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Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago
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.
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.
392 pages, Hardcover
Published May 15, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 8, 2023
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
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December 8, 2021"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
- Lee Fennell, Max Pam Professor of Law
August 1, 2026
As a lawyer, and lakefront fan, and public trust nerd, this book deserves 5 stars in some ways, 0 stars in other ways, and somewhere in between in most others.
5 Stars -- Well researched, with details about Illinois Lake Michigan lakefront history that even the most scholarly of lakefront history buffs likely haven't read before.
0 Stars -- In many ways, the writing is academic and stilted, and even clunky. Because the authors are lawyers, the book is written from a legal perspective, often ignoring the biology of why lakefill projects can be harmful.
The authors focus on big news projects like (what is today) Millennium Park, U.S. Steel South Works, Lakeshore Drive, and the Obama Presidential Center. While these are vital chapters, the authors ignore the more insidious threat to the lakefront: Dozens of smaller (usually residential) projects that continue today to claim to be for "shoreline protection" but in reality nick and chip away at public access and ecological health, approved with the thud of an Illinois DNR rubber stamp. The impact is arguably greater than the more localized impacts of fewer and more localized big projects.
The analysis is even self contradictory throughout the book. For example, the authors readily admit that governmental institutions like the state legislature and city council can be "easily captured by special interests" and make decisions that undermine "broader public aspirations." Yet, in assessing some of the very cases that make up the foundation of the book, the authors argue that representative bodies should have (or have had) the final say about what constitutes what is in the public good. In other words, legislative decisions can be corrupt, but we should defer to legislative decisions. This circular narrative repeats itself throughout the book. The end result: The book's credibility erodes like a beach during a storm.
In short, the authors are strong in analyzing details of different court cases but weak in stepping back and analyzing why the public trust doctrine is important in the first place: Because some resources belong--and should always belong--to all of us, without being sold off for any reason.
5 Stars -- Well researched, with details about Illinois Lake Michigan lakefront history that even the most scholarly of lakefront history buffs likely haven't read before.
0 Stars -- In many ways, the writing is academic and stilted, and even clunky. Because the authors are lawyers, the book is written from a legal perspective, often ignoring the biology of why lakefill projects can be harmful.
The authors focus on big news projects like (what is today) Millennium Park, U.S. Steel South Works, Lakeshore Drive, and the Obama Presidential Center. While these are vital chapters, the authors ignore the more insidious threat to the lakefront: Dozens of smaller (usually residential) projects that continue today to claim to be for "shoreline protection" but in reality nick and chip away at public access and ecological health, approved with the thud of an Illinois DNR rubber stamp. The impact is arguably greater than the more localized impacts of fewer and more localized big projects.
The analysis is even self contradictory throughout the book. For example, the authors readily admit that governmental institutions like the state legislature and city council can be "easily captured by special interests" and make decisions that undermine "broader public aspirations." Yet, in assessing some of the very cases that make up the foundation of the book, the authors argue that representative bodies should have (or have had) the final say about what constitutes what is in the public good. In other words, legislative decisions can be corrupt, but we should defer to legislative decisions. This circular narrative repeats itself throughout the book. The end result: The book's credibility erodes like a beach during a storm.
In short, the authors are strong in analyzing details of different court cases but weak in stepping back and analyzing why the public trust doctrine is important in the first place: Because some resources belong--and should always belong--to all of us, without being sold off for any reason.
March 4, 2026
This is a very readable discussion about the history of the development Chicago's lakefront and the interplay of real estate law, civic growth and social policy that influenced it. Chicago famously preserves open public access to its lakefront, but that was not always the case. Kearney explores how Chicago's developing land use, economic priorities and concepts of public trust have created the modern Chicago.
May 21, 2026
An extraordinary and engaging read about the public trust doctrine! Not a sentence that anyone ever thought...ever, but this is a really good book about an important legal concept wrapped in a well-crafted history of Chicago! I have been to Chicago a bunch of times but have never looked at it from this perspective. It might be the only way I will ever be able to think of the Chicago now.
July 3, 2021
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.
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.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews