|
Abstract: While reading Lee Fennell’s book Slices and Lumps, I was struck that the book could have been written using only examples from water law. Fennell’s framework describes nearly all challenges and aims inherent in water management, and connects these challenges to broader questions in life and law. Water law is all about slices and lumps. It involves efforts to slice interests in waterbodies into discrete property rights and lump interests in water together as a resource governed by various institutions. The challenge with slicing and lumping water is that water defies lines, whether drawn to slice or lump. Water sinks beneath lines, flies over them, and flows across them. This Essay relies on Fennell’s Slices and Lumps framework to evaluate two challenges of configuration in water policy and to propose reforms to address these challenges.
|