Sometimes they come from Ancient Rome.
Case in point: Laws regarding the ownership of beaches. These date back to the time of Justinian and are still the basis of much - though not all - of contemporary law on the subject. A similar story can be told about most every type of law that exists.
From the New York Times: An Ancient Law Could Shape the Modern Future of America’s Beaches. Here’s How.
. . . At issue is a legal concept from the sixth century A.D., when Emperor Justinian ordered the codification of Roman laws. The resulting code declared that features of nature like the air, running water, the sea and “the shores of the sea” must be held in trust for the use of the public. That idea passed into English common law, and then to the United States.
As a result, environmentalists, regulators, surfers and others say that landowners must not install sea walls or other coastal armor that will inevitably doom public beaches to disappear. On the other hand, owners of beachfront houses, hotels and other properties argue that if rules against coastal armor cause their private property to vanish beneath the waves, then they must be compensated for their losses.
The result is an impasse playing out from Hawaii to South Carolina.
When it comes to beaches, “there tends to be a lot of agreement that people would like to preserve these properties,” said Jeremy Talcott, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has represented property owners in disputes over armor. But there is “a much lower desire to actually pay for it.”
. . . Though rules vary, most U.S. states follow the principle that land below the high-tide line is public property. In Rhode Island, for example, members of the public may walk, fish, gather seaweed and “leave the shore to swim in the sea” on these beaches. These rights are set out in the State Constitution.
Until recently, most court cases about public trust beaches involved property owners who posted no-trespassing signs, erected fences or hired guards to keep people out. Now, the very existence of these beaches is often the issue.
One such case in Columbia, S.C., involves setback rules first adopted in 1988.
This spring in South Carolina Administrative Law Court, Rom and Renee Reddy challenged the state Department of Environmental Services, which had fined them $289,000 for building what officials called an “unpermitted” sea wall at their house on Isle of Palms.
. . . A decision by Judge Ralph K. Anderson III is pending.
For more:
- Justinian Code.
- Common Law.
- Public Trust Doctrine.
- Texas Open Beaches Act.