Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive Faculty Scholarship Faculty Publications 2004 The Origins of the American Public Trust Doctrine: What Really Happened in Illinois Central Joseph D. Kearney Thomas W. Merrill Columbia Law School,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, and the Property Law and Real Estate Commons Recommended Citation Joseph D. Kearney & Thomas W. Merrill, The Origins of the American Public Trust Doctrine: What Really Happened in Illinois Central, 71 U. CHI. L. REV. 799 (2004). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/604 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Scholarship Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Archive. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Origins of the American Public Trust Doctrine: What Really Happened in Illinois Central Joseph D. Kearney & Thomas W. Merrillt Introduction ......................................................................................................... 800 I. The Standard Illinois Central Narrative .................................................. 805 II. Setting the Stage ........................................................................................ 811 A . The Lay of the Land ......................................................................... 811