Rural Lands Seminar: Who Owns America?

Selected Topics in Property and Natural Resources Law

Jessica A. Shoemaker

University of Nebraska College of Law

In this seminar, we will analyze advanced topics in property and natural resources law. Our core objective is to analyze how, and if, our collective choices about property and natural resource law intersect with pressing environmental, social, and economic challenges. We will explore these questions fundamentally through the lens of rural land justice and, often, agricultural land tenure specifically. We will ask and explore deep and important questions about property's role in shaping the social and ecological contours of modern rural landscapes, including: Who really owns rural America? Why? And with what consequences?

Fundamentally, I hope you will interrogate property and natural resource law in new and creative ways. Rather than reach a certain conclusion, our primary objective is that we learn together to think about legal choices as choices - subject to ongoing questioning, critique, and even creativity. Does agricultural land tenure impact the modern American food system? How? And does it relate to other challenges facing current rural communities? How and why? What about other rural land types?

Topics will likely include the history of U.S. land settlement, the role of local property regulations in modern food systems, energy transitions, and the particular land-based changes being experienced in real-time by many rural communities facing increasing absentee investment pressure.

Depending on student interest, other seminar topics may include public rights of access across a range of countryside spaces; public lands management; energy siting and decommissioning controversies; access to water and related infrastructure development; land grab dynamics globally and locally; rights of housing; informal land settlements; and issues of access and exclusion particular to racialized and other marginalized groups, including histories of Black land loss, ongoing negotiation of Indigenous land rights, and farmworker dilemmas.

The seminar will be discussion based and collaborative. No prior rural or agricultural experience or knowledge is required. Students must complete both a final writing and presentation assignment.

Rural and Agricultural Land Justice - Fall 2024 Seminar

Agriculture, Race, and Connections to Place - Spring 2023 Seminar