Associate Professor Lingxi Chenyang, a natural resources and food law expert, was chosen to present her paper “Feasting on Fish: The Egalitarian Origins of the Public Trust Doctrine” at the Harvard-Yale-Stanford Junior Faculty Forum, held May 21-22, 2026.
The Harvard-Yale-Stanford Junior Faculty Forum invites submissions on selected topics in public and private law, legal theory, and law and humanities topics, with the goal of promoting in-depth discussion about particular papers and general reflections on broader methodological issues and fostering a stronger sense of community among American legal scholars.
Law professors at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford choose papers from 10-15 junior scholars (with one to seven years of teaching experience) through a double-blind selection process to present their work at the forum. A senior scholar will then comment on each paper.
Chenyang’s paper examines three centuries of natural resources law along the Atlantic coast to reveal that the public trust doctrine emerged as a survival tactic to feed starving colonists and to attract immigrants to America’s shores to settle a new political community. By connecting the public trust doctrine to its egalitarian early American roots, the paper explains why the doctrine should extend to the atmosphere and other life-sustaining resources.
Learn more about the Harvard-Yale-Stanford Junior Faculty Forum.