The Public Trust, Atmospheric Pollution, and the Oregon Supreme Court: A Law Professors' Amicus Brief

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Blumm ◽  
Mary C. Wood
2021 ◽  
pp. 128-164
Author(s):  
Joseph D. Kearney ◽  
Thomas W. Merrill

This chapter assesses the implications of natural accretion, unauthorized landfilling, and a legally sanctioned public works project on the neighborhood known today as Streeterville. It illustrates the three periods following the struggle for control of the land of Streeterville: the first was relatively decorous, consisting largely of litigation over rights to land formed by natural accretion, the second was intense and largely extralegal, and the third period was when the wealthy landowners who claimed the land by riparian rights consolidated their control over the area, abetted by construction undertaken by institutions of impeccable social standing, such as Northwestern University. The chapter investigates why it took so long for the struggle over Streeterville to be resolved, arguing resolution came only when the claimants with the most resources started to build substantial structures on the land. It also examines why the filled land in this area of the lakefront is overwhelmingly held in private hands, whereas the land south of the Chicago River, in what is now Grant Park, is public. Ultimately, the chapter reviews how the public trust doctrine was invoked in challenging the artificial filling of submerged land in Streeterville, and analyzes the Illinois Supreme Court decision following the case.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Daxton "Chip" Stewart ◽  
Amy Kristin Sanders

As governments engage in public-private partnerships, they have devised ways to shield the public’s business from the traditional level scrutiny offered by citizens and journalists, watchdogs of the public trust. The authors propose rethinking public oversight of private vendors doing government business. First, the authors explore the historical and legal background of open records laws. This core purpose is undermined by overly broad interpretations of trade secrets and competitive harm exceptions, a trend exacerbated by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2019 ruling. The authors demonstrate why public-private collusion to sabotage transparency demands a reinvigorated approach to the quasi-government body doctrine, which has been sharply limited for decades. The authors conclude with recommendations on reversing the trend.


Author(s):  
Amran Suadi

This paper is motivated by the spirit of judicial reform in Indonesia in the reformation era. The right to access information on judicial institutions is an integral part of the constitutional rights that guaranteed by the Indonesian Constitution and must be fulfilled. The question proposed in this paper is how far the court decisions publication and judicial reform based on electronic courts implicated to increase public trust to judicial institutions in Indonesia? On the one hand, public information disclosure is a demand for democracy, transparency, and accountability of judicial institutions to gain the public trust. On the other hand, the level of public trust to the judicial institution is still low. The research objective is to provide a general description the judicial information system services based on electronic court through the Supreme Court Decisions Directory and its implication to increase the public trust to the judicial institutions in Indonesia. The results of this study indicate that the public can now easily access all court information ranging from case administration service procedures to issuing court decisions, which also has implications to increase the public trust to the judicial institutions itself. The evidence can be seen in the decision-making filing program in the last ten years, in which the Indonesian Supreme Court has also succeeded in publishing 4,661,021 court decisions, consisting of 4,403,428 at first-level court decisions, 123,995 at appellate court decisions, 100,863 at verdict decisions, and 32,735 at reconsi¬deration decisions.


1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-517
Author(s):  
Abdel Rahman Ahmed Abdel Rahman

Public bureaucracies, a general term including government agenciesand departments in the areas of public utilities, social services, regulatoryservices, security, and law enforcement, are indispensable to our welfare;we need them for the provision of these basic services. To provide theseservices, bureaucracies need such resources as power and money. Thepower of bureaucracies is compounded by their virtual monopoly of technicalexpertise, which puts bureaucrats at the forefront of public policymaking.Indispensable to our welfare though they are, public bureaucracies alsopose a potential threat. In view of the technical knowledge they have andtheir consequent important role in policy making, they may dominate publiclife. In other words, they may develop into a power elite and, as a result,act as masters of the public rather than as its servants. More disturbingly,they may not use the public trust to serve the public or respond to its needs.Still more disturbingly, they may breach the public trust or abuse the powerentrusted to them.All of these possibilities have given rise to a widespread fear ofbureaucracy. In some societies, this fear has reached pandemic levels.Fear of bureaucracy is not unwarranted; there is a consensus and concernin administrative and academic circles that the degree of bureaucraticaccountability has declined in both developed and developingcountries. A central issue with public bureaucracy has always beenhow to make it behave responsibly or in the public interest. Despite aplethora of mechanisms for ensuring administrative responsibility orbureaucratic responsiveness, many public bureaucracies may still be unresponsive and unaccountable ...


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