In Rural Residency, Rural Resentment, and Attitudes Towards Public Land Management in the United States, authors B. Kal Munis and Zoe Nemerever (both Political Science, Auburn) explore attitudes regarding federal public land management along the urban-rural divide. The authors find that while both rural and non-rural Americans are broadly supportive of federal public lands, a subset of “resentful ruralities” are markedly unsupportive of public lands due to their opposition to the federal government.

‍By Erika Allen Wolters (Oregon State University) and ‍Kevin Pirch (Eastern Washington University).‍‍ ‍

As the United States expanded its territory into the American West, the federal government’s distributive land policies helped promote settlement by incentivizing new residents with the promise of land, resources, and profit. While these policies, like the Homestead Act, helped entice settlers (and simultaneously displace Indigenous peoples), large-scale infrastructure projects such as the expansion of railways aided western settlement. However, the federal government retained a significant amount as public land, allocating it based on the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). The PLSS neatly mapped the region into 640-acre sections, resulting in a checkerboard pattern of public and private land ownership. This intermix of land ownership led to expected quarrels over natural resource use, ownership, and private property rights. Additionally, it also left about 9.52 million acres of the 640 million acres of public land total in the United States inaccessible for public use (TCRP). ‍

In Justice on the Backroads: The TBA YLD’s Answer to the Rural Attorney Shortage, Hon. Zachary R. Walden (Criminal Court judge for Tennessee’s 8th Judicial District) and Alix Rogers (Belmont University College of Law) explore the impact of the Tennessee Bar Association Young Lawyer Division’s Rural Judicial Fellowship (RJF) on law students from schools across the state. Built in response to Tennessee’s growing “legal deserts”—areas in which the availability of legal services is diminishing—the RJF program places law students in clerkships with rural judges during the summer to introduce them to career opportunities in rural areas. 

In Collaborative Management on the Eastern Slopes: The Waldron Ranch Grazing Cooperative and Conservation Easement Motivations, Forrest Hisey (Geography, Geomatics, and Environment, University of Toronto Mississauga) and Jonah Olsen (Geography and Planning, University of Toronto) investigate the use of conservation easements (CEs) in Canada as a tool for private land conservation. The authors explore the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for such easements, including deeply rooted cultural identities among landowners and traditional economic benefits.

Announcing the Fall 2026 Law and Rurality Workshop to be held in-person at the University of South Dakota. This workshop for interdisciplinary scholars will be held on Friday, October 9, 2026, with a submission deadline of Monday, July 27, 2026. Full details here in our Call for Papers.

In Understanding Rural Legal Deserts to Inform Public Policy: Identifying and Describing Lawyer Gaps in Non-Metropolitan Counties, David J. Peters, Emma Bartling, and Emily Meyer (all Agricultural and Rural Policy, Iowa State University) analyze the current trends of lawyer shortages in rural “legal deserts,” areas lacking sufficient legal services, across the United States. In doing so, the authors put forth an alternative calculation and classification of legal deserts that differs from that of the American Bar Association.

By Cassie Chambers Armstrong (Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law)

I began my career as a legal aid attorney representing low-income survivors of violence in rural Kentucky. This experience led me to try to understand the impact of place on domestic violence protective orders. Specifically, I am interested in the unique challenges that rural courts face and how these barriers impact those trying to navigate these legal processes.

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In The Healing Power of Antitrust, Theodosia Stavroulaki (Saint Louis University School of Law) analyzes the effects of noncompete and merger agreements between rural hospitals, which lead to “hospital deserts,” areas where geographic access to hospitals and primary care physicians is lacking. These areas leave millions of Americans without necessary medical care, further exacerbating health and racial disparities that leave rural populations particularly vulnerable.

In The Geography of Property Rights: Land Concentration, Irrigation Access and Rural Poverty Under Climate Change in Chile, Eduardo Villavicencio-Pinto (Law, University of Kent, England) examines the relationship between land concentration and rural poverty in Chile. The article argues that land concentration increases the likelihood of poverty primarily in communities with limited water access.  

In Feed it to the Ocean: The Federal Approach to Decommissioning in Alaska Native Climate Adaptation Project, Sophia Tidler (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Law) highlights the importance of decommissioning existing infrastructure when planning relocation, managed retreat, and protect-in-place (RMP) projects for environmentally threatened Native communities in rural Alaska.

In Catching Nutrients in a Net: Collective Action, Institutional Impediments, and the Mississippi River Watershed, Jonathan Rosenbloom (Albany Law School) investigates the role of local governments in the regulation of pollution in the Mississippi River Watershed. In his analysis, Rosenbloom goes beyond the traditional “tragedy of the commons” explanation for local government action and instead looks to the dynamics of federal and state regulations that preempt local governments.