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Modern Public Land Law in a Nutshell

6th Edition
Robert L. Glicksman
ISBN: 9798317712297
Subject: Public Land Law
Format: Print - Softbound
Page Count: 502
Copyright: 2027 | Status: Accepting Pre-Orders

This book analyzes all significant aspects of management of lands and resources owned by the federal government, focusing on the national parks, the national forests, the national wildlife refuges, and the remaining public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management. It provides a brief historical overview of public land law in the United States and analyzes the constitutional basis for ownership and regulation of federal lands and natural resources. It covers the organic statutes that determine appropriate uses of federal lands in each of the major federal lands systems. The book addresses issues concerning access to those lands and the rules that govern land transactions such as exchanges, sales, and acquisition. It provides extensive coverage of the process for assessing the environmental impacts of activities on those lands under the National Environmental Policy Act and of species and habitat protection under the Endangered Species Act. The book analyzes the rules governing planning, management, and use of the water, mineral, timber, range, wildlife, recreation, and preservation of resources on federal lands. Finally, it covers the latest important public land law developments — in Congress, in the land management agencies, and in the courts.


Imprint: West Academic Publishing
Series: Nutshells
Publication Date: 11/12/2026

Robert L. Glicksman, George Washington University Law School

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While the structure of the book remains the same as in the 5th edition, the 6th edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect changes in the law in the intervening seven years. These include:

  • Complete coverage of a series of dramatic changes in the National Environmental Policy Act, including judicial invalidation of the Council on Environmental Quality’s NEPA implementing regulations, administrative rescission of those regulations, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, which narrowed the scope of NEPA’s coverage and mandated more deferential judicial review of agency NEPA documents
  • Significant changes in the Fish and Wildlife Service’s regulations that implement the Endangered Species Act, including rescission of the regulatory definition of harm to include habitat modification that the Supreme Court endorsed years ago in Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter
  • Discussion of U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Ass’n, in which the Supreme Court held that the Forest Service has authority under the Mineral Leasing Act to grant rights-of-way through lands within national forests traversed by the Appalachian Trail, even though the Trail is administered by the National Park Service
  • Examination of the pro-development shift in federal land management priorities under the Trump Administration, including expanded coal production and oil and gas leasing on federal lands, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
  • Analysis of important developments in judicial review of land management agency decisions, including the Supreme Court’s overruling of Chevron v. NRDC and its adoption of the major questions doctrine
  • Discussion of the controversy that surrounds the scope of presidential power under the Antiquities Act to designate, modify, or rescind national monuments
  • Analysis of judicial clarification of when rails-to-trails conversions pursuant to the National Trails System Act amount to compensable takings under the Fifth Amendment
  • Thorough coverage of all important Court of Appeals decisions involving interpretations and applications of statutes that govern activities on the federal lands, such as the Antiquities Act, the Clean Water Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Wilderness Act, and the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act

Learn more about this series.