Title: JOAN M GLASS V RICHARD A GOECKEL
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 126409
State: Michigan
Issuer: Michigan Supreme Court
Date: July 29, 2005

_______________________________ 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Michigan Supreme Court 
Lansing, Michigan 
Chief Justice: 
Justices: 
Clifford W. 
Michael F. Cavanagh
Taylor 
Elizabeth A. Weaver 
Marilyn Kelly
Opinion 
Maura D. Corrigan
Robert P. Young, Jr.
Stephen J. Markman 
FILED JULY 29, 2005 
JOAN M. GLASS, 
Plaintiff-Appellant, 
v 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
No. 126409 
RICHARD A. GOECKEL and KATHLEEN D. GOECKEL, 
Defendants-Appellees. 
BEFORE THE ENTIRE BENCH  
CORRIGAN, J.  
The issue presented in this case is whether the public 
has a right to walk along the shores of the Great Lakes 
where a private landowner ostensibly holds title to the 
water’s edge. 
To resolve this issue we must consider two 
component questions: (1) how the public trust doctrine 
affects private littoral1 title; and (2) whether the public 
1 Modern usage distinguishes between “littoral” and
“riparian,” with the former applying to seas and their
coasts and the latter applying to rivers and streams.
Black’s Law Dictionary (7th ed). 
Our case law has not 
always precisely distinguished between the two terms. 
Consistent with our recognition that the common law of the 
1  
 
                     
 
 
trust encompasses walking among the public rights protected 
by the public trust doctrine. 
Despite the competing legal theory offered by Justice 
Markman, our Court unanimously agrees that plaintiff does 
not interfere with defendants’ property rights when she 
walks within the area of the public trust. 
Yet we decline 
to 
insist, 
as 
do 
Justices 
Markman 
and 
Young, 
that 
submersion2 at a given moment defines the boundary of the 
public trust. 
Similarly, we cannot leave uncorrected the 
Court of Appeals award to littoral landowners of a “right 
of exclusive use” down to the water’s edge, which upset the 
balance between private title and public rights along our 
Great Lakes and disrupted a previously quiet status quo. 
Plaintiff Joan Glass asserts that she has the right to 
walk along Lake Huron. 
Littoral landowners defendants 
sea applies to our Great Lakes, see People v Silberwood,
110 Mich 103, 108; 67 NW 1087 (1896), citing Illinois 
Central R Co v Illinois, 146 US 387, 437; 13 S Ct 110; 36 L
Ed 1018 (1892), we will describe defendants’ property as
littoral property. 
Although we have attempted to retain
consistency in terminology throughout our discussion, we
will at times employ the term “riparian” when the facts or
the language previously employed so dictate. 
For example,
a littoral owner of property on the Great Lakes holds
riparian rights as a consequence of owning waterfront 
property. See Hilt v Weber, 252 Mich 198, 225; 233 NW 159
(1930). 
2 We note that, in the view of our colleagues,
“submerged land” includes not only land that lies beneath
visible water, but wet sands that are “infused with water.”
See post at 52. 
2  
 
 
 
                     
Richard and Kathleen Goeckel maintain that plaintiff 
trespasses on their private land when she walks the 
shoreline. 
Plaintiff 
argues 
that 
the 
public 
trust 
doctrine, which is a legal principle as old as the common 
law itself, and the Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act 
(GLSLA), MCL 324.32501 et seq.,3 protect her right to walk 
along the shore of Lake Huron unimpeded by the private 
title of littoral landowners. 
Plaintiff contends that the 
public trust doctrine and the GLSLA preserve public rights 
in the Great Lakes and their shores that limit any private 
property rights enjoyed by defendants. 
Although we find plaintiff’s reliance on the GLSLA 
misplaced, we conclude that the public trust doctrine does 
protect her right to walk along the shores of the Great 
Lakes. 
American law has long recognized that large bodies 
of navigable water, such as the oceans, are natural 
resources and thoroughfares that belong to the public. 
In 
our common-law tradition, the state, as sovereign, acts as 
trustee of public rights in these natural resources. 
Consequently, the state lacks the power to diminish those 
rights when conveying littoral property to private parties. 
3 The Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act, formerly MCL
322.701 et seq., is now part of Michigan’s Natural 
Resources and Environmental Protection Act, MCL 324.101 et 
seq. 
3  
 
 
 
                     
This “public trust doctrine,” as the United States Supreme 
Court stated in Illinois Central R Co v Illinois, 146 US 
387, 435; 13 S Ct 110; 36 L Ed 1018 (1892) (Illinois 
Central I), and as recognized by our Court in Nedtweg v 
Wallace, 237 Mich 14, 16-23; 208 NW 51 (1926), applies not 
only to the oceans, but also to the Great Lakes. 
Pursuant to this longstanding doctrine, when the state 
(or entities that predated our state’s admission to the 
Union) conveyed littoral property to private parties, that 
property remained subject to the public trust. 
In this 
case, the property now owned by defendants was originally 
conveyed subject to specific public trust rights in Lake 
Huron and its shores up to the ordinary high water mark. 
The ordinary high water mark lies, as described by 
Wisconsin, another Great Lakes state, where “‛the presence 
and action of the water is so continuous as to leave a 
distinct mark either by erosion, destruction of terrestrial 
vegetation, or other easily recognized characteristic.’” 
State v Trudeau, 139 Wis 2d 91, 102; 408 NW2d 337 (1987) 
(citation omitted).4  Consequently, although defendants 
4 We refer to a similarly situated sister state not for
the entirety of its public trust doctrine, but for a
credible definition of a term long employed in our 
jurisprudence. Despite Justice Markman’s protestation over
upsetting settled rules, see, e.g., post at 37, we have 
4  
 
 
                     
 
retain full rights of ownership in their littoral property, 
they hold these rights subject to the public trust. 
We hold, therefore, that defendants cannot prevent 
plaintiff from enjoying the rights preserved by the public 
trust doctrine. 
Because walking along the lakeshore is 
inherent in the exercise of traditionally protected public 
rights of fishing, hunting, and navigation, our public 
trust doctrine permits pedestrian use of our Great Lakes, 
up to and including the land below the ordinary high water 
mark. Therefore, plaintiff, like any member of the public, 
enjoys the right to walk along the shore of Lake Huron on 
land 
lakeward 
of 
the 
ordinary 
high 
water 
mark. 
Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of 
Appeals and remand this case to the trial court for further 
proceedings consistent with this opinion. 
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY 
Defendants own property on the shore of Lake Huron, 
and their deed defines one boundary as “the meander line of 
Lake Huron.”5
 Plaintiff owns property located across the 
recourse to this persuasive definition because, as noted by
Justice Young, this area of law has been characterized by
critical terms receiving less than precise definition. See 
post at 1. 
5 We note that the parties do not contest the terms of 
the deed by which defendants own their property. 
We take 
as given that defendants hold title to their property 
5  
 
 
 
                     
 
highway from defendants’ lakefront home. 
This case 
originally arose as a dispute over an express easement. 
Plaintiff’s deed provides for a fifteen-foot easement 
across defendants’ property “for ingress and egress to Lake 
Huron,” and she asserts that she and her family members 
have used the easement consistently since 1967 to gain 
access to the lake. 
The parties have since resolved their 
dispute about plaintiff’s use of that easement. 
This present appeal concerns a different issue: 
plaintiff’s right as a member of the public to walk along 
the shoreline of Lake Huron, irrespective of defendants’ 
private title. 
During the proceedings below, plaintiff 
sought to enjoin defendants from interfering with her 
walking along the shoreline. 
Defendants sought summary 
disposition under MCR 2.116(C)(8) and (9), for failure to 
state a claim upon which relief may be granted and for 
failure to state a defense. 
Defendants argued that, as a 
matter of law, plaintiff could not walk on defendants’ 
property between the ordinary high water mark and the lake 
without defendants’ permission. 
according to the terms of their deed. 
The record does not 
reflect any argument over the meaning of the term “meander
line” in this context. The issue before us is not how far 
defendants’ private littoral title extends, but how the
public trust affects that title. 
6  
 
 
 
The trial court granted plaintiff summary disposition 
under MCR 2.116(I)(2). 
Although the court concluded that 
no clear precedent controls resolution of the issue, it 
held that plaintiff had the right to walk “lakewards of the 
natural ordinary high water mark” as defined by the GLSLA. 
The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's order 
in a published opinion. 
262 Mich App 29; 683 NW2d 719 
(2004). 
It stated “[t]hat the state of Michigan holds in 
trust the submerged lands beneath the Great Lakes within 
its borders for the free and uninterrupted navigation of 
the public . . . .” Id. at 42. The Court held that, apart 
from 
navigational 
issues, 
the 
state 
holds 
title 
to 
previously submerged land, subject to the exclusive use of 
the riparian owner up to the water’s edge. 
Id. at 43. 
Thus, 
under 
the 
Court 
of 
Appeals 
analysis, 
neither 
plaintiff nor any other member of the public has a right to 
traverse the land between the statutory ordinary high water 
mark and the literal water’s edge. 
We subsequently granted leave to appeal. 471 Mich 904 
(2004). 
STANDARD OF REVIEW 
We review de novo the grant or denial of a motion for 
summary disposition. 
Maiden v Rozwood, 461 Mich 109, 118; 
597 NW2d 817 (1999). 
In a motion under MCR 2.116(C)(8), 
7  
 
 
 
 
 
 
“[a]ll well-pleaded factual allegations are accepted as 
true and construed in a light most favorable to the 
nonmovant.” 
Maiden, supra at 119.  As we stated in Nasser 
v Auto Club Ins Ass’n, 435 Mich 33, 47; 457 NW2d 637 
(1990), “a motion for summary disposition under MCR 
2.116(C)(9) is tested solely by reference to the parties’ 
pleadings.” 
ANALYSIS 
I. 
THE HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC TRUST DOCTRINE 
Throughout the history of American law as descended 
from English common law, our courts have recognized that 
the sovereign must preserve and protect navigable waters 
for its people. 
This obligation traces back to the Roman 
Emperor Justinian, whose Institutes provided, “Now the 
things which are, by natural law, common to all are these: 
the air, running water, the sea, and therefore the 
seashores. Thus, no one is barred access to the seashore . 
. . .” 
Justinian, Institutes, book II, title I, § 1, as 
translated in Thomas, The Institutes of Justinian, Text, 
Translation 
and 
Commentary 
(Amsterdam: 
North-Holland 
Publishing Company, 1975), p 65; see also 9 Powell, Real 
Property, § 65.03(2), p 65-39 n 2, quoting a different 
translation. 
The law of the sea, as developed through 
English common law, incorporated the understanding that 
8  
 
 
 
 
 
both the title and the dominion of the sea, and
of rivers and arms of the sea, where the tide
ebbs and flows, and of all the lands below high
water mark, within the jurisdiction of the Crown
of England, are in the King. 
Such waters, and
the lands which they cover, either at all times,
or at least when the tide is in, are incapable of
ordinary and private occupation, cultivation and
improvement; and their natural and primary uses
are public in their nature, for highways of 
navigation and commerce, domestic and foreign,
and for the purpose of fishing by all the King’s
subjects. 
Therefore the title, jus privatum, in 
such lands . . . belongs to the King as the
sovereign; 
and 
the 
dominion 
thereof, 
jus
publicum, is vested in him as the representative
of the nation and for the public benefit. 
[Shively v Bowlby, 152 US 1, 11; 14 S Ct 548; 38
L Ed 331 (1894).] 
This rule—that the sovereign must sedulously guard the 
public’s interest in the seas for navigation and fishing— 
passed from English courts to the American colonies, to the 
Northwest Territory, and, ultimately, to Michigan. 
See 
Nedtweg, supra at 17; accord Phillips Petroleum Co v 
Mississippi, 484 US 469, 473-474; 108 S Ct 791; 98 L Ed 2d 
877 (1988), quoting Shively, supra at 57. 
Michigan’s courts recognized that the principles that 
guaranteed public rights in the seas apply with equal force 
to the Great Lakes. Thus, we have held that the common law 
of the sea applies to the Great Lakes. 
See Hilt v Weber, 
252 Mich 198, 213, 217; 233 NW 159 (1930); People v 
Silberwood, 110 Mich 103, 108; 67 NW 1087 (1896). 
In 
particular, we have held that the public trust doctrine 
9  
 
  
 
                     
 
 
from the common law of the sea applies to the Great Lakes.6 
See Nedtweg, supra at 16-23; Silberwood, supra at 108; 
State v Venice of America Land Co, 160 Mich 680, 702; 125 
NW 770 (1910); accord Illinois Central I, supra at 437. 
Accordingly, 
under 
longstanding 
principles 
of 
Michigan’s common law, the state, as sovereign, has an 
obligation to protect and preserve the waters of the Great 
Lakes and the lands beneath them for the public.7  The state 
serves, in effect, as the trustee of public rights in the 
Great Lakes for fishing, hunting, and boating for commerce 
or pleasure. 
See Nedtweg, supra at 16; Venice of America 
Land Co, supra at 702; State v Lake St Clair Fishing & 
6 In this decision, we consider the public trust
doctrine only as it has applied to the Great Lakes and do
not consider how it has applied to inland bodies of water. 
7 Although not implicated in this case, we note that
the Great Lakes and the lands beneath them remain subject
to the federal navigational servitude. 
This servitude 
preserves for the federal government control of all 
navigable waters “for the purpose of regulating and 
improving navigation . . . .” 
Gibson v United States, 166
US 269, 271-272; 17 S Ct 578; 41 L Ed 996 (1897).
“[A]lthough the title to the shore and submerged soil is in
the various States and individual owners under them, it is
always subject to the servitude in respect of navigation
created 
in 
favor 
of 
the 
Federal 
government 
by 
the 
Constitution.” Id. at 272. Apart from this servitude, the
federal government has relinquished to the state any
remaining ownership rights in the Great Lakes. 
See 43 USC 
1311. 
10  
 
 
 
 
 
Shooting Club, 127 Mich 580, 586; 87 NW 117 (1901); Lincoln 
v Davis, 53 Mich 375, 388; 19 NW 103 (1884). 
The state, as sovereign, cannot relinquish this duty 
to preserve public rights in the Great Lakes and their 
natural resources. As we stated in Nedtweg, supra at 17: 
The State may not, by grant, surrender such
public rights any more than it can abdicate the
police 
power 
or 
other 
essential 
power 
of 
government. 
But this does not mean that the 
State must, at all times, remain the proprietor
of, as well as the sovereign over, the soil
underlying navigable waters. . . . The State of
Michigan has an undoubted right to make use of
its 
proprietary 
ownership 
of 
the 
land 
in 
question, [subject only to the paramount right
of] the public [to] enjoy the benefit of the
trust. 
Therefore, although the state retains the authority to 
convey 
lakefront 
property 
to 
private 
parties, 
it 
necessarily conveys such property subject to the public 
trust. 
At common law, our courts articulated a distinction 
between jus privatum and jus publicum to capture this 
principle: 
the alienation of littoral property to private 
parties leaves intact public rights in the lake and its 
submerged land. See Nedtweg, supra at 20; McMorran Milling 
Co v C H Little Co, 201 Mich 301, 313; 167 NW 990 (1918); 
Sterling v Jackson, 69 Mich 488, 506-507; 37 NW 845 (1888) 
(Campbell, J., dissenting); see also Collins v Gerhardt, 
11  
 
   
 
 
                     
 
237 Mich 38, 55; 211 NW 115 (1926) (Fellows, J., 
concurring) (recognizing the “different character” of the 
rights held by the federal government as proprietor and as 
trustee in an inland navigable stream); Lorman v Benson, 8 
Mich 18, 27-28 (1860) (reciting the common-law distinction 
between jus publicum and jus privatum in a case involving 
ownership of a riverbed).8 
Jus publicum refers to public rights in navigable 
waters and the land covered by those waters;9 jus privatum, 
in contrast, refers to private property rights held subject 
8 Indeed, other states also recognize the distinction
between private title and public rights. 
See, e.g., State 
v Longshore, 141 Wash 2d 414, 427; 5 P3d 1256 (2000) (“The
state’s ownership of tidelands and shorelands is comprised
of two distinct aspects--the jus privatum and the jus
publicum.”); Smith v State, 153 AD2d 737, 739-740; 545
NYS2d 203 (1989) (“This doctrine grows out of the common­
law concept of the jus publicum, the public right of
navigation and fishery which supersedes a private right of
jus privatum.”) (citations omitted); Bell v Town of Wells,
557 A2d 168, 172-173 (Me, 1989) (stating that the different
types of title in the same shore property “remain in force"
to this day); see also R W Docks & Slips v State, 244 Wis
2d 497, 509-510; 628 NW2d 781 (2001) (applying the public
trust doctrine as adopted in its state constitution). 
9 See Black’s Law Dictionary 
(7th ed), defining “jus
publicum” as “[t]he right, title, or dominion of public
ownership; esp., the government’s right to own real 
property in trust for the public benefit.” 
12  
 
