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The two papers in Ch. 5 examine how lawyers and law professors, operating in private arenas, successfully revived a pre-modern legal system, the Lex Mercatoria – the international body of trade law derived from merchant practice. Shapiro’s paper, which was originally published in The State and Freedom of Contract (ed. Harry Scheiber, Stanford University Press) in 1998) first introduces the Lex Mercatoria (the law of merchants) in relation to freedom of contract and contract law, and then discusses globalizing tendencies in contract law, doctrine, and jurisprudence, before moving on to globalizing tendencies in contract practice, using the legal doctrine of conflict of laws as a baseline for measurement of globalization tendencies. Here, Lex Mercatoria (or general principles of law) often play a substantial part in the resolution of contract disputes, particularly where arbitration is involved. Shapiro goes on to deal with the unification of private law in the United States in the 1920s (the trans-state harmonization of contract law), which he uses as a benchmark to assess the massive post-Second World War movement to a global law of contract. Aspects addressed include the globalization of contracting practice and law, the American-style contract (in relation to franchising law and mineral (non-oil) development contracts), and developments in business organization and law institutions.

In symbiotic associations, there is great variation in ecological outcomes shaped by the underlying coevolutionary process. Endophytic fungi of grasses have been shown to affect host growth and reproduction, photosynthetic physiology, abiotic stress tolerance, and competitive ability. Although positive effects of endophytes on host growth in several grass-endophyte systems have been described, many studies have been done mostly on a limited set of species growing in controlled environments. Effects of endophytes on host sexual reproduction range from parasitic castration (e.g., sexual Epichloë endophytes which cause choke disease) to improved seed production (e.g. asexual Neotyphodium endophytes in tall fescue). Vertical transmission within seeds occurs in asexual endophytes and may favor the evolution of mutualistic symbioses. Most reports of improved tolerance of abiotic stresses, such as low soil water and/or minerals shown by infected hosts, have involved tall fescue or perennial ryegrass. The grass-endophyte interaction could represent an adaptive symbiosis in relation to at least some environmental stresses. Effects of elevated atmospheric CO₂ on grass-endophyte interactions have not been clearly demonstrated. Although past workers have sometimes shown that endophytes increased the competitive ability of their hosts, recent analyses have not supported the contention that endophytes significantly improve host competitive ability.

Urban areas, gardens, and backyards can support a diverse range of wildlife, including a number of species rare in or absent from more semi-natural habitats. This chapter discusses the general principles of the management of these areas. It also briefly discusses management of mineral-extraction sites and developed land or buildings that are not currently in use, commonly known as brownfield or post-industrial sites. Mineral-extraction sites usually occur in the wider countryside, but are discussed here because of their similarity to brownfield sites.

After spending the 1970s developing the institutional capacity to effectively govern their resources, energy tribes now demanded that federal law recognize their authority to make development decisions. This final chapter documents, once again, the pivotal role the Northern Cheyenne tribe played in this process. With Ronald Reagan’s massive budget cuts forcing tribes to look increasingly to private-tribal partnerships to extract their minerals and secure revenue, the Northern Cheyenne executed a 1982 agreement with the Atlantic Richfield Company. Federal officials, however, were reluctant to approve the deal because it did not conform to the 1938 Indian Mineral Leasing Act, exposing how embedded notions of Indian inferiority continued to hinder tribal development. In response, the Northern Cheyenne, the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, and their allies within the federal government and the energy industry, pushed to change the law. The result was the 1982 Indian Mineral Development Act that authorized tribes to enter into whatever type of resource development agreement they desired, subject only to final federal approval. This new law reversed the historic roles of federal and tribal governments, giving energy tribes primary authority to determine the fate of their resources.

This chapter explains how the higher level of prosperity attained during the second “golden age” was threatened during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Pressures for a significant restructuring in the economy arose from a boom in mineral production, the onset of Asian industrialization, and a spike in world energy prices. These forces eventually led to the adoption of more outward-oriented policies with respect to trade and capital flows and a more market-oriented approach to the regulation of the domestic economy—policies more akin to those pursued in the nineteenth century. In pursuit of enhanced levels of prosperity, the policy reforms during the 1980s and 1990s were numerous and significant, requiring the abolition or adaptation of some key economic institutions.

The idea of private property, borrowed by Catherine the Great from Europe, was transplanted into an economic order based on serfdom and hierarchical patrimonial relations. Peasants were seen as being attached to land—along with rivers, forests, and whatever else this land might contain on and beneath its surface. This chapter traces the transformation of property rights set off by the reforms of the 1860s and, most importantly, the emancipation of the serfs, through the analysis of two acute issues in the Russian economy—the preservation of forests and the exploitation of mineral resources. It analyzes how the emancipation of peasants in 1861 affected the system of property rights designed in different economic conditions. It shows which elements of Catherine's vision of property survived through the reform, and how her legacy affected the post-emancipation vision, practice, and politics of property.

If the Prologue presents the specific action that altered the state of reservation resource development, this first chapter explains how we got there. Opening with the federal government’s warm embrace of the first energy proposals to the Northern Cheyenne tribe in the 1960s, the chapter describes the legal regime that placed federal, not tribal, officials in charge of reservation development. Tracking the ideological underpinnings of these laws back to the 1930s, it shows that while John Collier’s Indian New Deal ended the worst of federal Indian policies – such as allotment and forced assimilation – paternalistic assumptions of Indian inferiority remained in federal law. Further, the chapter demonstrates how laws governing reservation development were patterned off a dysfunctional legal regime used for leasing public minerals, which allowed energy companies to acquire vast amounts of resources on the cheap. Little of this, of course, was known to Cheyenne leaders in the 1960s, who collaborated with federal officials to secure the largest and most lucrative energy contracts possible.

