Document Type
Article
Publication
University of Colorado Law Review
Year
2020
Citation Information
Sarah Krakoff, Not Yet America's Best Idea: Law, Inequality, and Grand Canyon National Park, 91 U. Colo. L. Rev. 559 (2020), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/faculty-articles/1260.
Abstract
Even the nation’s most cherished and protected public lands are not spaces apart from the workings of law, politics, and power. This Essay explores that premise in the context of Grand Canyon National Park. On the occasion of the Park’s 100th Anniversary, it examines how law — embedded in a political economy committed to rapid growth and development in the southwestern United States — facilitated the violent displacement of indigenous peoples and entrenched racialized inequalities in the surrounding region. It also explores law’s shortcomings in the context of sexual harassment and discrimination within the Park. The Essay concludes by suggesting how the next one hundred years might be different. Through the hard work of integrating practices of justice, equity, and sustainability, our national parks may yet become America’s best idea — not because they set places apart from law and politics but because they create public spaces within which to forge better visions of what American might be.
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