 
 
 
 
 
                     
to the public trust.10  As the United States Supreme Court 
explained in Shively, supra at 13: 
In England, from the time of Lord Hale, it
has been treated as settled that the title in the 
soil of the sea, or of arms of the sea, below the
ordinary high water mark, is in the King, except
so far as an individual or a corporation has
acquired rights in it by express grant or by
prescription or usage; and that this title, jus
privatum, whether in the King or in a subject, is
held subject to the public right, jus publicum,
of navigation and fishing. [Citations omitted.] 
Thus, when a private party acquires littoral property from 
the sovereign, it acquires only the jus privatum. 
Our 
courts have continued to recognize this distinction between 
private title and public rights when they have applied the 
public trust doctrine. 
Public rights in certain types of 
access to the waters and lands beneath them remain under 
the protection of the state. 
Under the public trust 
doctrine, the sovereign never had the power to eliminate 
those rights, so any subsequent conveyances of littoral 
property remain subject to those public rights. 
See 
Nedtweg, supra at 17; see also People ex rel Director of 
Conservation v Broedell, 365 Mich 201, 205; 112 NW2d 517 
(1961). 
Consequently, littoral landowners have always 
10 See id., defining “jus privatum” as “[t]he right,
title, or dominion of private ownership.” 
13  
 
 
 
 
 
 
taken title subject to the limitation of public rights 
preserved under the public trust doctrine. 
II. THE SCOPE OF THE PUBLIC TRUST DOCTRINE 
Having established that the public trust doctrine is 
alive and well in Michigan, we are required in this appeal 
to examine the scope of the doctrine in Michigan: 
whether 
it extends up to the ordinary high water mark or whether, 
as defendants argue, it applies only to land that is 
actually below the waters of the Great Lakes at any 
particular moment. 
A. THE GREAT LAKES SUBMERGED LANDS ACT 
Plaintiff argues that the Legislature defined the 
scope of the public trust doctrine and established the 
outer limits of the doctrine in the GLSLA, thus supplanting 
our case law. 
This act, according to plaintiff, manifests 
a legislative intent to claim all land lakeward of the 
ordinary high water mark. 
Thus, plaintiff claims that the 
public trust extends to all land below the ordinary high 
water mark as defined in the act, which states that “the 
ordinary 
high-water 
mark 
shall 
be 
at 
the 
following 
elevations above sea level, international Great Lakes datum 
of 1955: Lake Superior, 601.5 feet; Lakes Michigan and 
Huron, 579.8 feet; Lake St. Clair, 574.7 feet; and Lake 
Erie, 571.6 feet.” MCL 324.32501. 
14  
 
We find plaintiff’s reliance on the GLSLA to be 
misplaced. 
First, the act does not show a legislative 
intent to take title to all land lakeward of the ordinary 
high water mark. MCL 324.32502 provides: 
The lands covered and affected by this part
are all of the unpatented lake bottomlands and 
unpatented 
made 
lands 
in 
the 
Great 
Lakes,
including the bays and harbors of the Great 
Lakes, belonging to the state or held in trust by
it, 
including 
those 
lands 
that 
have 
been 
artificially filled in. The waters covered and
affected by this part are all of the waters of
the Great Lakes within the boundaries of the 
state. This part shall be construed so as to
preserve and protect the interests of the general
public in the lands and waters described in this
section, 
to 
provide 
for 
the 
sale, 
lease,
exchange, or other disposition of unpatented
lands and the private or public use of waters
over patented and unpatented lands, and to permit
the filling in of patented submerged lands 
whenever it is determined by the department that
the private or public use of those lands and
waters will not substantially affect the public
use of those lands and waters for hunting,
fishing, 
swimming, 
pleasure 
boating, 
or 
navigation or that the public trust in the state
will not be impaired by those agreements for use,
sales, lease, or other disposition. The word 
“land” or “lands” as used in this part refers to
the 
aforesaid 
described 
unpatented 
lake 
bottomlands 
and 
unpatented 
made 
lands 
and 
patented lands in the Great Lakes and the bays
and harbors of the Great Lakes lying below and
lakeward of the natural ordinary high-water mark,
but this part does not affect property rights
secured by virtue of a swamp land grant or rights
acquired by accretions occurring through natural
means or reliction. For purposes of this part, 
the ordinary high-water mark shall be at the
following 
elevations 
above 
sea 
level,
international Great Lakes datum of 1955: Lake 
Superior, 601.5 feet; Lakes Michigan and Huron, 
15  
 
 
 
 
  
                     
579.8 feet; Lake St. Clair, 574.7 feet; and Lake
Erie, 571.6 feet. 
The first sentence of this section states that the act 
applies 
only 
to 
“unpatented 
lake 
bottomlands” 
and 
“unpatented made lands.” 
The fourth sentence, however, 
defines “land” or “lands” in the act as including not only 
the bottomlands and made lands described in the first 
sentence, but also “patented lands in the Great Lakes and 
the bays and harbors of the Great Lakes lying below and 
lakeward of the natural ordinary high-water mark . . . .”11 
Thus, the act covers both publicly owned land (the lake 
bottomlands and made lands described in the first sentence) 
and privately owned land that was once owned by the state 
(patented land below the ordinary high water mark). 
In 
other words, the act reiterates the state’s authority as 
trustee of the inalienable jus publicum, which extends over 
both publicly and privately owned lands. 
The act makes no 
claims to alter the delineation of the jus privatum of 
individual landowners. 
Moreover, the act never purports to establish the 
boundaries of the public trust. 
Rather, the GLSLA 
establishes the scope of the regulatory authority that the 
11 A land patent is “[a]n instrument by which the
government conveys a grant of public land to a private
person.” Black’s Law Dictionary (7th ed), p 1147. 
16  
 
 
 
                     
 
Legislature 
exercises, 
pursuant 
to 
the 
public 
trust 
doctrine. Indeed, most sections of the act merely regulate 
the use of land below the ordinary high water mark.12  The 
only section of the act that purports to deal with property 
rights is § 32511, MCL 324.32511: 
A riparian owner may apply to the department
for 
a 
certificate 
suitable 
for 
recording
indicating the location of his or her lakeward
boundary or indicating that the land involved has
accreted to his or her property as a result of
natural accretions or placement of a lawful,
permanent structure. The application shall be 
accompanied by a fee of $200.00 and proof of
upland ownership. 
12 Section 32503 provides that the Department of 
Environmental Quality (DEQ) may enter into agreements
regarding land use or alienate unpatented land to the
extent that doing so will not impair “the public trust in
the waters . . . .” MCL 324.32503. Section 32504 governs
applications for deeds or leases to unpatented lands. 
MCL 
324.32504. 
Section 32504a concerns the restoration and 
maintenance of lighthouses. MCL 324.32504a. Section 32505 
covers unpatented lake bottomlands and unpatented made 
lands, again providing that such lands may be conveyed as
long as the public trust “will not be impaired or 
substantially injured.” 
MCL 324.32505. 
Sections 32506 
through 32509 concern the valuation of unpatented lands and
various administrative matters (with § 32509 delegating
authority to promulgate rules to the DEQ). 
MCL 324.32506 
through 324.32509. 
Section 32510 establishes that a 
violation of the act is a misdemeanor punishable by 
imprisonment or a fine. 
MCL 324.32510. 
Prohibited acts 
are defined in § 32512, MCL 324.32512, with § 32512a, MCL
324.32512a, 
specifically 
focusing 
on 
the 
removal 
of 
vegetation. 
Sections 
32513 
and 
32514 
return 
to 
administrative matters, such as applications for permits
and public notice of hearing. MCL 324.32513 and 324.32514. 
Section 32515, MCL 324.32515, deals with enlargement of
waterways, and § 32516, MCL 324.32516, returns again to the
removal of vegetation. 
17  
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
                     
 
As shown previously, a vital distinction in public trust 
law exists between private title (jus privatum) and those 
public rights that limit that title (jus publicum). 
Section 32511 only establishes a mechanism for landowners 
to certify the boundary of their private property (jus 
privatum). 
The 
boundary 
of 
the 
public 
trust 
(jus 
publicum)—distinct from a boundary on private littoral 
title—remains a separate question, a question that the act 
does not answer. 
Finally, plaintiff also relies on the following 
language in § 32502 to argue that the GLSLA establishes the 
scope of the public trust doctrine: 
This part [the GLSLA] shall be construed so
as to preserve and protect the interests of the
general public in the lands and waters described
in this section, to provide for the sale, lease,
exchange, or other disposition of unpatented
lands and the private or public use of waters
over patented and unpatented lands, and to permit
the filling in of patented submerged lands 
whenever it is determined by the department that
the private or public use of those lands and
waters will not substantially affect the public
use of those lands and waters for hunting,
fishing, 
swimming, 
pleasure 
boating, 
or 
navigation or that the public trust in the state
will not be impaired by those agreements for use,
sales, lease, or other disposition.[13] 
13 MCL 324.32502. 
18  
 
 
 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
Again, plaintiff’s reliance on this section is misplaced. 
This sentence states that the act will be construed to 
protect the public interest. But that rule of construction 
begs the question and cannot resolve whether the public has 
an interest in a littoral property in the first place. 
It 
provides no reason to expand the public trust beyond the 
limits established at common law. 
Thus, we must look 
elsewhere to determine the precise scope of the public 
trust to which § 32502 refers.14 
B. THE PUBLIC TRUST DOCTRINE AS APPLIED TO THE GREAT LAKES 
Because the GLSLA does not define the scope of the 
public trust doctrine in Michigan, we must turn again to 
our common law. 
In applying the public trust doctrine to the oceans, 
courts have traditionally held that rights protected by 
this doctrine extend from the waters themselves and the 
lands beneath them to a point on the shore called the 
14 The Legislature has recognized the public trust in
other contexts as well. 
As early as 1913, the Legislature
had made provision for the disposition and preservation of
the public trust by entrusting trust lands and waters to
the care of the predecessor of the DEQ. 
See 1913 PA 326,
1915 CL 606 et seq.; see also Nedtweg, supra at 18, 20
(upholding the constitutionality of the act because any
authorized uses would yield to the “rights of the public”).
In addition, the Legislature has conveyed small fractions
of the lakes and shoreline to private parties, though only
after ensuring that such conveyances did not disturb the
public trust. 
See, e.g., 1954 PA 41; 1959 PA 31; 1959 PA
84. 
19  
 
 
 
“ordinary high water mark.” 
See, e.g., Shively, supra at 
13; Hardin v Jordan, 140 US 371, 381; 11 S Ct 808; 35 L Ed 
428 (1891); see also Hargrave’s Law Tracts, 11, 12, quoted 
in Shively, supra at 12 (“‘The shore is that ground that is 
between the ordinary high water and low water mark [and 
this ground belongs to the sovereign.]’”). 
The United 
States Supreme Court described this common-law concept of 
the “high water mark” in Borax Consolidated, Ltd v Los 
Angeles, 296 US 10, 22-23; 56 S Ct 23; 80 L Ed 9 (1935): 
The tideland extends to the high water mark.
This does not mean . . . a physical mark made
upon the ground by the waters; it means the line
of high water as determined by the course of the
tides. By the civil law, the shore extends as far
as the highest waves reach in winter. But by the
common law, the shore “is confined to the flux
and reflux of the sea at ordinary tides.” It is
the land “between ordinary high and low-water
mark, the land over which the daily tides ebb and
flow. When, therefore, the sea, or a bay, is
named as a boundary, the line of ordinary high­
water mark is always intended where the common
law prevails.” [Citations omitted.] 
An “ordinary high water mark” therefore has an 
intuitive meaning when applied to tidal waters. Because of 
lunar influence, ocean waves ebb and flow, thus reaching 
one point on the shore at low tide and reaching a more 
landward point at high tide. 
The latter constitutes the 
high water mark on a tidal shore. 
The land between this 
mark and the low water mark is submerged on a regular 
20  
 
  
                     
 
 
basis, and so remains subject to the public trust doctrine 
as “submerged land.” 
See, e.g., Illinois Central R Co v 
Chicago, 176 US 646, 660; 20 S Ct 509; 44 L Ed 622 (1900) 
(Illinois Central II) (“But it is equally well settled 
that, in the absence of any local statute or usage, a grant 
of lands by the State does not pass title to submerged 
lands below [the] high water mark . . . ." (Citations 
omitted; emphasis added.) 
Michigan’s courts have adopted the ordinary high water 
mark as the landward boundary of the public trust. 
For 
example, in an eminent domain case concerning property on a 
bay of Lake Michigan, we held that public rights end at the 
ordinary high water mark. 
Peterman v Dep’t of Natural 
Resources, 446 Mich 177, 198-199; 521 NW2d 499 (1994).15 
Thus, we awarded damages for destruction of the plaintiff’s 
property above the ordinary high water mark that resulted 
from construction by the state (which occurred undisputedly 
in the water and within the public trust). Id. Similarly, 
in an earlier case where the state asserted its control 
under the public trust doctrine over a portion of littoral 
15 This decision relied not simply on a “navigational
servitude” 
unique 
to 
that 
case, 
but 
rooted 
that 
“navigational servitude” in the public trust doctrine. See 
id. at 194 n 22, citing Collins, supra at 45-46; Venice of 
America Land Co, supra; Nedtweg, supra at 16-17. 
21  
 
 
 
  
                     
 
property, the Court also employed the high water mark as 
the boundary of the public trust. 
Venice of America Land 
Co, supra at 701-702. 
Our Court has previously suggested that Michigan law 
leaves some ambiguity regarding whether the high or low 
water mark serves as the boundary of the public trust. See 
Broedell, 
supra 
at 
205-206. 
But 
the 
established 
distinction in public trust jurisprudence between public 
rights (jus publicum) and private title (jus privatum) 
resolves this apparent ambiguity. 
Cases that seem to 
suggest, at first blush, that the public trust ends at the 
low water mark actually considered the boundary of the 
littoral owner’s private property (jus privatum) rather 
than the boundary of the public trust (jus publicum).16 
16 See La Porte v Menacon, 220 Mich 684; 190 NW 655
(1922) (resolving a dispute between private landowners over
a deed term and bounding property at the low water mark);
Lake St Clair Fishing & Shooting Club, supra at 587, 594­
595 (setting the boundary of private title at the low water
mark, while simultaneously endorsing Shively and Illinois 
Central I and II); Silberwood, supra at 107 (reciting the
holdings of other jurisdictions that a riparian owner’s fee
ends at the low water mark); Lincoln, supra at 384 
(considering the boundaries of a grant made by the federal
government, rather than the boundary on what the government
retained). 
In 
Collins, 
supra 
at 
60 
(Fellows, 
J.,
concurring), our Court differed and used the high water 
mark as the boundary to private title, but that case
involved property on an inland stream. 
In People v Warner, 116 Mich 228, 239; 74 NW 705
(1898), the Court appeared to place a single boundary 
22  
 
  
                     
Because the public trust doctrine preserves public rights 
separate from a landowner’s fee title, the boundary of the 
public trust need not equate with the boundary of a 
landowner’s littoral title. Rather, a landowner’s littoral 
title might extend past the boundary of the public trust.17 
between the riparian owner’s title and state control,
stating that “[t]he adjoining proprietor’s fee stops [at 
the high or low water mark], and there that of the State
begins.” 
Yet this boundary marks “the limit of private
ownership.” 
Id. 
This recalls the fact that the state 
might hold proprietary title or, separate from that title,
title as trustee to preserve the waters and lands beneath
them on behalf of the public. 
The Court proceeded to
distinguish the state’s interest in the waters from the
interest of the public in navigation, fish, and fowl. 
Id. 
Thus, in context, the Warner Court recognized a boundary on
a riparian title, a title that remained subject to the
public trust. 
But the Court did not equate that boundary
with the limit of the public trust. 
17 Although in the context of an inland stream case,
Justice 
Fellows 
noted 
the 
possibility 
of 
different 
boundaries on the public trust and riparian ownership in
his concurring opinion in Collins, supra at 52, quoting
Bickel v Polk, 5 Del 325, 326 (Del Super, 1851): 
“The right of fishing in all public streams
where the tide ebbs and flows, is a common right,
and the owner of land adjoining tide water,
though his title runs to low water mark, has not
an exclusive right of fishing; the public have 
the right to take fish below high water mark,
though upon soil belonging to the individual, and
would not be trespassers in so doing; but if they
take the fish above high water mark, or carry
them above high water mark and land them on
private property, this would be a trespass . . . 
. 
In all navigable rivers, where the tide ebbs
and flows, the people have of common right the
privilege of fishing, and of navigation, between 
23  
 