Changes in mining rights on private lands came about in leasing contracts, court interpretations, and custom. By the nineteenth century English landowning families could set up mining operation themselves, call on free miners, or lease or sell mining rights to outsiders. Under changing property law, the family head might be impeachable for waste — for his family and his tenants his title might require that the estate's minerals and surface lands remain intact. Changes in tort law lawsuit decisions increased his exclusivity. They prevented him from interfering with his neighbours, his neighbours from harming him, and flooding. The courts in Rylands v Fletcher (1868) produced a spillover doctrine that was soon applied beyond mining. If the holding originating the flooding was doing something that was not ‘natural’ to its operations, it was liable to the victim. In the booming US mining, Rylands v Fletcher was cited frequently. The chapter mentions damage from surface collapse. The English courts were driven to an extreme: any surface landowner was absolutely entitled to support. The parties' contract could not waive this right. Instead of this for some decades some American courts followed a doctrine that when on one piece of land surface and mining interests were in physical conflict the miner's was always the ‘dominant’ estate.

This chapter analyzes the first decade of Central Asia's independence and transition towards market-based economies. After December 1991, the new independent states had no alternative than to embark on the transition from central planning. Throughout Central Asia, the 1990s were a grim decade, with falling output and increased income inequality and poverty. The transitional recession was most moderate in Uzbekistan and most severe in Tajikistan, which suffered from civil war until 1997. Recovery began in the late 1990s, and in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Central Asia was one of the fastest growing parts of the world economy, buoyed by a mixture of recovery from recession and soaring world prices for key energy and mineral exports.

This chapter examines the characteristics of the natural resources that are important for Central Asia. At independence, cotton was the most important commodity export from Central Asia, but cotton did not share in the commodity boom, never repeating the 1995 peak price of over a dollar per pound. In the twenty-first century, cotton has been displaced by oil and gas and minerals. However, all the governments have shown concern about ongoing dependence on primary product exports, whose importance increased after independence despite plans for economic diversification. The chapter then reviews the resource curse literature that highlights why primary product dependence may be harmful. Resource curse outcomes are not inevitable, but resource-abundant countries do face significant obstacles if they want to avoid such an outcome.

This chapter demonstrates the flawed minerals leasing regime in action. Postwar changes in global energy production and escalating demand from the booming Sunbelt South brought multinational energy companies to the vast coal reserves of the American West. There, they exploited a legal regime that placed authority over public and tribal minerals in the hands of unprepared federal officials, who allowed energy firms to cheaply secure millions of tons of minerals. By 1971, this system was so dysfunctional that the federal government halted further leasing of public minerals, though Indian mineral development continued unabated. No group had more experience with this broken system than the Navajo and Hopi tribes. The second half of the chapter thus demonstrates how energy companies worked with federal agents and tribal leaders to lock up reservation minerals for minimum royalties. It discusses the pressure to develop exerted by federal officials, the inexperience of tribal leaders negotiating energy deals, and the lack of knowledge among ordinary tribal members about mining’s impacts. While some tribal members resisted development, that resistance came too little, too late. These southwestern fights, however, prepared a generation of tribal leaders and consultants for their more successful battle on the Northern Plains.

By 1950, American public opinion had swung into a clear majority in favour of bringing Spain into the NATO. This was a climate in which the American Chiefs of Staff, long sold on the strategic importance of Spain, and backed by powerful commercial lobbies, could at last begin to make headway. For those few military planners in the know, the critical need for nuclear minerals added to their belief that the United States could no longer afford to wait on European approval. If Europe would not co-operate over Spain, the United States would go it alone. There was another equally pressing aspect of the nuclear question, that is, the need for bases to accommodate nuclear primed bombers, and give cover from the south of the kind it was hoped that British nuclear bases afforded from northern Europe. The subject of Spain was now routinely incorporated in intensive ongoing bilateral military talks with Britain and in updating United States long-term nuclear strategic planning.

This chapter is organized around a construct of hydromineral homeostasis and focuses on water and mineral consumption in rats. It provides a brief overview of the main body fluid compartments, of how fluids are gained and lost by those compartments, and of relevant neural and hormonal signals. The test environment and sodium preference and appetite are also discussed.

This chapter examines the limited supplies of the Earth's materials—in particular minerals, be they metals, sedimentary materials, or fuel. All our mineral resources come, not from the “whole Earth,” but from Earth's crust, whose relative thickness has been compared to that of a peach skin on a peach. And even within that thin skin, most useful minerals are rare. Ninety-eight percent of the crust is composed of only eight elements. The chapter discusses the occurrence and rarity of these materials, as well as how they are extracted, manufactured, and used, in more depth. It also shows how even these processes can have an effect on the environment, thus prompting measures to minimize damage to the environment.

This chapter discusses the effects of minerals development on biodiversity; land use and fragmentation; pollution resulting from mining operations; managing biological resources in minerals development; emerging best practices; exploration; innovation for remediation and reuse throughout the mine operation; rehabilitation and decommissioning; national legislation; corporate social responsibility within the minerals sector; and the future challenges of minerals extraction and development.