may take the course pass/fail or for one graded credit.

4--All students will complete a very brief written exercise. No AI is to be used in the production of what is turned in.

     Credit will also be given for class participation, so long as it meets the expectations described above at (1).