Center for Water Policy Director, Professor, and Lynde B. Uihlein Endowed Chair Melissa Scanlan was quoted in a recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article examining a municipal court trial about whether people have the right to walk along Lake Michigan’s shoreline below the ordinary high-water mark. The case centers on Shorewood resident Paul Florsheim, who is contesting a trespassing ticket he received while walking along what he understood to be publicly accessible beach. Florsheim argues that Wisconsin’s Public Trust Doctrine guarantees the public’s right to traverse the area between the water’s edge and the ordinary high-water mark. His father, Thomas Florsheim, testified that when he was a riparian owner along this same beach until 2003, he viewed the beach as “common property” and believed that the vegetation marked the start of private land.
Professor Scanlan noted that while Wisconsin has never litigated this question for its Great Lakes coasts, both Michigan and Indiana’s supreme courts have upheld the public’s right to walk along Great Lakes shorelines. She emphasized that Wisconsin now has an opportunity to clarify and potentially affirm this historic public access tradition.
Read the full article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel here: Where can the public walk along Lake Michigan? Shorewood case may settle the issue
And check out some of the Center’s Public Trust Doctrine research here!