 
 
                     
Our 
case 
law 
nowhere 
suggests 
that 
private 
title 
necessarily ends where public rights begin. 
To the 
contrary, the distinction we have drawn between private 
title and public rights demonstrates that the jus privatum 
and the jus publicum may overlap. 
Nor does this recognition of the potential for overlap 
represent a novel invention. 
While not binding on 
Michigan, other courts have similarly accommodated the same 
practical challenge of fixing boundaries on shifting 
waters: they acknowledged the possibility of public rights 
coextensive with private title. See, e.g., State v Korrer, 
127 Minn 60, 76; 148 NW 617 (1914) (Even if a riparian 
owner holds title to the ordinary low water mark, his title 
is absolute only to the ordinary high water mark and the 
intervening shore space between high and low water mark 
remains subject to the rights of the public.); see also 
North Shore, Inc v Wakefield, 530 NW2d 297, 301 (ND, 1995) 
(stating that neither the state nor the riparian owner held 
absolute interests between high and low water mark); 
Shaffer v Baylor’s Lake Ass’n, Inc, 392 Pa 493, 496; 141 
A2d 583 (1958) (subjecting private title held to low water 
mark to public rights up to high water mark); Flisrand v 
high and low water mark; though it be over 
private soil.” 
24  
 
 
                     
 
 
Madson, 35 SD 457, 470-472; 152 NW 796 (1915) (same as 
Korrer, supra); Bess v Humboldt Co, 3 Cal App 4th 1544, 
1549; 5 Cal Rptr 2d 399 (1992) (noting that it is “well 
established” that riparian title to the low water mark 
remained subject to the public trust between high and low 
water marks). 
In the instant case, the Court of Appeals relied 
extensively on Hilt to set a boundary on where defendants’ 
property ended and where plaintiff’s rights (as a member of 
the public) began. 
But our concern in Hilt was the 
boundary of a littoral landowner’s private title,18 rather 
than the boundary of the public trust. 
See Hilt, supra at 
206 (noting that the government conveyed title “to the 
water’s edge”). 
Indeed, the Hilt Court endorsed the 
Nedtweg Court’s discussion of the public trust and decided 
the issue of the boundary on private littoral title within 
the context of the public trust doctrine. 
See id. at 203, 
224-225, 227.19  Consequently, the Court of Appeals erred by 
18 Moreover, the particular issue in Hilt was the 
boundary of private title on relicted/accreted land, which
is not at issue in the present case. 
19 The Hilt Court concluded by stating how the public 
trust doctrine affected a riparian owner’s private title: 
While the upland owner, in a general way,
has full and exclusive use of the relicted land,
his enjoyment of its use, especially his freedom 
25  
 
 
                     
 
granting defendants an exclusive right of use down to the 
water’s edge, because littoral property remains subject to 
the 
public 
trust 
and 
because 
defendants 
hold 
title 
according to the terms of their deed. 
Our public trust doctrine employs a term, “the 
ordinary high water mark,” from the common law of the sea 
and applies it to our Great Lakes. While this term has an 
obvious meaning when applied to tidal waters with regularly 
recurring high and low tides, its application to nontidal 
waters like the Great Lakes is less apparent. 
See, e.g., 
Lincoln, supra at 385 (noting, amidst a discussion of the 
extent of private littoral title, some imperfection in an 
analogy between the Great Lakes and the oceans). 
In the 
Great Lakes, water levels change because of precipitation, 
barometric pressure, and other forces that lack the 
regularity of lunar tides, which themselves exert a less 
noticeable influence on the Great Lakes than on the oceans. 
Applying a term from the common law of the sea, despite the 
obvious difference between the oceans and the Great Lakes, 
to develop and sell it, is clouded by the lack of
fee title, the necessity of resorting to equity
or to action for damages instead of ejectment to
expel a squatter, and the overhanging threat of
the State’s claim of right to occupy it for State
purposes. 
The State, except for the paramount 
trust purposes, could make no use of the land
. . . . [Id. at 227.] 
26  
  
 
 
has led to some apparent discontinuity in the terminology 
employed in our case law. 
Notwithstanding some prior 
imprecision in its use, a term such as “ordinary high water 
mark” attempts to encapsulate the fact that water levels in 
the Great Lakes fluctuate. 
This fluctuation results in 
temporary exposure of land that may then remain exposed 
above where water currently lies. 
This land, although not 
immediately and presently submerged, falls within the ambit 
of the public trust because the lake has not permanently 
receded from that point and may yet again exert its 
influence up to that point. 
See Nedtweg, supra at 37 
(setting apart from the public trust that land which is 
permanently exposed by the “recession of water” and so 
“rendered suitable for human occupation”). 
Thus, the 
ordinary high water mark still has meaning as applied to 
the Great Lakes and marks the boundary of land, even if not 
instantaneously 
submerged, 
included 
within 
the 
public 
trust. 
Our sister state, Wisconsin, defines the ordinary 
high water mark as 
the point on the bank or shore up to which the
presence and action of the water is so continuous
as to leave a distinct mark either by erosion,
destruction of terrestrial vegetation, or other
easily recognized characteristic. 
And where the 
bank or shore at any particular place is of such
a character that is impossible or difficult to
ascertain where the point of ordinary high-water
mark is, recourse may be had to other places on 
27  
 
 
 
                     
 
the bank or shore of the same stream or lake to 
determine whether a given stage of water is above
or below ordinary high-water mark. 
[Diana 
Shooting Club v Husting, 156 Wis 261, 272; 145 NW
816 (1914), (citation omitted).] 
Although Diana Shooting Club involved a river, Wisconsin 
has applied this definition not only to inland waters, but 
also to the Great Lakes. 
See R W Docks & Slips, supra at 
508-510; Trudeau, supra at 102.20  This definition has long 
served a state with which we share a border and that also 
has an extensive Great Lakes shoreline. 
Although we do not import our sister state’s public 
trust doctrine where this Court has already spoken, we are 
persuaded to adopt this definition to clarify a term long 
used but little defined in our jurisprudence. 
Indeed, 
Wisconsin’s definition of ordinary high water mark is not 
20 While an average member of the public may not
require this degree of precision, Trudeau illustrates how a 
factual dispute over the location of the ordinary high
water mark may be resolved. 
In that case, the parties
presented evidence via expert witnesses. 
Id. at 108. 
For 
example, the state’s expert testified that he “analyzed
several aerial photographs . . . , the government survey
maps, the site’s present configuration, and stereo [three­
dimensional] photographs . . . .” 
Id. 
Numerous resources 
exist to provide guidance to professionals. 
See, e.g.,
Simpson, 
River 
& 
Lake 
Boundaries: 
Surveying 
Water 
Boundaries—A Manual (Kingman, AZ: Plat Key Publishing, 
1994); Cole, Water Boundaries (New York: J Wiley & Sons,
1997). 
Not surprisingly, this Court requires a survey
based on proper monuments to establish an actual property
line. 
Hurd v Hines, 346 Mich 70, 78-79; 77 NW2d 341
(1956). 
The same requirement would apply for a boundary
set by one of our Great Lakes. 
28  
 
  
                     
 
 
far 
removed 
from 
meanings 
previously 
recognized 
in 
Michigan. 
See MCL 324.30101(i);21 1999 AC, R 281.301(j); 
Peterman, supra at 198 n 29 (noting a statutory definition 
regarding inland waters, now enacted as MCL 324.30101(i), 
when considering the ordinary high water mark on Lake 
Michigan). This definition also parallels that employed by 
the federal government. 
See, e.g., 33 CFR 328.3(e).22 
Thus, we clarify the meaning of “ordinary high water mark” 
consistently with a definition that has served another 
21 Enacted after the GLSLA employed a standard based on
International Great Lakes Datum for the Great Lakes, MCL
324.30101(i), which contains definitions previously found
in the former Inland Lakes and Streams Act, in relevant
part provides: 
“Ordinary-high water mark” means the line
between 
upland 
and 
bottomland 
that 
persists
through successive changes in water levels, below
which the presence and action of the water is so
common or recurrent that the character of the 
land is marked distinctly from the upland and is
apparent in the soil itself, the configuration of
the surface of the soil, and the vegetation. 
22 33 CFR 328.3(e) provides: 
The term ordinary high water mark means
that line on the shore established by the 
fluctuations of water and indicated by physical
characteristics such as clear, natural line 
impressed on the bank, shelving, changes in the
character of soil, destruction of terrestrial
vegetation, the presence of litter and debris,
or other appropriate means that consider the
characteristics of the surrounding areas. 
29  
 
 
 
                     
Great Lakes state for some hundred years and is in accord 
with the term’s limited development in our own state. 
The concepts behind the term “ordinary high water 
mark” have remained constant since the state first entered 
the Union up to the present: 
boundaries on water are 
dynamic and water levels in the Great Lakes fluctuate.23  In 
light of this, the aforementioned factors will serve to 
identify the ordinary high water mark, but the precise 
location of the ordinary high water mark at any given site 
on the shores of our Great Lakes remains a question of 
fact. 
III. THE PUBLIC TRUST INCLUDES WALKING WITHIN ITS BOUNDARIES 
We have established thus far that the private title of 
littoral landowners remains subject to the public trust 
beneath the ordinary high water mark. 
But plaintiff, as a 
23 As our Court has consistently recognized, water
boundaries necessarily defy static definition. 
See Hilt, 
supra at 219. 
For example, the common law recognized
riparian rights to accretion and reliction. 
This meant 
that riparian landowners gained private title to land 
adjacent 
to 
their 
property 
that 
gradually 
became 
permanently exposed through erosion or a change in water
level. See Peterman, supra at 192-193. The recognition of
these riparian rights shows that our courts have refused to
fix a line that defies natural processes. 
Also, the
concept of a “moveable freehold” to accommodate the effects
of accretion and reliction on the bounds of littoral title 
shows our acknowledgement of the shifting nature of water
boundaries. 
See id., Klais v Danowski, 373 Mich 262, 275­
276; 129 NW2d 414 (1964), and Broedell, supra at 206, all
quoting Hilt, supra at 219. 
30  
 
member of the public, may walk below the ordinary high 
water mark only if that practice receives the protection of 
the public trust doctrine. 
We hold that walking along the 
shore, subject to regulation (as is any exercise of public 
rights in the public trust) falls within the scope of the 
public trust. 
To reiterate, the public trust doctrine serves to 
protect resources—here the waters of the Great Lakes and 
their submerged lands—shared in common by the public. 
See 
pp 9-11 of this opinion; see also Venice of America Land 
Co, supra at 702 (noting that “the State of Michigan holds 
these lands in trust for the use and benefit of its 
people”). 
As trustee, the state must preserve and protect 
specific public rights below the ordinary high water mark 
and may permit only those private uses that do not 
interfere with these traditional notions of the public 
trust. 
See Obrecht v Nat'l Gypsum Co, 361 Mich 399, 412­
413; 105 NW2d 143 (1960). 
Yet its status as trustee does 
not permit the state, through any of its branches of 
government, to secure to itself property rights held by 
31  
 
 
                     
 
littoral owners. 
See Hilt, supra at 224 (“The state must 
be honest.”).24 
We first note that neither party contests that walking 
falls within public rights traditionally protected under 
our public trust doctrine. Rather, they dispute where, not 
whether, plaintiff may walk: 
below the literal water’s 
edge or below the ordinary high water mark. 
While the 
parties’ agreement on this point cannot determine the scope 
of 
public 
rights, 
this 
agreement 
does 
indicate 
the 
existence of a common sense assumption: 
walking along the 
lakeshore is inherent in the exercise of traditionally 
protected public rights. 
Our 
courts 
have 
traditionally 
articulated 
rights 
protected by the public trust doctrine as fishing, hunting, 
and navigation for commerce or pleasure. 
See Nedtweg, 
supra at 16; Venice of America Land Co, supra at 702; Lake 
24 For example, in Hilt, supra at 225, we noted several
riparian rights held by landowners whose property abuts
water. 
These riparian rights include the “[u]se of the
water for general purposes, as bathing, domestic use, etc.
[,] . . . wharf[ing] out to navigability [,] . . . [a]ccess
to navigable waters [, and] . . . . [t]he right to
accretions.” 
(Citations omitted.) 
Moreover, “[r]iparian
rights are property, for the taking or destruction of which
by the State compensation must be made, unless the use has
a real and substantial relation to a paramount trust 
purpose.” 
Id.; see also Peterman, supra at 191. 
Thus, we
have long recognized the value of riparian rights, but
those rights remain ever subject to the “paramount” public
trust. 
32  
 
   
                     
 
 
St Clair Fishing & Shooting Club, supra at 586; Lincoln, 
supra at 388.25 
In order to engage in these activities specifically 
protected by the public trust doctrine, the public must 
have a right of passage over land below the ordinary high 
water mark. 
Indeed, other courts have recognized a “right 
of passage” as protected with their public trust. See Town 
of Orange v Resnick, 94 Conn 573, 578; 109 A 864 (1920) 
(listing as public rights “fishing, boating, hunting, 
bathing, taking shellfish, gathering seaweed, cutting sedge 
and . . . passing and repassing”); Arnold v Mundy, 6 NJL 1, 
12 (1821) (reserving to the public the use of waters for 
“purposes of passing and repassing, navigation, fishing, 
fowling, [and] sustenance”). 
We can protect traditional public rights under our 
public trust doctrine only by simultaneously safeguarding 
activities inherent in the exercise of those rights. 
See 
e.g., Attorney General, ex rel Director of Conservation v 
Taggart, 306 Mich 432, 435, 443; 11 NW2d 193 (1943) 
(permitting wading in a stream pursuant to the public trust 
25 Indeed, we have even noted that the public might cut
ice or, in the context of inland waters, might float logs
downriver. 
See Lake St Clair Fishing & Shooting Club, 
supra at 587; Grand Rapids Booming Co v Jarvis, 30 Mich
308, 319 (1874). 
33  
 
 
                     
 
 
doctrine). 
Walking the lakeshore below the ordinary high 
water mark is just such an activity, because gaining access 
to the Great Lakes to hunt, fish, or boat required walking 
to reach the water.26  Consequently, the public has always 
held a right of passage in and along the lakes. 
Even before our state joined the Union, the Northwest 
Ordinance of 1787, art IV, protected our Great Lakes in 
trust: 
“The navigable waters leading into the Mississippi 
and St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between the same, 
shall be common highways and forever free . . . .” 
See 
Northwest Ordinance of 1787, art IV. 
Given that we must 
protect the Great Lakes as “common highways,” see id., we 
acknowledge 
that 
our 
public 
trust 
doctrine 
permits 
pedestrian use–in and of itself–of our Great Lakes, up to 
and including the land below the ordinary high water mark. 
Yet in Hilt, supra at 226, our Court noted the rule 
stated by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Doemel v Jantz, 
180 Wis 225; 193 NW 393 (1923): “[T]he public has no right 
of passage over dry land between low and high-water mark 
but the exclusive use is in the riparian owner . . . .” 
When read in context, this quotation does not represent a 
26 This does not imply a right of lateral access in the
public, i.e., a right to traverse the land of littoral
owners to reach the lands and waters held in trust. 
See, 
e.g., Collins, supra at 49. 
34  
 
 
 
 
                     
rejection of walking as impermissible within our public 
trust. As correctly described by Justice Markman, the Hilt 
Court cited this passage as part of its discussion 
regarding the Michigan Supreme Court’s correction of an 
earlier departure from the common law.27  See post at 51-53. 
But rather than adopting that rule from Doemel, the Hilt 
Court listed this rule, among others, to refute the notion 
that the state held “substantially absolute title” in the 
lakes and the lands beneath them. 
Hilt, supra at 224. 
Instead, “the State has title in its sovereign capacity,” 
id., pursuant to the public trust doctrine. 
Consequently, 
“the right of the State to use the bed of the lake, except 
for the trust purposes, is subordinate to that of the 
riparian owner.” 
Id. at 226, citing Town of Orange, supra 
at 578. 
In light of this exception for the public trust, 
littoral owners’ rights supersede public rights in the same 
property (by virtue of their ownership) only to the extent 
that littoral owners’ rights do not contravene the public 
trust. See id. When the Hilt Court recognized the greater 
27 The Kavanaugh cases departed from the common law by
fixing the meander line as the boundary on private littoral
title and by fixing the legal status of land below that
line, regardless of subsequent physical changes. See Hilt, 
supra at 213; see also Kavanaugh v Rabior, 222 Mich 68; 192
NW 623 (1923); Kavanaugh v Baird, 241 Mich 240; 217 NW 2
(1928). 
35  
 
