Historic Preservation Law in a Nutshell

As this is my maiden voyage into the blogosphere, I thought I’d share with you my passion for historic resources and their preservation along with an exciting recent publication. Before ever dreaming of law, or legal academia for that matter, I was studying medieval British history at Oxford University. Due to many experiences in the UK—handling and reading thousand-year-old vellum documents on a regular basis; participating in voluntary archaeological digs for Anglo-Saxon settlements; mapping the phases of urban growth in Oxford; charting extant Romanesque and Gothic survivals in old Oxford buildings and sharing these discoveries with others—I realized more fully how the past enriches the present, and how without an understanding of what has come before, our own lives are less complete.

I’ll never forget eating pizza on the second floor of an old restaurant in Oxford. While munching on a slice, I looked over at one of the walls. During renovations the owners discovered 16th century wall paintings depicting the symbiotic relationship between plants and humans and took steps to preserve these paintings, incorporating them into the ambience of a modern pizza joint. This visible connection between the past and present made me muse about all the people who had eaten (or lived) in this building before, and it made mediocre pizza taste like manna.

Laws governing the management of tangible historic resources—often referred to as Historic Preservation Law and/or Cultural Heritage Law—are rounding into maturity. Given that historic resources encompass many types of law (property law, land use law, natural resources law, environmental law, Native American law) and traverse local, state, tribal, federal and international jurisdictions, there has long been a need for a resource that speaks to those jurisdictions and varied types of law collectively, rather than in silos as the field is typically analyzed

Professor Sara Bronin (University of Connecticut School of Law) and I have recently published such a resource with West Academic: Historic Preservation Law in a Nutshell.

Here is the publisher's blurb: “Historic Preservation Law in a Nutshell provides the first-ever in-depth summary of historic preservation law within its local, state, tribal, federal, and international contexts. Historic Preservation is a burgeoning area of law that includes aspects of property, land use, environmental, constitutional, cultural resources, international, and Native American law. This book covers the primary federal statutes, and many facets of state statutes, dealing with the protection and preservation of historic resources. It also includes key topics like the designation process, federal agency obligations, local regulation, takings and other constitutional concerns, and real estate development issues.”

Professors who would like to review a print copy of this title may request a complimentary copy by contacting their West Academic Publishing Account Manager at [email protected]

Click this link to go to Amazon where hardcopy and E-book formats can be purchased.  

I hope that this book can be of use to you,  and I would welcome any feedback on how it may be improved in future editions.  

To some extent, all legal and policy decisions we make today--particularly those concerned with land--are predicated on the past.  And in knowing about and respecting the past, we learn more about ourselves.  As Shakespeare wrote in the Tempest, "What's Past is Prologue".  

Ryan Rowberry

(Ryan's Web Profile and Email)