Wildlife law (United States)
As Wildlife law (eg, law of wild fauna ') is referred to the area of law in the United States, which deals with protection and preservation of wildlife.
history
History of English law until 1776
Legal Status of Wildlife
Most of the constitutions of the individual states contain provisions that declare wild animals to be the subject of public interest . The Pennsylvania Constitution exemplifies in p. 27:
"Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people. "
Often, hunting and fishing are the subject of special constitutional guarantees. This particular legal status of wild animals is a legacy of medieval English law, which made all land and wild animals the property of the Crown. With the independence of the United States, ownership, combined with the duty to preserve the existence and use it for the common good, passed from the English king to the individual states. The legacy of English common law nonetheless stayed alive in court decisions, as demonstrated by a 1914 Washington Supreme Court decision :
“Under the common law of England all property right in animals feræ naturæ was in the sovereign, for the use and benefit of the people. The killing, taking, and juse of game was subject to absolute governmental control of the common good. This absolute power to control and regulate was vested in the colonical governments as a part of the common law. It passed with the title to game to the several states as an incident of their sovereignty, and was retained by the states for the use and benefit of the people of the states, subject only to any applicable provisions of the federal constitution. "
The view that, in the tradition of English law, the ownership of wild animals belongs to the state as the trustee of the citizens, was extended by the United States Supreme Court in 1896 in the decision of Geer v. Connecticut Approved.
literature
- Eric T. Freyfogle, Dale D. Goble: Wildlife Law: A Primer . Island Press , 2009.
- Michael Lowndes Wolfe: A comparative consideration of the hunting regulations in the Federal Republic of Germany and in the United States of America with special consideration of their wild biological and hunting effects . Hann. Münden 1966.
Legal history
- Michael J. Bean and Michael J. Bean: The Evolution of National Wildlife Law . 3. Edition. Prager, 1997, ISBN 978-0-275-95989-0 .
- TS Palmer: Chronology and index of the more important events in American game protection, 1776-1911 . US Dept. of Agric., Bureau of Biol. Survey Bull., Washington DC 1912.
- ML Wolfe: The development of hunting law in the Anglo-American legal system . In: Journal for Hunting Science . tape 14 , no. 3 , 1968, ISSN 0044-2887 , pp. 118-135 .