 
 
 
 
rights of littoral property owners, it did not alter the 
public trust or preclude the public from walking within it. 
We must conclude with two caveats. 
By no means does 
our public trust doctrine permit every use of the trust 
lands and waters. 
Rather, this doctrine protects only 
limited public rights, and it does not create an unlimited 
public right to access private land below the ordinary high 
water mark. 
See Ryan v Brown, 18 Mich 196, 209 (1869). 
The public trust doctrine cannot serve to justify trespass 
on private property. 
Finally, any exercise of these 
traditional public rights remains subject to criminal or 
civil regulation by the Legislature. 
IV. RESPONSE TO OUR COLLEAGUES 
Our Court unanimously agrees that defendants cannot 
prevent plaintiff from walking along the shore of Lake 
Huron within the area of the public trust. 
Despite the 
separate theory that undergirds the analysis, Justices 
Markman and Young agree with the majority that plaintiff 
may walk along Lake Huron in the area of the public trust. 
Moreover, the majority and our colleagues agree on 
several other points. 
We agree that the public trust 
doctrine, descended at common law, applies to our Great 
Lakes. 
See Hilt, supra at 202 (“[T]his Court has 
consistently held that the State has title in fee in trust 
36  
 
 
 
                     
for the public to submerged beds of the Great Lakes within 
its boundaries.”). 
We further agree that the public trust 
doctrine requires the state as trustee to preserve public 
rights in the lakes and lands submerged beneath them. 
See 
Nedtweg, supra at 16. 
Finally, we agree that plaintiff 
retains the same right to walk along the Great Lakes she 
has always held. 
Post at 50-52. 
That our colleagues 
disagree with the other members of this Court over the 
particulars of how far those public rights extend ought not 
overshadow our fundamental agreement: 
plaintiff does not 
interfere with defendants’ property rights when she walks 
within the public trust. 
Despite the sound and fury of Justice Markman’s 
concurring and dissenting opinion,28 we do not radically 
depart from our precedents or destabilize property rights 
by upholding and applying our common law. 
While our 
28 For example, Justice Markman predicts the appearance
of fences along the shore. 
Yet to the extent that 
landowners may do as they see fit on their own property,
they could always erect a fence. 
While we share Justice 
Markman’s desire to preserve any “long coexist[ence] in
reasonable harmony,” post at 2 n 2, we find peculiar his
implication that resolving an actual instance of disharmony
between these parties or correcting the lower court’s 
departure from our common law equates with this Court’s
endorsement of (or even comment on) property owners using
fences. 
Were we to adopt our colleagues’ approach, 
littoral landowners could place fences as far down as the
water’s edge. 
37  
 
 
                     
 
 
colleagues in dissent claim to maintain the status quo, 
they do not do so. 
Rather, the majority retains and 
clarifies the status quo. 
The trial court correctly 
permitted plaintiff to walk lakeward of the ordinary high 
water mark. The Court of Appeals also correctly recognized 
the importance of the public trust doctrine, though we 
reverse its requirement that plaintiff walk only where 
water currently lies. 
Yet our colleagues in dissent would repeat this error 
by continuing to grant an exclusive right of possession to 
littoral landowners. 
Indeed, they would compound this 
error by granting littoral landowners all property down to 
where unsubmerged land ends, which they locate at the 
water’s edge,29 regardless of the terms of landowners’ 
29 Numerous states bound their public trust, not at an
instantaneously defined “water’s edge,” but at their high
water mark. 
See, e.g., Barboro v Boyle, 119 Ark 377, 385;
178 SW 378 (1915) (high water mark for a lake); Simons v 
French, 25 Conn 346, 352-353 (1856) (high water mark on
tidal waters); Day v Day, 22 Md 530, 537 (1865) (high water
mark on tidally influenced rivers and streams); State v 
Florida Natural Properties, Inc, 338 So 2d 13, 19 (Fla,
1976) (ordinary high water mark); Freeland v Pennsylvania R
Co, 197 Pa 529, 539; 47 A 745 (1901) (ordinary high water
mark); Allen v Allen, 19 RI 114, 115; 32 A 166 (1895) (high
water mark); State v Hardee, 259 SC 535, 541-542; 193 SE2d
497 (1972) (high water mark on tidally influenced stream). 
Indeed, references in other states to “water’s edge”
often tie that term to either a high or low water mark. 
See, e.g., Concord Mfg Co v Robertson, 66 NH 1, 19-21; 25 A
718 (1889); Lamprey v State, 52 Minn 181, 198; 53 NW 1139 
38  
 
 
                     
deeds.30  We would not so casually set aside the countless 
deeds that order property rights for the length of our 
state shoreline. 
We would not give away to littoral 
landowners 
the 
absolute 
title 
to 
public 
trust 
land 
preserved for the people. Such a departure would represent 
a grave disturbance to the property rights of littoral 
landowners and of the public. 
Notwithstanding Justice Markman’s characterization of 
this case as “aberrational,” post at 4, 5, and 65, we have 
not invented the dispute presented to us. 
Nor do we have 
the luxury of forsaking public rights; our Court is one of 
the “sworn guardians of Michigan’s duty and responsibility 
as trustee of the [Great Lakes].” 
See Obrecht, supra at 
412. 
For the reasons described earlier in the opinion, we 
conclude that public rights may overlap with private title. 
Consequently, we refuse to enshrine–for the first time in 
our history–a solitary boundary between them. In this way, 
(1893); Hazen v Perkins, 92 Vt 414, 419-421; 105 A 249
(1918); Mont Code, § 70-16-201; ND Cent Code, § 47-01-15. 
30 In the absence of a review of the myriad deeds by
which landowners hold title to property on the Great Lakes,
Justice Markman assumes that their deeds will describe, in
some manner, the “water’s edge.” 
Yet, as he acknowledges,
that water’s edge may shift. 
This could result in water 
reaching above the low water mark, even though a deed could
convey title to the low water mark. See, e.g., La Porte v 
Menacon, 220 Mich 684, 687; 190 NW 655 (1922) (enforcing a
deed that extended private title to the “shore,” meaning
the “water’s edge at its lowest mark”). 
39  
 
                     
we preserve littoral title as landowners have always held 
it, and we preserve public rights always held by the state 
as trustee. 
In dissent, our colleagues resist acknowledging the 
boundary of the public trust as the ordinary high water 
mark. 
To reach this conclusion, Justice Markman relies on 
cases concerning the boundary of private title, rather than 
the boundary of the public trust. 
See e.g., Silberwood; 
Lake St Clair Hunting & Fishing; Hilt.31
 He refuses to 
accept our Court’s holding–in a case involving Lake 
Michigan–that “‘the limit of the public’s right is the 
ordinary high water mark . . . .’” 
Peterman, supra at 198 
(citation omitted).32
 Although he criticizes the majority 
31 Justice Markman makes frequent reference to colonial
cases, particularly relying on Massachusetts. 
But as that 
state’s high court has made clear, at common law the state
owned to the mean high water line subject to public rights
in navigation and fishing. 
See Opinion of the Justices to
the House of Representatives, 365 Mass 681, 684-685; 313
NE2d 561 (1974). 
What the court described as the colonial 
ordinance of 1641 to 1647 changed the common law to allow
private title to the low water mark, but even that extended
title remained subject to public rights. 
Id. 
Unlike 
Massachusetts, no colonial ordinance altered the common-law
concepts in Michigan. 
32 In seeming contradiction to his reading of Peterman,
Justice Markman does accept that “the ‘ordinary high water
mark’ is simply the outside edge of property that may . . .
be regulated to preserve future navigational interests at
times of high water . . . .” Post at 29. He also goes so
far as to suggest that our Court has equated the high and 
40  
 
 
                     
 
 
 
 
for vagueness with regard to the definition of that term,33 
we clarify the meaning of that term in a way that allows 
for the fact-specific inquiry necessary to account for the 
range of physical forces and variety of landforms along our 
shoreline.34
 We decline to draw, merely for a charade of 
clarity, a universal line along the Great Lakes without any 
factual development of the point in the instant case or 
low water marks, see post at 55, but the Warner Court on 
which he relies did not address that issue. 
Warner, supra
at 239 (“If the absence of tides upon the Lakes, or their
trifling effect if they can be said to exist, practically
makes high and low water mark identical for the purpose of
determining boundaries (a point we do not pass upon), the
limit of private ownership is thereby marked.”). 
Additionally, our precedent stands in contradiction to
Justice Young’s intuition that the ordinary high water mark
has no application in Michigan. See, e.g., Peterman, supra
at 198-199 (calculating damages, at least in part, on the
basis of the location of the ordinary high water mark). In 
contrast, the “wet sand” standard supported by Justice
Young appears for the first time in our state in this case.
We have serious reservations about adopting the view that
he joins Justice Markman in advancing. See post at 49-51. 
33 In apparent tension with his claim that the majority
fails to rely on Michigan common law, Justice Markman
purports to offer an authoritative definition for ordinary
high water mark that derives from a federal case and a 1997
dictionary. See post at 41-42 & n 35. 
34 We are unpersuaded that Justice Markman’s recitation
of natural forces demonstrates a difficulty in ascertaining
the ordinary high water mark, because those same forces
operate to shift the “water’s edge.” 
See post at 43-48. 
If anything, the results of this scientific expedition show
the complexity of arriving at a water-tight definition,
rather than prove that the “water’s edge” concept escapes
similar difficulties. 
41  
 
 
 
legal argument on an issue of significance to our state’s 
jurisprudence. 
Nor does our colleagues’ “water’s edge” concept 
provide 
superior 
clarity. 
Although 
the 
term 
might 
intuitively appear to mean where the water meets land, 
Justice Markman expands the term to include sand dampened 
by water. 
See, e.g., post at 50 (“Because by definition 
such sands are infused with water, the wet sands fall 
within the definition of ‘submerged lands.’”). 
Our 
colleagues’ conception of “water’s edge” neglects to 
account for (1) geography where sand is absent; (2) sudden 
changes in water levels such as storm surges; (3) what 
degree of dampness suffices: 
that identified by touch, 
sight, or a scientific review that could identify the 
presence of a single water molecule; and (4) the source of 
the water, where dampness may arise because of contact with 
a liquid, such as rain, other than water from the Great 
Lakes. 
Also, the instant-by-instant determination of a 
property boundary affords little certainty to littoral 
landowners. 
Given these serious difficulties in applying 
our colleagues’ “water’s edge” rule and the absence of 
support in our case law, we refuse to shift the boundary on 
the public trust away from the ordinary high water mark. 
42  
 
 
 
                     
 
As trustee, the state has an obligation to protect the 
public trust. 
The state cannot take what it already owns. 
Because private littoral title remains subject to the 
public trust, no taking occurs when the state protects and 
retains that which it could not alienate: 
public rights 
held pursuant to the public trust doctrine.35
 Certainly, 
the loss of littoral property or riparian rights could 
result from an unconstitutional taking. 
See, e.g., 
Peterman, supra at 198, 208 (compensating the plaintiffs 
for losses above the ordinary high water mark); see also 
Bott v Natural Resources Comm, 415 Mich 45, 80; 327 NW2d 
838 (1982); Hilt, supra at 225. Yet, here, defendants have 
not lost any property rights. 
Rather, they retain their 
property subject to the public trust, just as all property 
that abuts the Great Lakes in Michigan remains subject to 
the public trust, pursuant to our common law. 
35 The United States Supreme Court has held that the
issue before us is a matter of state property law.  See 
Phillips Petroleum Co v Mississippi, 484 US 469, 475; 108 S
Ct 791; 98 L Ed 2d 877 (1988) (“[T]he individual States
have the authority to define the limits of the lands held
in public trust and to recognize private rights in such
lands as they see fit.”); see also Shively, supra at 40 
(“[T]he 
title 
and 
rights 
of 
riparian 
or 
littoral 
proprietors in the soil below high water mark of navigable
waters are governed by the local laws of the several
States, subject, of course, to the rights granted to the
United States by the Constitution.”). 
43  
 
 
 
Justice Markman also criticizes the majority for 
leaving unanswered many questions, several of which require 
the adoption of the legal framework that he proposed. 
Yet 
this case raises none of the questions that Justice Markman 
poses. 
In general, we reserve the judgment of this Court 
for “actual cases and controversies” and do not “declare 
principles or rules of law that have no practical legal 
effect in the case before us . . . .” 
Federated 
Publications, Inc v City of Lansing, 467 Mich 98, 112; 649 
NW2d 383 (2002). Accordingly, we decline to rule on issues 
that are not before us. 
V. 
CONCLUSION 
We conclude that plaintiff, as a member of the public, 
may walk the shores of the Great Lakes below the ordinary 
high water mark. Under longstanding common-law principles, 
defendants hold private title to their littoral property 
according to the terms of their deed and subject to the 
public trust. 
We therefore reverse the judgment of the 
Court of Appeals and remand this case to the trial court 
for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 
Maura D. Corrigan
Clifford W. Taylor
Michael F. Cavanagh
Elizabeth A. Weaver 
Marilyn Kelly 
44  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
_______________________________ 
 
 
 
v 
S T A T E O F M I C H I G A N  
SUPREME COURT  
JOAN M. GLASS, 
Plaintiff-Appellant, 
No. 126409 
RICHARD A. GOECKEL AND KATHLEEN D. GOECKEL, 
Defendants-Appellees. 
YOUNG, J. (concurring in part and dissenting in part). 
This case poses a deceptively simple question: where, 
if anywhere, can a member of the public walk on the private 
beach of one of our Great Lakes without trespassing on a 
lakefront (littoral) owner’s property? 
Although the question is simple, the answer, as amply 
demonstrated by the more than one hundred pages of the 
rival opinions filed in this case, is muddled by an 
abstruse body of precedent that has been less than precise 
in defining critical terms and issues.  This was a well­
briefed and argued case that has resulted in a vigorous 
debate within the Court. The opinions of the majority and 
Justice 
Markman 
present 
compelling, 
principled, 
but 
competing constructions of an ambiguous body of Michigan 
law and that of other jurisdictions concerning Great Lakes 
 
 
 
 
   
   
                     
 
property rights. 
In the final analysis, I believe that 
answer offered by Justice Markman is more firmly anchored 
than that of the majority in the admittedly obscure 
property law of the Great Lakes. 
I concur in the majority’s determination that the Great 
Lakes Submerged Lands Act (GLSLA), MCL 324.32501 et seq., 
does not create a right to walk the shores of our Great 
Lakes. The Act plainly evinces the Legislature’s intent to 
regulate the use of land below what the International Great 
Lakes Datum identifies as the “ordinary high water mark,” 
rather 
than 
to 
define 
new 
public 
rights 
or 
limit 
established property rights.1 
However, I join Justice Markman’s opinion with respect 
to the other issues presented by this appeal. Like Justice 
Markman, I believe the majority errs by recognizing a right 
that we have never before recognized-the right to “walk” 
the private beaches of our Great Lakes- and by granting 
public access to private shore land up to an ill-defined 
and utterly chimerical “ordinary high water mark” as 
described in the majority opinion.2 
1 See ante at 14-19. 
2 See ante at 19-30. The majority concedes that:
“Applying a term [ordinary high water mark] from the common
law of the sea, despite the obvious difference between the
oceans and the Great Lakes, has lead to some apparent
discontinuity in the terminology employed in our case law.” 
2  
 
 
                     
To be sure, the majority’s opinion constitutes a 
concerted and honest effort to give coherence to a very 
vague body of precedent. 
However admirable the majority’s 
effort, I remain convinced that the “ordinary high water 
mark” concept on which the majority relies applies only to 
tidal waters, with their regularly recurring high and low 
tides.3
 The only “water mark” that one can find on the 
Great Lakes is the water’s edge—viz., the wet portion of 
the shore over which the lake is presently ebbing and 
flowing. 
I believe it is only in this area of wet 
shoreline that the public may walk. 
They may do so, not 
because of a recognized “right to walk” the otherwise 
private beaches of our Great Lakes, for no such “right” has 
ever been recognized previously to be a part of Michigan’s 
public trust doctrine.4
 Nor, in my view, is the public’s 
Ante at 26-27. 
Precisely so. 
In effort to employ a term
that does not adequately reflect the physical realities of
our Great Lakes, the majority has borrowed definitions
variously from statutes and Wisconsin cases in a struggle
to make this tidal term fit where it does not, and in so
doing, has immeasurably expanded the scope of the public
trust. 
3 See post at 31-35. 
4 Until today, Michigan cases have only recognized the
right of the public to use the public trust for navigation,
hunting, fishing, and fowling. 
See, e.g., Hilt v Weber,
252 Mich 198, 224; 233 NW 159 (1930); Collins v Gerhardt,
237 Mich 38, 46; 211 NW 115 (1926); State v Lake St Clair 
3  
 
