United States Law

From Salish Sea Wiki


The law of the land drives many of the behaviors of human systems. In the context of ecosystem management, legal topics on this wiki focus on 1) recurring authorities by which legislatures appropriate bond or tax revenue to be spent by agencies, and 2) laws which result in procedures or prosecution to regulate the behavior of citizens. All legal topic pages use the "legal" category. Pages may provide an overview of an authority or describe examples of the application of legal rights and authorities.

Legal Topics Organized by Strata of Government

Legal topics may relate to particular strata of government (federal, state or local). Generally higher strata of government exert authority over lower strata, or delegate authority down to lower strata for implementation. However in our system of representative politics, the authority of the state is derived by local representatives that are influenced by politically effective constituents, and so the local concerns of politically effective constituents about the use of state power feeds back through councils, boards, legislatures, and congress. Legal topics may thereby involve two or more strata, and define a relationship among them. For example, the Shoreline Management Act defines an obligation of local government to the state for the management of shorelines, components of which are a common pool resource despite private ownership.

All Topics and Documents

The following topics, document and pages are tagged with the legal category

All Topics

All Documents