Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago

by Joseph D. Kearney, Thomas W. Merrill

How did Chicago, a city known for commerce, come to have such a splendid public waterfront―its most treasured asset? Lakefront reveals a story of social, political, and legal conflict in which private and public rights have clashed repeatedly over time, only to produce, as a kind of miracle, a generally happy ending. Joseph D. Kearney and Thomas W. Merrill study the lakefront's evolution from the middle of the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Their findings have significance for understanding not only Chicago's history but also the law's part in determining the future of significant urban resources such as waterfronts. The Chicago lakefront is where the American public trust doctrine, holding certain public resources off limits to private development, was born. This book describes the circumstances that gave rise to the doctrine and its fluctuating importance over time, and reveals how it was resurrected in the later twentieth century to become the primary principle for mediating clashes between public and private lakefront rights. Lakefront compares the effectiveness of the public trust idea to other property doctrines, and assesses the role of the law as compared with more institutional developments, such as the emergence of sanitary commissions and park districts, in securing the protection of the lakefront for public uses. By charting its history, Kearney and Merrill demonstrate that the lakefront's current status is in part a product of individuals and events unique to Chicago. But technological changes, and a transformation in social values in favor of recreational and preservationist uses, also have been critical. Throughout, the law, while also in a state of continual change, has played at least a supporting role.

Genres: Law, History

392 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2022

Reviews

[Ethan Sleeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining and fascinating look at how Chicago came to have the beautiful public lakefront that it currently does through a torrid history of litigation and back room dealing. Requires a solid tolerance for legal intricacies and some bone-dry academic sarcasm, but it’s a remarkably good read as this type of academic press nonfiction goes! If you enjoy law, it’s really entertaining to see all the Truly wacky knots the state court ties itself in and then unties itself from over the ~150 year scope of this book. 3.5 stars

[UChicagoLaw]

"This book recounts the backstory behind Chicago’s incomparable lakefront. A deep dive into property rights and land use conflicts at the water's edge."

- Lee Fennell, Max Pam Professor of Law

[Bill Tyroler · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

Fabulous history of Chicago's lakefront by legal scholars Joseph Kearney and Thomas Merrill. Think the Field Museum or Soldier Field sprung up without controversy? Or for that matter that Lincoln or Grant Park were built on land already there just waiting to accommodate human footprints? Not quite. Creative lawyering; legal doctrines that have gone in and out of fashion; deep-pocketed individuals and environmental groups willing to litigate repetitively with terrier-like determination; expansion-minded corporations; and, this being Illinois, good old-fashioned corruption — all that and more contributed to the “stunning vista” (authors’ words) that is the Chicago lakefront. Most impressively, it’s all recited clearly and concisely, no mean feat. Good writing often comes down to whether complex concepts and events are explained so as to be readily comprehensible, and that is exactly what Dean Kearney and Professor Merrill have done.