 
                     
opportunity to walk the shoreline a product of an overlap 
between private and public property titles as the majority 
asserts. Rather, I believe that the littoral landowner has 
no property claim to assert over submerged land—land over 
which the waters of a Great Lake is presently ebbing and 
flowing and which constitutes the lake bed. 
This area is 
the outer boundary of the public trust that is owned by and 
maintained for the People of Michigan. 
The 
difficulty 
of 
the 
majority’s 
rule 
and 
the 
soundness of Justice Markman’s approach is evident when one 
actually tries to apply their different standards to the 
shore. In the attached photograph,5 an area of darker, wet 
sand forms the outer boundary of the lake bed. 
The water 
is presently acting on this portion of the beach, as 
evidenced by the fact that the land is waterlogged. 
Under 
Justice Markman’s view and my own, it is only in this area 
that the public may walk, and it may do so because the land 
is presently subject to reinundation and is part of the 
Fishing & Shooting Club, 127 Mich 580, 586; 87 NW 117
(1901). 
5 Photograph by David Hansen, Minnesota Agricultural
Experiment Station, University of Minnesota. 
Reproduced
with permission. 
4  
 
 
 
 
 
 
                     
lake bed. Thus, in the photograph, both the seagull and the 
beach walker are within the public trust.6 
Where, however, lies the majority’s “ordinary high 
water mark” in this photograph? 
Presumably, the majority 
would identify the point where sand gives way to vegetation 
in the upper right-hand corner of the picture. 
The lake 
water is nowhere near that point now and, absent a storm, 
the water is unlikely to reach that point any time in the 
near future. 
Even if the lake did rise to meet the 
vegetation line due to extremely high precipitation or 
6 Accordingly, I would hold that plaintiff may walk in
the zone of wet sands on Lake Huron, provided that she does
so without creating a nuisance, because the defendants have
no property interests in the bed of that lake. 
5  
 
 
 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
 
powerful barometric forces, in what sense would the line of 
vegetation be an ordinary high water mark in the sense 
suggested by the majority’s definition? 
Moreover, the majority notes that its ordinary high 
water mark excludes all dry land except that “temporar[ily] 
expos[ed]”7 by the water. The pictorial beach illustration 
shows how unsatisfactory is the majority’s formulation of 
its definition of “ordinary high water mark” as applied to 
our Great Lakes: What exactly does the majority mean by 
“temporary” exposure? 
If it simply means land from which 
the lake waters have “not permanently receded,”8 at what 
point may anyone determine that the recession of the water 
is “permanent”? 
If the portion of the shore between the 
lake bed 
(including the wet sand area over which the lake 
is presently lapping) and the vegetation line has been dry 
for a season or more, can it truly be argued that this area 
of 
the 
beach 
is 
“temporarily” 
exposed? 
These 
are 
apparently pure questions of fact for the majority,9 but I 
believe they are critical threshold questions that must be 
posed and answered when giving the term “ordinary high 
7 Ante at 27. 
8 Ante at 27. 
9 Ante at 30. 
6  
 
 
 
 
 
                     
water mark” a workable legal definition as applied to the 
Great Lakes. 
In 
essence, 
then, 
I 
believe 
that 
the 
majority 
concludes that the dry sandy area in the attached picture 
is entirely below the “ordinary high water mark” (thus 
within the protected, state-owned public trust) because 
this area looks like it may have been subject to the 
influence of water at some unidentifiable point in the past 
and because it may again, at some unidentifiable point in 
the future, be covered by the lake. 
If nothing else, this 
is an impractical proposition because it requires the 
uncritical application to our nontidal Great Lakes of a 
term–the “ordinary high water mark”-that is applicable only 
to tidal waters.   
I believe the analysis offered by Justice Markman is 
more persuasive than that offered by the majority. 
In my 
view, not only has Justice Markman analyzed the applicable 
common law decisions with greater accuracy but, in contrast 
with the majority opinion, he has articulated a rule that 
is both faithful to the physical realities of our Great 
Lakes and consonant with the available confused precedent 
that we have all valiantly struggled to decipher.10 
10 If we must transform the term “ordinary high water 
mark” in order to use it, I believe that we ought at least 
7  
 
 
 
                     
 
For these reasons, I concur in part II(A) of the 
majority opinion but join parts I-III and V of Justice 
Markman’s opinion in respectfully dissenting from the 
remainder of the majority opinion. 
Robert P. Young, Jr. 
define and apply it in a way that reflects the physical
nature of our non-tidal Great Lakes and that does least 
damage to heretofore stable lakefront property rights in 
the State. 
8  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
_______________________________ 
 
 
 
                     
 
v 
S T A T E O F M I C H I G A N  
SUPREME COURT  
JOAN M. GLASS, 
Plaintiff-Appellant, 
No. 126409 
RICHARD A. GOECKEL AND KATHLEEN D. GOECKEL, 
Defendants-Appellees. 
MARKMAN, J. (concurring in part and dissenting). 
Because I would not alter the longstanding status quo 
in our state concerning the competing rights of the public 
and lakefront property owners, I respectfully dissent. 
In 
concluding that the “public trust doctrine” permits members 
of the public to use unsubmerged lakefront property up to 
the “ordinary high water mark,” the majority creates new 
legal rules in Michigan out of whole cloth by adopting 
Wisconsin law in piecemeal fashion and discarding Michigan 
rules that have defined the relationship between the public 
and lakefront property owners for virtually the entirety of 
our state’s history.1  Equally troubling, the majority 
Although, quite remarkably, the majority purports
that it “retains and clarifies the status quo,” ante at 38,
there is not a scintilla of support for the proposition 
1 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
replaces clear and well-understood rules-- rules that have 
produced reasonable harmony over the decades in Michigan--
with obscure rules. 
One of the few things that is clear 
about 
the 
majority’s 
opinion 
is 
that 
it 
will 
lead 
inevitably to more litigation-- more litigation in an area 
of the law that, mercifully, has been largely free from 
such litigation for the past century and a half in our 
state. 
In the place of the reasonable harmony that has 
developed between the public and littoral property owners, 
there will be litigation. 
In the place of open beaches, 
there almost certainly will be a proliferation of fences 
erected by property owners determined to protect their now 
uncertain rights.2
 In the place of rules that have both 
that Wisconsin law has ever been the law of Michigan, not a
single Michigan case referencing the majority’s new test,
and not a paragraph of argument in any of the briefs of 
plaintiffs, defendants, or amici identifying Wisconsin law
as the law of Michigan. 
2 The majority fails to recognize why its new rules are
a prescription for fences. 
It is, of course, true that a
lakefront property owner “could always erect a fence,” as
the majority observes. 
Ante at 37 n 28. 
However, fences
have not heretofore generally been thought necessary.
Under current law, which I would not alter, members of the
public and lakefront property owners have long coexisted in
reasonable harmony. 
It is the majority’s actions today in
departing from our precedents and creating new and vague
law that will almost certainly transform this relationship
and cause at least some property owners to believe that
they must erect fences in order to protect boundaries that
now have been called into question and that apparently will 
2  
 
 
                     
 
upheld the property rights of lakefront landowners and 
provided an environment in which reasonable public use of 
lakefront 
property, 
including 
beach-walking, 
could 
routinely take place, the majority introduces new rules 
that will create tensions between the public and lakefront 
property owners. 
In the place of a boundary that can be 
determined by simple observation, the majority’s new rules 
would require property owners and the public to bring 
“aerial photographs,” a “government survey map[]” and 
“stereo [three-dimensional] photographs,” ante at 28 n 20, 
in order to determine where their rights begin and end. In 
the place of rules in which property rights have been 
clearly defined by law, the majority expands the “public 
trust” in an uncertain fashion, in accordance with rules 
and regulations to be issued at some future time by the 
administrative agencies of state government. 
In the place 
of the clear rule of law in which property rights have been 
respected in a consistent fashion for more than a century 
and 
a 
half, 
there 
will 
be 
political 
dispute 
and 
negotiation. 
This is the first such dispute to come before this 
Court in our history. 
Rather than recognizing the harmony 
be subject to definition by the Department of Natural
Resources. 
3  
 
 
                     
 
that has been produced by the present rules in the course 
of the millions of interactions that occur each year 
between the public and property owners along the Great 
Lakes, the majority instead creates new rules on the basis 
of an isolated and aberrational dispute between the present 
parties. 
The majority departs from the longstanding status quo 
in our state, despite the following: (1) there is no realm 
of the law in which there is a greater need to maintain 
stability and continuity than with regard to property 
rights; (2) the parties in this case have all asserted that 
they favor a maintenance of the status quo;3 (3) there is no 
3 Plaintiff argues that use of the term “‘water’s edge’
[in Hilt v Weber, 252 Mich 198; 233 NW 159 (1930)] is
consistent with the nomenclature of many other state and
federal cases using ‘water’s edge’ to mean ‘high water
mark.’” 
Plaintiff's brief at 24. 
See, also, amicus brief
of the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council at 18; amicus
brief of the Michigan Senate Democratic Caucus at 2; amicus
brief of the Michigan Land Use Institute at 10; and amici
brief of the Michigan Departments of Environmental Quality
and Natural Resources at 11. 
Defendants argue that the
status quo gives the littoral owner “exclusive use of the
beachfront to the water’s edge as it exists from time to
time.” Defendants’ brief at 13. See, also, amici brief of
the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of 
Independent Business Legal Foundation, Michigan Bankers 
Association, and Michigan Hotel, Motel & Resort Association
at 11 (“The relevant Michigan authorities thus compel the
conclusion that the public trust applies only to submerged
lands when they are actually submerged”); amici brief of
the Save our Shoreline and the Great Lakes Coalition, Inc
at 9 (“[t]hat the water’s edge was the boundary between 
4  
 
 
                     
evidence that the status quo has not reasonably balanced 
the interests of property owners and the public in Michigan 
for more than a century and a half; and (4) there is no 
evidence that the present dispute is anything other than an 
isolated and aberrational dispute, not one upon which to 
predicate 
the 
reversal 
of 
a 
century-and-a-half-old 
conception of private property rights. 
This 
Court 
has 
recognized 
the 
importance 
of 
maintaining 
the 
security 
of 
private 
property 
by 
“declar[ing] that stare decisis is to be strictly observed 
where past decisions establish ‘rules of property’ that 
induce extensive reliance.” Bott v Natural Resources Comm, 
415 Mich 45, 77-78; 327 NW2d 838 (1982). In Bott, we noted 
that “[j]udicial ‘rules of property’ create value, and the 
passage of time induces a belief in their stability that 
generates commitments of human energy and capital.” Id. at 
78. 
Therefore, such rules should be closely respected and 
overturned only for “the very best of reasons.” See, e.g., 
Dolby v State Hwy Comm'r, 283 Mich 609, 615; 278 NW 694 
public and [littoral] ownership was first suggested in [La 
Plaisance]”); amici brief of the legislators at 4 (arguing
that numerous Michigan cases establish that littoral owners
“have title to their property to the water’s edge, free of
any public trust interest in the submerged lands of the
Great Lakes”); and amicus brief of the Defenders of 
Property Rights at 12 (noting that in the past sixty-four
years, this Court has rejected any attempt to expand public
rights to areas landward of the water’s edge). 
5  
 
 
 
                     
 
 
(1938); Lewis v Sheldon, 103 Mich 102, 103; 61 NW 269 
(1894). 
The public’s right to use property abutting the Great 
Lakes under the public trust doctrine has traditionally 
been limited to “submerged lands,” i.e., those lands 
covered by the Great Lakes, including their wet sands. The 
“water’s edge” is that point at which wet sands give way to 
dry sands, thus marking the limit of the public’s rights 
under the public trust doctrine. This has been the rule in 
our state since this Court’s decision in Hilt v Weber, 252 
Mich 198; 233 NW 159 (1930), a case that for seventy-five 
years has defined the limits of the public’s rights of use 
of littoral property.4
 Indeed, except for the seven-year 
period immediately preceding 
Hilt, this water’s edge 
principle is consistent with Michigan case law dating back 
over 160 years and probably even earlier. 
Lakefront 
4 As noted by the majority, “[o]ur case law has not
always 
precisely 
distinguished” 
between 
the 
terms 
“littoral” and “riparian.” 
Ante at 1 n 1. 
The former 
applies to oceans, seas, the Great Lakes, and their coasts,
while the latter applies to rivers and streams. 
Black’s 
Law Dictionary (7th ed). 
Unfortunately, the misuse of
these terms appears to at times have led this Court to
misapply aspects of the public trust doctrine as they
relate to rivers and streams as if those aspects also
related to the Great Lakes. See, e.g., Peterman v Dep’t of
Natural Resources, 446 Mich 177, 195; 521 NW2d 499 (1994).
I will use the term “littoral” when discussing property
abutting the Great Lakes. 
6  
 
 
 
 
 
                     
 
  
 
 
property owners, including businesses,5 have invested in 
reliance on present rules concerning the relationship 
between the public and lakefront property owners. 
This 
reliance on longstanding rules should have given the 
majority considerable pause before it altered the status 
quo and redefined the public trust doctrine. 
This is not the first time this Court has upset 
settled rules of property on the Great Lakes, but the 
lessons of the first time do not seem to have been well­
learned by the majority. Before the 1920s, property owners 
believed that their title extended to the water’s edge. 
Steinberg, God’s terminus: Boundaries, nature, and property 
on the Michigan shore, 37 Am J Legal Hist 65, 72 (1993). 
However, in the Kavanaugh cases,6 this Court abruptly 
5 In particular, the consequences of the majority’s new
rules are uncertain for those in the tourism industry in
Michigan who have invested in reliance on the rule set
forth in Hilt. 
The majority, in using the “ordinary high
water mark” as “defined” under Wisconsin law, has opened to
public use unsubmerged lands up to a wholly unspecified
point landward of the water and this change would seem to
have implications for the ability of at least some Great
Lakes tourists to enjoy the type of tranquil retreat 
offered 
by 
private 
beaches 
within 
Michigan. 
See,
generally, the amici brief of the Michigan Chamber of
Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business Legal
Foundation, Michigan Bankers Association, and Michigan
Hotel, Motel & Resort Association. 
6 Kavanaugh v Rabior, 222 Mich 68; 192 NW 623 (1923),
and Kavanaugh v Baird, 241 Mich 240; 217 NW 2 (1928). 
7  
 
 
                     
 
 
 
 
 
overruled eighty years of then-existing case law and held 
that a littoral owner’s title extended only to the “meander 
line,” a survey line used by the federal government to 
determine the amount of property available for sale in the 
Michigan Territory.7
 While this Court recognized at the 
time that this decision was “against the overwhelming 
weight of authority,”8 unlike the majority’s decision today, 
it was at least arguably grounded in dictum from a prior 
Michigan decision.9
 Nevertheless, by deviating from an 
established 
rule 
of 
property 
rights 
in 
favor 
of 
establishing a boundary at an imaginary line that property 
owners could not easily identify, the Kavanaugh cases threw 
Michigan’s lakeshores into disarray. 
For example, renters 
of property between the meander line and the water’s edge 
withheld their rent and in fact were advised to do so by 
the director of the Department of Conservation. Id. at 77­
78. Further, littoral owners found that third parties were 
building on property between the meander line and the 
7 Hilt, supra at 204-205. 
8 Baird, supra at 252. 
9 In Ainsworth v Munoskong Hunting & Fishing Club, 159 
Mich 61, 64; 123 NW 802 (1909), we stated that “[littoral]
owners along the Great Lakes own only to the meander line
. . . .”  Later, however, in Hilt, supra at 207, we noted
that in Ainsworth, the meander line and water’s edge were
the same on the bay in question. 
8  
 
