What would it mean to say that the public trust doctrine is transnational law? This chapter addresses that question. My main conclusion is that the public trust doctrine is a transnational legal norm but not a transnational legal order. To unpack this claim, I apply concepts from Gregory Shaffer and Terence Halliday’s theory of transnational legal orders (TLOs). My claim is that the public trust doctrine is not a transnational legal order in the way that, say, the rule of law is a transnational legal order. In using the public trust doctrine as a case study of the transnational dimensions of public fiduciary law, this chapter aims to introduce an empirically focused socio-legal approach into conversations about public fiduciary theory. Some scholars have made the conceptual claim that public fiduciary law is transnational in scope. In response, this chapter suggests the need for rigorous analysis of normative settlement (or lack thereof) around public fiduciary norms. To the extent that public fiduciary theory aims to reform transnational law, it must confront the challenges of achieving normative settlement in legal practice. The public trust doctrine’s transnational career is a case study in these challenges.

The first chapter introduces the problem to which the book responds: the ongoing exclusion of indigenous groups in many parts of the world from legal and policy frameworks determining the right to use water on their lands. The chapter presents the problem using academic and policy debates about indigenous water rights and the regulation of water while explaining how the comparative experiences considered in the book provide new perspectives on the reasons why indigenous water rights are needed, and the role law might play to provide for them.