Water Law - LAW 470

Water Law presents a mix of Lebanese and Comparative regulatory regimes over a resource that is scarce yet ubiquitous and, of course, essential to life. This course will consider different rights and regimes for water, including prior appropriation, riparian rights, and groundwater rights. It will also look at how the public trust doctrine and environmental protection can affect those water rights. The course will compare the view of water as a human right. Although the course considers Water Law at a national level, the objective will be not just to learn how water is regulated, but also to develop an understanding of the benefits and flaws of the various rights regimes in order to predict how water should be regulated as it becomes an increasingly scarce resource.

Language of Instruction: English (legal terms, however, are also given in Arabic and French).