 
 
 
water’s edge, thus effectively blocking their access to the 
lake. 
Other littoral owners were forced to hire surveyors 
in order to determine with any certainty what property they 
actually owned. The chaos caused by the departure from the 
traditional rule in the Kavanaugh cases was so dramatic 
that just seven years later this Court corrected its error 
and reestablished the rules of property as they had existed 
on the Great Lakes for at least the prior eighty years. 
Hilt, supra at 227. 
The majority today revamps the public trust doctrine 
on the basis of Wisconsin law-- or at least on the portions 
of it that the majority finds to their liking-- and, in so 
doing, announces new rules of law regarding lands subject 
to the public trust doctrine. 
Because I believe that the 
public’s rights under the doctrine have always been limited 
to the use of submerged lands, which includes the wet 
sands, I do not believe that the Court of Appeals erred in 
holding that the public may not walk on unsubmerged lands. 
However, I do believe the Court of Appeals erred in holding 
that the state’s title begins at the “ordinary high water 
mark.” 
Therefore, I would affirm in part and reverse in 
part the decision of the Court of Appeals and remand to the 
trial court to apply the principles set forth in this 
opinion. 
9  
 
 
 
 
                     
 
I. 
MISUNDERSTANDING THE “ORDINARY HIGH WATER MARK” 
The majority concludes that the “ordinary high water 
mark” is the landward boundary of the public trust 
doctrine.10
 While the majority does not necessarily 
disagree that the water’s edge serves as the boundary of 
the littoral owner’s title, it would expand the public’s 
legal right to use property up to the utterly indiscernible 
“‘point on the bank or shore up to which the presence and 
action of the water is so continuous as to leave a distinct 
mark 
either 
by 
erosion, 
destruction 
of 
terrestrial 
vegetation, or other easily recognized characteristic.’” 
Ante at 27 (citation omitted). 
The majority further adds 
that this newly described “ordinary high water mark,” one 
never before seen in Michigan, includes unsubmerged lands 
that are the product of “fluctuation” in the level of the 
lake that “results in temporary exposure of land that may 
10 
The 
majority 
also 
creates 
a 
new 
rhetorical 
formulation for the test determining whether a use is
permitted by the public trust doctrine, although I fail to
see any significant distinction between a use that is
“inherent in the exercise of traditionally protected public
rights,” ante at 32, and a use that bears “a real and
substantial relation to a paramount trust purpose.” 
Hilt, 
supra at 225. I agree with the majority that beach-walking
is a permissible public trust use. 
Walking in submerged
lands 
is 
an 
activity 
that 
bears 
a 
“necessary 
and 
substantial relation” to other water-borne recreational 
activities protected by the doctrine, e.g., boating,
swimming, and fishing. 
10  
 
 
                     
 
 
then remain exposed above where water currently lies.” Id. 
I disagree. 
The majority replaces a workable and easily 
identifiable boundary with one whose exact location is 
anyone’s guess and it has done so on the basis of the 
Wisconsin public trust doctrine, or at least that part of 
Wisconsin’s doctrine that supports the majority’s new 
rule.11  Instead, I believe that the public’s entitlement to 
use property under the public trust doctrine of Michigan is 
limited to submerged lands, i.e., the Great Lakes and their 
wet sands. 
The majority’s creation of this new rule is rooted in 
its misunderstanding of the importance of the “ordinary 
high water mark” for the purpose of defining the boundary 
of the public trust on the nontidal Great Lakes. 
The 
public trust doctrine in the United States is derived from 
the English common law, which extended to tidal land below 
11 Curiously, the majority adopts Wisconsin law in this
area, despite the fact that Wisconsin’s 820 miles of Great
Lakes shoreline is dwarfed by the 3,288 miles of shoreline
in this state. 
<http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,1607,7-135­
3313_3677-15959--,00.html> 
(accessed 
June 
24, 
2005).
Nonetheless, the critical point is not whether it is the
law of a state with a longer or shorter shoreline than
Michigan's that has been adopted by the majority. 
Rather,
it is why any new law has been adopted when current law has
proven workable for many decades of our state-- clearly
setting forth the rights of the public and the property
owner, minimizing litigation, and simultaneously protecting
private property rights while allowing reasonable public
use of the Great Lakes, including beach-walking. 
11  
 
 
 
  
                     
 
the ordinary high water mark. 
Borax Consolidated, Ltd v 
Los Angeles, 296 US 10, 23; 56 S Ct 23; 80 L Ed 9 (1935). 
The rights protected by the English common law included use 
of tidal lands up to the ordinary high water mark for 
“navigation and commerce . . . and for the purposes of 
fishing . . . .” 
Shively v Bowlby, 152 US 1, 11; 14 S Ct 
548; 38 L Ed 331 (1894). 
Following the American Revolution, the title held for 
the public trust by the King passed to the states, subject 
only to those rights surrendered by the states to the 
federal government. 
Id. at 14-15. 
While each state is 
required to protect the uses permitted by the public trust 
doctrine, Illinois Central R Co v Illinois, 146 US 387, 
453; 13 S Ct 110; 36 L Ed 1018 (1892) (Illinois Central I), 
the scope of property subject to that trust is governed by 
“the local laws of the several States . . . .”12 
Shively, 
12 The majority also notes that in Illinois Central R 
Co v Chicago, 176 US 646, 660; 20 S Ct 509; 44 L Ed 622
(1900) (Illinois Central II), the United States Supreme
Court found that “a grant of lands by the State does not
pass title to submerged lands below high-water mark 
. . . .”  However, as stated in Shively, the scope of lands
subject to the public trust is determined by state law. In 
determining the scope of the trust doctrine in Illinois 
Central II, the United States Supreme Court looked to “the
law of the State of Illinois, as laid down by the Supreme
Court . . . .” 
Id. at 659. 
In finding that Illinois’s
title went to the high water mark, the point emphasized by
the majority, the United States Supreme Court cited 
12  
 
 
                     
 
 
supra at 40. 
Thus, it cannot be said that the American 
public trust doctrine uniformly extends to the “ordinary 
high water mark.” 
Id.
 While a majority of the original 
thirteen colonies followed the English common-law rule, 
Shively noted that four of the original colonies held that 
the littoral owner holds title to the “low water mark,” 
subject only to the public’s right to use the water for 
navigation and fishing when it is above that point. Id. at 
18-25.13  For example, in Commonwealth v Alger, 61 Mass 53, 
70 (1851), the Supreme Court of Massachusetts held, under 
Illinois case law directly. 
Id. at 660, citing Seaman v 
Smith, 24 Ill 521 (1860), People ex rel Attorney General v
Kirk, 162 Ill 138, 146; 45 NE 830 (1896), and Revell v 
People, 177 Ill 468, 479; 52 NE 1052 (1898). 
Because 
Illinois Central II applied Illinois law, its holding
regarding the scope of lands subject to the public trust
doctrine is not binding on this Court. 
Rather, the common
law as developed in this state determines the scope of
lands subject to the doctrine. 
13 Those states are: Massachusetts, Shively, supra at 
18-19 (littoral owner takes title in fee to the low water
mark “subject to the public rights of navigation and 
fishery”); New Hampshire, id. at 20 (“a right in the shore
has been recognized to belong to the owner of the adjoining
upland”); Pennsylvania, id. at 23 (“the owner of lands
bounded by navigable water has the title in the soil
between high and low water mark, subject to the public
right of navigation”); and Virginia, id. at 24-25 (“the
owner of land bounded by tide waters has the title to
ordinary low water mark, and the right to build wharves,
provided they do not obstruct navigation”). 
13  
 
 
   
                     
 
 
 
 
the “local laws” of that state,14 a littoral owner’s title 
extends to the low water mark. 
However, the littoral 
owner’s title is limited because “whilst [lands above the 
low water mark] are covered with the sea, all other persons 
have the right to use them for the ordinary purposes of 
navigation.” 
Id. at 74-75. 
In other words, the public’s 
rights under the public trust doctrine are limited to the 
use of property that is currently submerged. 
Thus, the 
public trust doctrine as defined in the “low water mark” 
colonies restricts the public’s right of use to either land 
below the low water mark or to such land as is currently 
covered by the waters of the ocean.15 
Likewise, the “local laws” of Michigan did not adopt 
the English definition of public trust lands, but rather 
restricted the public’s rights under the public trust 
doctrine to the use of submerged lands. 
In La Plaisance 
14 
As noted by the majority, ante at 40 n 31,
Massachusetts adopted the low water mark by colonial 
ordinance. 
Alger, supra at 66. 
Thus, while obviously not
directly applicable to the public trust doctrine in 
Michigan, Alger does make clear that the “ordinary high 
water mark” has not been as universally accepted as the
majority apparently believes. 
15 In light of the majority’s reliance on Wisconsin
law, it is interesting to note that the Wisconsin Supreme
Court similarly held that the public’s right to use 
submerged lands up to the high water mark is only
applicable when the waters actually extend to such mark.
Doemel v Jantz, 180 Wis 225, 236; 193 NW 393 (1923). 
14  
 
 
 
Bay Harbor Co v Monroe City Council, Walker Chancery Rep 
155 (1843), the issue of public ownership of the Great 
Lakes was addressed for the first time by a Michigan court. 
In La Plaisance, the Court of Chancery addressed the 
state’s right to improve navigation in Lake Erie. 
The 
Legislature had authorized the city of Monroe to build a 
canal connecting the River Raisin to the lake. 
The harbor 
company brought suit to enjoin the project, claiming that 
the canal would divert so much water from the river that 
its downriver warehouses would be rendered inaccessible by 
boat. 
However, the court held that the harbor company did 
not have a right to the flow of water in the river in its 
natural bed because “[t]he public owns the bed of this 
class of rivers, and is not limited in its right to an 
easement, or right of way only.” 
Id. at 168. 
The court 
also noted that “with regard to our large lakes, or such 
parts of them as lie within the limits of the state[,] 
[t]he proprietor of the adjacent shore has no property 
whatever in the land covered by the water of the lake.” 
Id. (emphasis added). 
Moreover, it should be noted that 
before La Plaisance, and before statehood, Michigan was 
part of the Northwest Territory, which was ceded to the 
United States by Virginia in 1784. 
Under Virginia law, a 
15  
 
 
 
 
littoral owner held title to soil in tidewaters to the low 
water mark. Shively, supra at 24-25. 
The understanding that the public’s interest under the 
public trust doctrine is limited to the submerged lands of 
the Great Lakes was also expressed by Justice Champlin in 
his concurring opinion in Lincoln v Davis, 53 Mich 375; 19 
NW 103 (1884). 
In Lincoln, a fisherman had placed stakes 
in Thunder Bay, off an island, in order to set some fishing 
nets. The island’s owner removed the stakes, claiming that 
he had the exclusive right to fish in the waters off his 
island. 
The Lincoln majority, while not discussing the 
boundary 
between 
littoral 
property 
and 
public 
trust 
property, held that the owner had no right to interfere 
with the fisherman’s stakes. 
Justice Champlin noted that 
“when [Michigan] was admitted into the Union this political 
jurisdiction devolved upon the State, and the title to the 
soil under the navigable waters of the Great Lakes became 
vested in the State as sovereign to the same extent and for 
the same reasons that the title of the bed of the sea was 
vested in the king.” 
Id. at 384 (emphasis added). 
However, the state’s title only extends to the “low-water 
mark.” 
Id. at 384-385 (emphasis added). 
In fact, 
according to Justice Champlin, “The paramount rights of the 
public to be preserved are those of navigation and fishing, 
16  
 
 
 
 
 
 
and this is best accomplished by limiting the grants of 
lands bordering on the Great Lakes to [the] low-water 
mark.” Id. at 385-386. 
The United States Supreme Court defined the scope of 
the public trust doctrine as applied to the submerged lands 
of the Great Lakes in Illinois Central I, supra at 437. In 
Illinois Central I, the Illinois legislature had granted 
the railroad title to one thousand acres of submerged land 
on 
Lake 
Michigan. 
Four 
years 
later, 
the 
Illinois 
legislature repealed this act and sought to quiet title to 
submerged lands. 
The Supreme Court held that “the State 
holds the title to the lands under the navigable waters of 
Lake Michigan . . . and that title necessarily carries with 
it control over the waters above them whenever the lands 
are subjected to use.” 
Id. at 452 (emphasis added). 
Because the state’s public-trust title is a function of its 
sovereignty, the lands covered by the doctrine cannot be 
alienated, except when such alienation promotes the public 
use of them and the public use of the lands and waters 
remaining is not harmed. Id. at 452-453. 
Just four years later, in People v Silberwood, 110 
Mich 103, 107; 67 NW 1087 (1896), this Court seized upon 
the Illinois Central I explanation of the public trust 
doctrine to support its holding that the boundary between 
17  
 
 
 
 
 
public trust lands and littoral lands is the low water 
mark. 
In Silberwood, the defendant was convicted of 
cutting submarine vegetation on Lake Erie. 
The defendant 
claimed that the owners of land lying adjacent to Lake 
Erie, including his employer who ordered removal of the 
vegetation, owned the land to the center of that Great 
Lake, subject to the rights of navigation. 
The Court, 
quoting La Plaisance, held that a littoral owner does not 
have any title in land covered by the Great Lakes. 
Id. at 
106. 
The Court then noted that the Illinois Central I 
decision 
is in harmony with the doctrine laid down in the
early case of La Plaisance Bay Harbor Co. v. 
Council of City of Monroe, which I do not think
has ever been overruled in this State so far as 
it affects the rights of shore owners on the
borders of the Great Lakes. 
This doctrine, too,
is in harmony with the decisions in all of the
States bordering on these great seas. 
[Id. at 
108-109.] 
Further, the Court noted that decisions of other Great 
Lakes states were in line with both La Plaisance and 
Illinois Central I: 
The decisions in New York (Champlain, etc., 
R. Co. v. Valentine, 19 Barb. 484 [NY Sup 
(1853)]), in Pennsylvania (Fulmer v. Williams,
122 Pa. St. 191 [15 A 726 (1888)]), and in Ohio
(Sloan v. Biemiller, 34 Ohio St. 492 [1878]), all
hold that the fee of the [littoral] owner ceases
at the low-water mark. [Id. at 107.] 
18  
 
 
 
 
 
 
                     
 
This Court reaffirmed the principle that the public 
trust doctrine applies only to submerged lands in People v 
Warner, 116 Mich 228; 74 NW 705 (1898). At issue in Warner 
was ownership of a marshy island that was previously 
submerged under Saginaw Bay. 
The defendant claimed 
ownership of the marshy island as an accretion to his 
adjacent island. 
In placing the boundary at the water’s 
edge, the Court stated: 
The depth of water upon submerged land is 
not important in determining the ownership. If
the absence of tides upon the Lakes, or their
trifling effect if they can be said to exist,
practically 
makes 
high 
and 
low 
water 
mark 
identical 
for 
the 
purpose 
of 
determining
boundaries (a point we do not pass upon), the
limit of private ownership is thereby marked. The
adjoining proprietor’s fee stops there, and there
that of the State begins, whether the water be
deep or shallow, and although it be grown up to
aquatic plants, and although it be unfit for
navigation. 
The right of navigation is not the
only 
interest 
that 
the 
public, 
as 
contradistinguished from the State, has in these
waters. It has also the right to pursue and take
fish and wild fowl, which abound in such places;
and the act cited has attempted to extend this
right over the lands belonging to the State 
adjoining that portion of the water known to be
adapted to their sustenance and increase. 
[Id. 
at 239 (emphasis added).][16] 
16 The majority claims that when read “in context,”
Warner does not recognize “a single boundary between the
riparian owner’s title and state control . . . .” 
Ante at 
22 n 16. 
Specifically, the “context” relied upon by the
majority is Warner’s distinction between the state’s and 
the public’s interests in submerged lands. 
However, there
is no context under which Warner can reasonably be read to 
19  
 
 
 
 
                     
The Court found that a connection between the marshy island 
and the defendant’s island, which existed during times of 
low water, raised an issue of material fact. 
If the 
connection was evidence that land washed up against the 
defendant’s island and that eventually caused the marshy 
island to rise from the water, then the defendant held 
title to such land by accretion. 
However, if the island 
arose from the water first and only then began to extend 
towards the defendant’s island, then title belonged to the 
state. 
In any case, the Court held that summary 
disposition was inappropriate and remanded the case for a 
new trial. 
support the majority’s new rule of law. 
The passage cited
by the majority comes directly after this Court’s holding
that the state holds title to all submerged lands,
regardless of navigability. 
In justifying the state’s
title to lands “unfit for navigation,” Warner notes that 
the public has interests in those submerged lands above and
beyond a navigational interest, i.e., “the right to pursue
and take fish and wild fowl . . . .” 
Further, in an
opinion replete with novel concepts of law, perhaps the
most creative statement by the majority is that somehow the
phrase “[t]he adjoining proprietor’s fee stops there [i.e.,
where the water is], and there that of the State begins” 
does not represent a single boundary. If the state’s title 
begins at the point where the adjoining proprietor’s title
ends, there can only be one boundary and, therefore, there
cannot be an overlapping of titles as suggested by the
majority. 
Accordingly, and despite the majority’s claims
to the contrary, this Court has explicitly “enshrined” a
solitary boundary between littoral lands and public trust
lands for at least 107 years. 
20  
 
