About Us

The Public Trust Alliance: A New Project of the
Resource Renewal Institute

Ensuring that an Informed Public Can Continue to Use the Public Trust Doctrine to Defend and Responsibly Manage our Public Heritage Right Now and for Generations to Come.

The Ancient Romans encoded the following precept in the Institutes of Justinian in the mid 6th Century-

"By the law of nature, the following are common to all mankind--the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the shores of the sea. No one, therefore, is forbidden to approach the seashore."

In the many centuries since the law was first encoded, the commitment to the idea that some things are just too important for civic society to be completely privately owned and controlled has grown and is included into the constitutions, statutes and common law of each of the United States as its Public Trust Doctrine. The preservation of Mono Lake in California was based on a public trust argument. The Supreme Court of the State of Hawai’i recently gave the doctrine broader force by merging traditional Native practices with the other public uses protected by the trust and defining a bottom line duty to protect the ecological integrity of natural systems supporting trust resources. The Public Trust Alliance is committed to assisting with collaborations that will reinforce Public Trust goals and preserve Public Trust Resources in California and elsewhere.