Crystals and Mud in Nature

Abstract

This commentary is being published in a forthcoming symposium issue on "The Properties of Carol Rose" by the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. It is a commentary on a paper presented by Professor James Salzman Thirst: A Short History of Drinking Water. The commentary addresses three related topics: (1) what I liked best about Professor Salzman's article; (2) how the article's narrow focus on one use (drinking) of one resource (water) undermines some of the article's conclusions by understating water's complexity; and (3) why the article made me think about dirt, and ultimately about mud, and the juxtaposition of water and dirt in natural resources law.