 
 
 
 
 
                     
 
One of the most thorough opinions addressing the 
public trust doctrine was Justice Hooker’s concurring 
opinion in State v Lake St Clair Fishing & Shooting Club, 
127 Mich 580; 87 NW 117 (1901).17  Justice Hooker began his 
analysis by noting that the “title that Michigan took when 
it was admitted to the Union in 1836 is not limited to 
water sufficiently deep to float craft, but extends to the 
point where it joins the ground of the [littoral] owner, 
‘whether the water be deep or shallow, and although it be 
grown up to aquatic plants and unfit for navigation.’” Id. 
at 586, quoting Warner, supra at 239. 
Likewise, the title 
of the abutting littoral owner extends to the shoreline. 
Fishing & Shooting Club, supra at 587. 
Thus, “when the 
water in the lakes stands at low-water mark, . . . the 
title [is] in the State, and all land between low-water 
mark 
and 
the 
meander 
line 
belongs 
to 
the 
abutting 
proprietor . . . .” Id. at 590 (emphasis added). 
The common-law limitation of the scope of the public 
trust doctrine was reaffirmed by this Court in Hilt. In 
overruling the short-lived Kavanaugh cases, we held that 
“the purchaser from the government of public land on the 
17 
Justice Hooker’s analysis of the public trust 
doctrine was subsequently cited with approval by the 
unanimous opinion of this Court in State v Venice of 
America Land Co, 160 Mich 680, 702; 125 NW 770 (1910). 
21  
 
 
  
 
 
                     
 
 
Great Lakes took title to the water’s edge.” 
Hilt, supra 
at 206. 
We also noted that the waters of our Great Lakes 
commonly change the landscape surrounding them, by erosion 
or 
deposits 
made 
by 
the 
water, 
in 
a 
gradual 
and 
imperceptible manner. Id. at 219. In order to account for 
this constant change, the title of a littoral owner 
“follows the shore line under what has been graphically 
called ‘a movable freehold.’” Id. (citation omitted). The 
title to land above the water’s edge is “‘independent of 
the law governing the title in the soil covered by the 
water.’” Id., quoting Shively, supra at 35.18 
To summarize, under the common law as it has developed 
in Michigan, when the water is at a low point, the state 
holds title to the submerged land, including the wet sands, 
while title to unsubmerged land is in the littoral owner. 
Warner, supra; Fishing & Shooting Club, supra. 
As the 
water level rises, the public gains the right to use the 
entire surface of the lake up to the water’s edge-- the 
point at which wet sands give way to dry sands-- for public 
18 
Hilt also noted that to hold otherwise would 
effectively cut the littoral owner off from the water,
thereby destroying the very characteristic that defines
property as "littoral"-- its contact with the water. Hilt, 
supra at 219. 
22  
 
 
 
 
  
                     
 
 
 
 
trust purposes. Hilt, supra; Warner, supra. Likewise, the 
littoral owner’s title follows the rise and fall of the 
waters.19 
Id. 
Accordingly, the boundary of the littoral 
owner’s title is the most landward of either the “low water 
mark” or the current location of the water itself.20
 The 
19 The majority misstates my position as “granting
littoral landowners all property down to where unsubmerged
land ends, which [I] locate[] at the water’s edge,
regardless of the terms of landowners’ deeds.” Ante at 38­
39. 
There is no basis for this statement. 
The 
characteristic that defines property as “littoral” is its
contact with the water. 
Hilt, supra at 219. 
In other 
words, a property owner whose deed does not extend to the
water’s edge is not a littoral owner and, therefore, would
have no more rights in unsubmerged property than any other
member of the public. 
Obviously, a property owner is only
a littoral owner if the deed gives title to the water’s
edge, however the “water’s edge” may be described. 
For 
example, in the instant case, defendants’ deed states that
the “meander line of Lake Huron” forms part of the boundary
of their property. 
As we held in Farabaugh v Rhode, 305
Mich 234, 242; 9 NW2d 562 (1943), “the meander line of Lake
Michigan is a line of description and not one of boundary
and that one owning to such meander line owns to the
water’s edge subject to accretion and reliction unless a
contrary intention is expressed in the conveyance.” 
There 
is no evidence of a contrary intention in this case and,
therefore, defendants hold title to the water’s edge. 
20 The majority notes that this Court has identified
“some ambiguity regarding whether the high or low water
mark serves as the boundary of the public trust.” 
Ante at 
22, citing People, ex rel Director of Conservation v 
Broedell, 365 Mich 201, 205-206; 112 NW2d 517 (1961).
Broedell cited two cases with “language seemingly favorable
to the high-water-mark theory.” 
Id. at 206. 
One of those 
cases, Collins v Gerhardt, 237 Mich 38; 211 NW 115 (1926),
defined the public trust doctrine as it applies to rivers. 
The other case, Venice of America Land Co, supra at 702,
discussed the location of a certain island at the time of 
23  
 
 
   
                     
 
 
state’s public trust title, then, “begins [where the water 
is], whether the water be deep or shallow . . . .” Warner, 
supra at 239.21 
In 
rejecting 
this 
understanding, 
the 
majority’s 
opinion virtually ignores 162 years of case law, and 
instead simply announces that “Michigan’s courts have 
adopted the ordinary high water mark as the landward 
boundary of the public trust” doctrine. Ante at 21. Thus, 
according to the majority, unsubmerged land up to the “high 
water mark” remains subject to the trust. 
To support its 
assertion, the majority cites with approval this Court’s 
holding in Peterman v Dep’t of Natural Resources, 446 Mich 
177, 198-199; 521 NW2d 499 (1994). 
In doing so, the 
statehood. 
If the island was completely submerged at
statehood and only afterwards arose out of Lake St. Clair,
then the island belonged to the state. 
See, e.g., Warner, 
supra. The Court noted that, during periods of high water,
the island at issue was completely submerged. According to
the Court, Lake St. Clair experienced one such period of
high water in 1837-1838. Therefore, because the island was
submerged land at the time of statehood and only arose out
of the water afterwards, title to such property was in the
state. 
Id. 
Further, Venice of America Land Co expressly
adopted Justice Hooker’s concurring opinion from Fishing &
Shooting Club. 
As argued earlier, Justice Hooker found
that the boundary between a littoral owner’s property and
property held by the state in trust is the low water mark,
at least at times of low water. 
21 The majority has interpreted the “water’s edge”
principle as creating a “universal line along the Great
Lakes . . . .” 
Ante at 41. 
However, the water’s edge is
not a “universal line,” but rather a dynamic boundary that
moves as the waters of the Great Lakes move. 
24  
 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
   
 
 
majority fails to acknowledge that Peterman did not address 
the public’s right to use property under the public trust 
doctrine at all,22 but rather addressed the state’s right to 
improve navigation under the navigational servitude.23
 We 
began our analysis in Peterman by affirming that the 
“‘title of the [littoral] owner follows the shore line 
under 
what 
has 
been 
graphically 
called 
"a 
moveable 
freehold.”’” 
Id. at 192, quoting Hilt, supra at 219. 
However, we also found that such title is not absolute. 
Rather, the state retains a navigational servitude on 
unsubmerged property landward of the water’s edge that may 
again become submerged during periods of high water.24  In 
order to accommodate both the rights of the littoral owner 
22 Even if Peterman did apply in the public trust
context-- which it does not-- an examination of its holding
indicates a definition of the public trust doctrine far
more in line with “low water mark” cases such as Alger than 
with the “high water mark” cases cited by the majority. 
23 The majority argues that this decision “relied not
simply on a ‘navigational servitude’ unique to that case
but rooted that ‘navigational servitude’ in the public
trust doctrine.” 
Ante at 21 n 15. 
However, Peterman 
specifically states that “plaintiffs' [littoral] rights are
subject to the navigational servitude retained by the State
of Michigan.” 
Peterman, supra at 193-194. 
Peterman does 
not state that littoral rights are subordinate to the right
to fish and hunt or the right to walk. 
Rather, the Court
limited its holding to the state’s right to improve
navigation. 
24 The federal government also retains a navigational
servitude on the Great Lakes and the lands beneath them. 
25  
 
 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
 
 
and the potential use of unsubmerged land for navigation, 
we determined that the littoral owner’s title is “a limited 
title . . . that is subject to the power of the state to 
improve navigation.” 
Peterman, supra at 195 (emphasis 
added). 
That is, the state has the right to regulate this 
unsubmerged land to ensure that the littoral owner does not 
interfere with the public’s future right to use the land 
for navigational purposes when it again becomes covered by 
the waters of the Great Lakes. 
Also, the state has the 
right to take this unsubmerged land or otherwise take 
action inconsistent with the owner’s littoral rights 
without giving due compensation to the littoral owner when 
it is necessary to make navigational improvements or when 
the taking possesses an “essential nexus” to navigation. 
Id. at 201. However, just as in Alger, the public may only 
use the land in question for navigational purposes25 when 
the land is covered by the waters of the Great Lakes. 
25 We have recognized fishing as an incident of the
navigational 
servitude 
in 
inland 
rivers 
and 
lakes. 
Collins, supra at 48-49. 
In Collins, we noted that the
right to fish was limited to the stream itself and that “in
exercising this right people cannot go upon the uplands of
riparian owners in order to gain access to the water. 
If 
they do that they are guilty of trespass.” Id. at 49. See 
also Bott, supra at 64-65, in which the servitude was 
further limited. 
26  
 
 
 
                     
 
 
Because the majority misapprehends the nature of this 
limited title, it has misconstrued the importance of the 
“ordinary high water mark” as it is described in Peterman. 
While recognizing the state’s right to improve navigation, 
we also sought to limit the property that could be 
adversely affected by such improvements. 
To determine the 
scope of this limitation, we examined former MCL 281.952, 
which was part of the Inland Lakes and Streams Act, as well 
as cases defining the scope of the public trust doctrine on 
rivers, including Grand Rapids Booming Co v Jarvis, 30 Mich 
308, 318-321 (1874) (holding that the public right of 
navigation was confined to the stream itself and that its 
boundary was the line of ordinary high water), and Hall v 
Alford, 114 Mich 165, 167-168; 72 NW 137 (1897) (noting 
that land alongside a river above the high water line could 
not be taken without just compensation and due process). 
On the basis of our review of these authorities, we 
determined that “‘the limit of the public’s right is the 
ordinary high water mark of the river.[26] This means that 
26 We adopted the definition of “ordinary high water
mark” from the Inland Lakes and Streams Act, former MCL
281.952(h). 
Peterman, supra at 198 n 29. 
That statute 
defined the mark as, 
27  
 
 
 
  
                     
 
 
 
 
the ownership of fast land[27] is unqualified and not 
burdened with [the state’s right to improve navigation].’” 
Peterman, supra at 198 (citation omitted).
 Applying this 
rule of rivers to the Great Lakes, we held that destruction 
of the littoral owner’s property above the “ordinary high 
water mark” was “an unconstitutional taking of property 
without due process and just compensation.”28 
Id. at 200. 
the line between upland and bottomland which 
persists through successive changes in water 
levels, below which the presence and action of 
the water is so common or recurrent that the 
character of the land is marked distinctly from
the upland and is apparent in the soil itself,
the configuration of the surface of the soil, and
the vegetation. 
27 “Fast land” is “property that is ‘above the high­
water mark of’ the stream, river, or other body of water
that abuts the property.” 
Peterman, supra at 181 n 4,
quoting 26 Am Jur 2d, Eminent Domain, § 192, p 873. 
28 The plaintiffs’ recovery in Peterman was not limited 
to compensation for the damage done to the fast lands. 
We 
also concluded: 
While 
generally 
the 
navigational 
trust 
permits the state to improve waterways without
compensating for nonfast lands, the trust does
not grant blanket authority to destroy private
property--
the loss of the property must be 
necessary or possess an essential nexus to the
navigational improvement in question. 
In the 
instant case, no essential nexus existed between
the construction of the boat launch and the utter 
destruction of plaintiffs’ beach. 
The taking of
the property served no public interest because
the ramp could have been built without destroying
plaintiffs’ property. 
Thus, we affirm the trial 
28  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                     
Thus, contrary to the claims of the majority, Peterman 
did not alter the rule of Warner and Hilt that the public’s 
right to use property under the public trust doctrine is 
limited to submerged lands. 
Rather, the “ordinary high 
water mark” is simply the outside edge of property that may 
either 
be 
regulated 
to 
preserve 
future 
navigational 
interests 
at 
times 
of 
high 
water 
or 
taken 
without 
compensation for navigational improvements. 
Id. at 202. 
The majority fails to recognize that this Court’s holding 
applied 
only 
to 
the 
“public’s 
rights” 
under 
the 
navigational 
servitude. 
As 
a 
result, 
the 
majority 
unwarrantedly expands the scope of our holding in Peterman 
to create new rights under the public trust doctrine, 
rights that were never contemplated in that case. 
II. MISDEFINITION OF LANDS WITHIN THE PUBLIC TRUST DOCTRINE. 
Even if the majority were correct in its understanding 
of the “ordinary high water mark,” which for the reasons 
set forth I do not believe it to be, its definition of 
lands 
encompassed 
by 
the 
public 
trust 
doctrine 
is 
inconsistent with both the common-law scope of the public 
trust doctrine and the realities of the Great Lakes. 
The 
court's 
award 
of 
damages 
for 
the 
loss 
of 
plaintiffs’ property [i.e., the property below
the “ordinary high water mark”]. 
[Id. at 201­
202.] 
29  
 
 
majority does not apply Michigan law, but instead, without 
analysis 
or 
explanation, 
summarily 
adopts 
Wisconsin’s 
definition of the “ordinary high water mark,” which it 
derives from a case involving a Wisconsin river. 
Further, 
while the majority admits that the “ordinary high water 
mark” is a term used to define the scope of the public 
trust doctrine in tidal waters, it fails to account for the 
fact that the Great Lakes have no true scientific low and 
high water marks as exist on the seashore. 
Even given the 
majority’s attempt to graft this tidal-based term upon the 
nontidal 
Great 
Lakes, 
its 
definition 
bears 
little 
resemblance to the common-law standard. 
In creating a new 
definition of “ordinary high water mark” based on the 
portions of the common law of Wisconsin it finds amenable, 
the majority fails to provide either lakefront property 
owners or the public with the slightest guidance in 
understanding the lands in which the new rights granted to 
the public may be exercised. 
The majority defines the “ordinary high water mark” as 
“‘the point on the bank or shore up to which the presence 
and action of the water is so continuous as to leave a 
distinct mark either by erosion, destruction of terrestrial 
30  
 
 
  
                     
 
 
vegetation, or other easily recognized characteristic.’”29 
Ante at 27, quoting Diana Shooting Club v Husting, 156 Wis 
261, 272; 145 NW 816 (1914). 
This definition is derived 
from a State of Wisconsin case involving that state’s 
public trust doctrine as it applies to an inland river. 
Why this court now finds it necessary to abandon Michigan 
common law and replace it with Wisconsin’s common law, or 
at least those portions the majority finds persuasive, is 
not explained. As the United States Supreme Court noted in 
Shively, supra at 26, the determination of what lands fall 
within the scope of the public trust doctrine is different 
in each state. After reviewing the laws of several states, 
that Court remarked 
that each State has dealt with the lands under 
the tide waters within its borders according to
its own views of justice and policy, reserving 
its own control over such lands, or granting 
29 The majority concludes that the boundary of the
public trust doctrine is the “ordinary high water mark”
because the “lake has not permanently receded from that
point and may yet again assert its influence up to that
point.” 
Ante at 27. 
Does the majority mean that the
public has access to a littoral owner’s property that,
although currently dry, has been wet at some point in the
past and may again be wet some day in the future? 
If so,
what is the relevant time frame to determine if the water 
has permanently receded or not? Is it a day? Or a month? 
Or a year? Or a decade? Or since statehood? Or since the 
retreat of the glaciers 14,000 years ago? 
The majority
does not say. Further, how is a member of the public or a
property owner to ascertain whether lands in question “may
yet again” become submerged? 
Again, the majority does not
say. 
31  
 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
rights therein to individuals or corporations,
whether owners of the adjoining upland or not, as
it considered for the best interests of the 
public. 
Great caution, therefore, is necessary
in applying precedents in one State to cases
arising in another. [Id. (emphasis added).] 
The majority has failed to pay heed to the United 
States Supreme Court’s advice in this matter. The majority 
has also failed to examine the Wisconsin public trust 
doctrine in order to determine whether the policy reasons 
underlying 
the 
majority’s 
adoption 
of 
the 
Wisconsin 
understanding of the “ordinary high water mark” is even 
compatible with Michigan’s “views of justice and policy 
. . . .” 
Id. 
Rather than conduct such a review, the 
majority concludes that this definition is apt because it 
“has served another Great Lakes state for some hundred 
years and is in accord with the term’s limited development 
in our own state.” Ante at 29-30.30 
However, even a cursory review of the Wisconsin cases 
cited by the majority suggests a rule more in line with the 
decision of our Court of Appeals-- a decision unanimously 
rejected by this Court-- than the rule favored by the 
majority. In Diana Shooting Club, a hunter had floated his 
30 While the Diana Shooting Club definition has been 
used by Wisconsin for nearly one hundred years, the initial
express definition of the water’s edge principle in Warner 
predates the Diana Shooting Club rule by sixteen years. 
32  
 
