General Course Descriptions for Terms: water
845 - Water Rights Law
950 - Watergate
This Watergate class is for one credit. Given the untimely death of Prof. Frank Tuerkheimer, who was going to teach the course, the format and nature of the course is being adjusted. A fifteen-page paper will be due on November 9th. Paper topics should be cleared through Associate Dean Kelly. The Watergate scandal remains the greatest scandal in U.S. History, covering the period from late 1971 until a verdict in the Watergate trial in January 1975. That period saw the only time in U.S. history that the threat of viable impeachment and removal caused a President to resign. This is all the more remarkable since the President was re-elected in 1972 carrying all but one state. The Watergate story can be approached in many ways. This course, going through the Watergate story chronologically, inevitably focuses on how various institutions were tested -- the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Courts, the prosecution including the Grand Jury, and the press. Where appropriate, videos dealing with major events during this unique period in American history will be used. Readings in the course are a little unusual. Instead of cases, two books constitute the core of the readings, to be supplemented by less than half a dozen cases. It is strongly recommended that those enrolling in the class make these two books their summer reading, virtually eliminating assigned readings during the class. The two books are: John Dean's Blind Ambition; and Woodward and Bernstein's The Final Days.
988 - SP Environ Law: Natural Resources Law
This course covers the law and policy of the disposition and use of natural resources in the United States. We will emphasize federally owned and managed resources, especially the nearly one-third of this country’s land area that is owned by the federal government, although you will also learn a little about the management of state and private lands as well. Main topics include the history of public land law; the constitutional basis for federal control of natural resources, and legal doctrines and principles that cut across the whole field. We will study two important statutes that, while often included in environmental law curricula, are equally pivotal to natural land use and management in the United States: the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. We will then turn to studies of particular types of resources, including fisheries, wilderness and recreational areas, water, rangelands, federally owned minerals, and forests. Although the general public often perceives natural resources law as part of “environmental law,” natural resources law, as presented in law school courses and casebooks, covers the government’s role as owner and regulator of publicly owned resources, such as land and use of navigable waters. In contrast, environmental law tends to focus on the regulation of private conduct to minimize and provide remedies for various forms of pollution of natural resources. Natural resources law follows a property law model, whereas environmental law’s common law heritage is traceable first and foremost to tort law. While having taken environmental law will, like a number of other courses (structural constitutional law; federal courts; legislation), prove helpful for your studies of this course, it is not a requirement, and I will not assume knowledge of environmental law.