Author's Talk: Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago

Thursday, July 15, 6:30 p.m.
FREE and open to the public
Listen to webinar HERE

This program will be held via Zoom and is in partnership with the Caxton Club and the Union League Club of Chicago.

How did Chicago, a city known for commerce, come to have such a splendid public waterfront–its most treasured asset? The product of two decades of research, Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago sets forth the social, political, and legal conflict in which private and public rights clashed repeatedly over time, only to produce, as a kind of miracle, a generally happy ending. It is an extraordinary story.

In Lakefront, authors Joseph D. Kearney and Thomas W. Merrill compare the effectiveness of the public trust idea to other property doctrines, and assesses the role of the law as compared to more institutional developments, such as the emergence of sanitary commissions and park districts, in securing the protection of the lakefront for public uses. 

Note that registering for the event will provide you with the opportunity to purchase copies of Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago for $29.00 including tax, shipping, and a bookplate signed by the authors.

Joseph D. Kearney is Dean and Professor of Law at Marquette University. Thomas W. Merrill is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia University. Before entering academe, both authors clerked at the US Supreme Court and lived for many years in Chicago, where they practiced law and became captivated by the history of the city’s lakefront.