Natural Res Law: The River

Catalog description

This hybrid classroom/field course immerses students in the major natural resources legal regimes and controversies of one of two interstate rivers: the Upper Arkansas River Basin in Colorado and Kansas, or the Rio Grande Basin in Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. These two basins have produced numerous and major legal and policy controversies since the Mexican War (1846-48), which secured most of the region for the United States. The course consists of two components. The first component is based in the classroom and will consist of lectures and discussions concerning the history of the relevant basin and its principal legal and policy issues. Students will select a legal topic or controversy from the basin, compile and refine a bibliography, and draft a bibliographic essay. The second component takes place in the field, lasting between five and seven days, traveling across the basin. The professor will lead field sessions with help from local lawyers, judges, scientists, agency representatives, and private businesspeople; students will deliver presentations based on their bibliographic essays. After returning from the field, students will submit a final draft of their essay, together with a field journal of their experience in the basin. This course is intended to provide a capstone experience for students in natural resources law, showing how water law, environmental law and policy, public land law, energy law, and agricultural law all converge and cross-communicate in natural resources law practice. Prerequisites/Corequisites: at least TWO of the following: water law, environmental law, public land law, oil and gas law, or agricultural law.