Law and Natural Resources in the Spanish Borderlands of North America

This course examines the transnational intersection of law and natural resources in the Spanish Borderlands of North America. We will study how the Spanish empire (and later an independent Mexico and the emerging United States) defined natural resources as property rights and allocated such resources to Europeans and Indigenous peoples who lived in the arid landscapes of the far northern frontier (what became present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, & California). The course also explores the conflict that developed in the U.S. over natural resources after 1848 between the Hispanic civil law and Anglo-American common law.