 
 
boat into an area overgrown by vegetation for the purpose 
of shooting wild ducks. 
The riparian owner claimed that, 
pursuant to its ownership of the soil beneath the river, 
the members of its organization had the exclusive right to 
hunt in those waters. 
The Wisconsin Supreme Court 
recognized the riparian owner’s title in the soil beneath 
the river, but also found that the waters themselves 
“should be free to all for commerce, for travel, for 
recreation, and also for hunting and fishing, which are now 
mainly certain forms of recreation.” 
Diana Shooting Club, 
supra at 271. It ultimately held that: 
Hunting on navigable waters is lawful when 
it is confined strictly to such waters while they
are in a navigable stage, and between the 
boundaries of ordinary high water marks. When so 
confined it is immaterial what the character of 
the stream or water is. 
It may be deep or
shallow, 
clear 
or 
covered 
with 
aquatic
vegetation. 
By ordinary highwater mark is meant
the point on the bank or shore up to which the
presence and action of the water is so continuous
as to leave a distinct mark either by erosion,
destruction of terrestrial vegetation, or other
easily recognized characteristic. 
[Id. at 272 
(emphasis added).] 
Thus, unlike the majority, Diana Shooting Club restricted 
public trust activity to the waters themselves. 
Indeed, 
the Wisconsin Supreme Court confirmed this interpretation 
in Doemel v Jantz, 180 Wis 225, 236; 193 NW 393 (1923), 
noting that: 
33  
 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
What was said in the Diana Shooting Club
Case on the subject of the rights of a hunter to
pursue his game up to the ordinary high-water
mark, merely affirmed the public right to pursue
the sport of hunting to the ordinary high-water
mark of a navigable river while the waters of the
river actually extended to such mark.[31] 
The Wisconsin Supreme Court later suggested that the 
Diana Shooting Club’s definition of the ordinary high water 
mark also applied to the Great Lakes. State v Trudeau, 139 
Wis 2d 91; 408 NW2d 337 (1987).32
 In Trudeau, a littoral 
owner along Lake Superior sought to build condominiums 
within an area below the “ordinary high water mark” of Lake 
Superior. 
The littoral owner argued that the area in 
question was not navigable and, therefore, he was entitled 
to use the lake bed. 
The Wisconsin Supreme Court 
disagreed, reasoning that the state’s interest extended to 
31 Doemel addressed the public trust doctrine as it
applied to inland lakes. Interestingly, while the majority
claims that a case applying the public trust to rivers is
perfectly legitimate to apply in the littoral context, it
concludes that Doemel is inapplicable, presumably because
it applies to an inland lake. 
32 The majority observes that its new definition was
also invoked in a footnote by the Wisconsin Supreme Court
in R W Docks & Slips v State, 244 Wis 2d 497, 510 n 2; 628
NW2d 
781 
(2001) 
(citing 
Trudeau, 
supra, 
for 
the 
definition). 
Ante at 28. 
However, the R W Docks case 
involved a claimed regulatory taking, based on Wisconsin’s
refusal to issue a dredging permit. 
The location of the 
ordinary high water mark was not at issue and the case did
not involve a question of public access to land within the
public trust. 
Thus, the majority apparently is basing its
new rule on mere dictum from the decision of another 
state's Supreme Court. 
34  
 
 
 
 
   
                     
 
 
the “ordinary high water mark” of Lake Superior. 
Id. at 
103. 
In discussing the “ordinary high water mark,” the 
court cited with approval the definition from Diana 
Shooting Club. 
However, the court’s ultimate disposition 
in that case was to remand “for findings concerning those 
portions of the site higher than 602 feet [above sea level, 
according to the International Great Lakes Datum], the 
[ordinary high water mark] of Lake Superior.” 
Id. at 110. 
Thus, Trudeau held that the “ordinary high water mark” is 
defined by the International Great Lakes Datum (“IGLD”) 
level--
the very standard that has been unanimously 
rejected by the justices of this Court.33 
To summarize, none of the few Wisconsin cases cited by 
the majority addresses the issue of whether the public has 
33 The majority, apparently recognizing the vagueness
of its definition of the "ordinary high water mark,"
observes, “the precise location of the ordinary high water
mark at any given site on the shores of our Great Lakes 
remains a question of fact.” 
Ante at 30. 
While the 
majority again cites Trudeau as an example of how such a
“question of fact” can be answered, ante at 28 n 20, it
neglects to note that Trudeau adopted the International
Great Lakes Datum (IGLD) definition of ordinary high water
mark. 
Trudeau, supra at 110. 
However, the majority has
held that the Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act (GLSLA),
which also uses that datum, is not dispositive in defining
the landward boundary of the public trust. 
Ante at 14-19. 
Does the majority mean to suggest that, despite this 
Court's holding that the GLSLA is not dispositive, the ILGD
is still relevant in determining the location of the 
ordinary high water mark for public trust purposes in this
state? The majority does not say. 
35  
 
 
 
 
 
 
a right to use currently unsubmerged land below the 
“ordinary high water mark” for public trust purposes. 
Indeed, the Wisconsin public trust doctrine specifically 
limits the public’s use of submerged lands to when those 
lands are covered by the waters themselves. 
In addition, 
to the extent that the majority believes that Trudeau makes 
the Diana Shooting Club definition applicable to the Great 
Lakes, the majority fails to note that Trudeau adopted the 
IGLD definition of the “ordinary high water mark” on the 
Great Lakes. 
Trudeau, supra at 110. 
In determining the 
location of the “ordinary high water mark,” Trudeau 
specifically relied on the following evidence: 
The DNR's area water management specialist,
Richard Knitter, testified that he determined the
lake's 
OHWM 
[ordinary 
high 
water 
mark]
approximately one-half mile from the site at a
protected location with a clear erosion line that
was free from excessive wave action. 
Knitter 
then determined that this site's elevation was 
602 feet I.G.L.D. 
He transferred the elevation 
of the OHWM site to a number of points at the
project site and concluded that approximately
half of the site was below Lake Superior's OHWM.
The developers' surveyor did not determine the
OHWM of the site or Lake Superior. 
[Id. at 106­
107.] 
The court concluded that “[a]ny part of the site at or 
below 602 feet I.G.L.D. is within the OHWM of Lake Superior 
and is therefore protected lake-bed upon which building is 
prohibited.” 
Id. at 109. 
The presence of this single, 
36  
 
 
 
 
clear definition stands in stark contrast to the vague and 
ever-changing, "fact-specific," “ordinary high water mark” 
newly promulgated by the majority. 
In contrast to the 
Wisconsin Supreme Court, this Court expends its energies 
explaining why our Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act (GLSLA), 
MCL 324.32501 et seq., which relies upon the IGLD, is not 
dispositive in defining the landward boundary of the public 
trust. Ante at 14-19. 
In stating that “we are persuaded to adopt [the Diana 
Shooting Club definition of “ordinary high water mark”] to 
clarify a term long used but little defined in our 
jurisprudence,” ante at 28, the majority adopts the law of 
another state, without much explanation as to why that law 
has been chosen from among the laws of the fifty states or, 
even more significantly, why the law of any other state is 
seen as necessary to replace the long-settled law of 
Michigan. 
Further, the majority adopts only a part of the 
law of that other state, again without much explanation as 
to why it has chosen to adopt only parts of that other 
state’s law. 
Finally, to compound this inexplicable 
process, 
the 
majority 
fails 
to 
accord 
significant 
consideration to the manner in which the courts of the 
other state have interpreted its own law, misconstruing in 
37  
 
 
  
                     
 
 
the process even the few decisions to which it gives 
consideration. 
Even absent the differences between Wisconsin and 
Michigan law, the Diana Shooting Club standard was derived 
from the very different context of riparian property.34 
Undeterred, the majority simply utilizes this standard 
without explanation of how it should be modified for 
application on the Great Lakes. The result is a definition 
that is doubly vague, because the majority not only fails 
to explain what kind of “distinct mark” is considered to be 
so “easily recognizable” that it can be allowed to 
determine the limits of the public trust, but it also fails 
to provide any time frame for determining how “continuous” 
the “presence and action of the water” must be in order to 
leave such a mark. 
The majority fails to define either of 
these terms in a manner that will enable the public or 
34 The majority observes that the Diana Shooting Club
definition is not “far removed from meanings previously
recognized in Michigan.” 
Ante at 29. 
In support, the
majority cites MCL 324.30101(i), a part of the current
version of the former Inland Lakes and Streams Act. 
However, the majority fails to acknowledge that this 
statute expressly states that it does not apply to the
Great Lakes. 
MCL 324.30101(f). 
I also assume that the 
majority in characterizing its definition as "not far 
removed" from another definition-- that which, in fact, has
been the law of Michigan--
is acknowledging, albeit 
euphemistically, that it is adopting a new rule. 
The 
majority alternates between the adoption of new rules and
disclaiming that it has adopted such new rules. 
38  
 
 
property owners to determine which lands are within the 
public trust. What kind of “distinct mark” is sufficiently 
“recognizable” to bring unsubmerged land within the scope 
of the public trust? 
Since it cannot be that point at 
which wet sands give way to dry sands-- the majority having 
rejected the position of this dissent-- is this “distinct 
mark” a function of where the waves have deposited 
seashells? 
Is it a function of where debris has been 
washed ashore? 
Is it a function of where some line of 
vegetation can be identified? Or is it a function of where 
sand castles are no longer standing? The majority does not 
say. 
Moreover, even if the public or the property owner 
could discern the relevant “distinct mark,” how would such 
persons determine how “continuous” the “presence and action 
of the water” has been-- or indeed must be-- in leaving 
such a mark. It cannot be limited to the “current ebb and 
flow of the waves,” as that too is the position of this 
dissent which the majority rejects. How continuous then is 
“continuous?” 
Is it a month, a season, a year, a century, 
or an epoch? Again, the majority does not say. 
Moreover, the majority would apparently expand public 
access to private littoral lands even beyond its new 
definition of the “ordinary high water mark.” The majority 
states, “‘where the bank or shore at any particular place 
39  
 
 
 
is of such a character that it is impossible or difficult 
to ascertain where the point of ordinary high-water mark 
is, recourse may be had to other places on the bank or 
shore of the same stream or lake to determine whether a 
given stage of water is above or below ordinary high-water 
mark.’” 
Ante at 27-28, quoting Diana Shooting Club, supra 
at 272 (emphasis added). 
Does the majority intend by this 
to say that the public may now cross onto private littoral 
property in order to determine where the new "ordinary high 
water mark" lies? 
If so, the public would seem to have 
access to such property even beyond the "ordinary high 
water mark." 
The only apparent limitation on the public’s 
right of access is that the "ordinary high water mark" must 
be “difficult” to ascertain. 
Given that under the 
majority's new definition the "ordinary high water mark" 
will never be anything other than difficult to ascertain--
and, as the majority admits, will generally constitute a 
"question of fact” ante at 30--
there appears to be 
considerable potential for access by the public upon 
private littoral lands even beyond the "ordinary high water 
mark." 
Still, the majority is indisposed to answer any of 
the questions that are most dispositive in determining 
where private and public rights begin and end. In eventual 
course, 
these 
questions, 
so 
indispensable 
to 
the 
40  
 
 
 
determination of individual property rights, will have to 
be addressed by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) 
with virtually no guidance from this Court. 
In leaving such questions to the DNR, the majority 
adopts the premises of administrative law in the very 
different realm of property law, by defining critical 
questions of property rights not in well-understood terms 
that conduce toward specific boundaries, but in language 
drawn from the modern administrative process in which vague 
and empty terms are given meaning by regulatory agencies, 
such as the DNR, with subsequent deferential review by the 
courts. 
This is a prescription for uncertainty, and 
uncertainty is a prescription for litigation, and the 
majority with its eyes wide open has chosen to give 
Michigan both. 
Further, the majority’s inclusion of unsubmerged lands 
within 
the 
public 
trust 
because 
“the 
lake 
has 
not 
permanently receded from that point and may yet again exert 
its influence up to that point,” ante at 27, conflicts with 
the traditional common-law definition of the public trust 
doctrine. 
At common law, the high water mark was defined 
as “‘the line of the medium high tide between the springs 
41  
 
 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
and the neaps.[35]  All land below that line is more often 
than not covered at high water, and so may justly be said, 
in the language of Lord Hale, to be covered by the ordinary 
flux of the sea.’” 
Borax Consolidated, supra at 25, 
quoting Attorney-General v Chambers, 4 De G M & G 206, 217; 
43 Eng Rep 486 (1854).36  High tides move with the moon as 
it revolves around the Earth. 
At most ocean shores 
35 The “spring tide” is defined as “the large rise and
fall of the tide at or soon after the new or full moon.” 
The “neap” tide is defined as “those tides, midway between
spring tides, that attain the least height.” 
Random House 
Webster’s College Dictionary (1997). 
36 The majority asserts that I offer this as an 
“authoritative definition for ordinary high water mark” and
that somehow there is a tension between this definition and 
my criticism of the majority’s creation of new law in this
case. 
Ante at 41 n 33. 
That the majority does not
recognize the English common-law definition of the ordinary
high water mark is not surprising given that its novel
definitions of the term bear no resemblance. 
According to
the majority: 
[The] ebb and flow, thus reaching one point
on the shore at low tide and reaching a more
landward 
point 
at 
high 
tide. 
The 
latter 
constitutes the high water mark on a tidal shore.
The land between this mark and the low water mark 
is submerged on a regular basis, and so remains
subject 
to 
the 
public 
trust 
doctrine 
as 
“submerged land.” 
[Ante at 20-21 (emphasis
added).] 
Thus, it appears that the majority takes the position
that the public trust extends to the highest high tide.
However, as noted in Borax Consolidated, the ordinary high
water mark is not the highest high tide, but rather the
medium high tide between the spring and neaps, which is
rarely exposed to the open air for more than twenty-four
hours. 
42  
 
 
 
 
  
 
                     
 
  
 
 
throughout the world, two high tides and two low tides 
occur every lunar day.37  A typical seaport will alternate 
between high and low tides about every six hours. 
Thus, 
while the ocean bed may be temporarily exposed to the open 
air during low tide, such land will again be submerged 
during the next high tide. Because the land is continually 
being affected by the action of the water, it falls within 
the scope of the English common-law doctrine, even when 
exposed to open air. 
In contrast, tidal forces acting on the Great Lakes 
are of such a “trifling effect,” Warner, supra at 239, that 
they cannot even be measured without precise instruments.38 
Thus, there is no “high” or “low” water marks, as they are 
scientifically understood. 
Instead, lake levels are 
affected seasonally by the natural operation of the 
hydrologic 
cycle, 
which 
includes 
precipitation, 
37 A lunar day is the time it takes for the moon to
return to a point above the Earth: approximately twenty­
four hours and fifty minutes. 
See definition of "day,
lunar" 
at 
<http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS-
Proxy/cocoon/glossary/xml/D.xml> (accessed June 24, 2005). 
38 According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, spring tide in the Great Lakes is less than
2 
inches 
(5 
cm) 
in 
height. 
See 
<http://co­
ops.nos.noaa.gov/faq2.html> (accessed June 24, 2005). 
43  
 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
 
 
evaporation, condensation, and transpiration.39  During the 
winter, the air above the lakes is cold and dry, compared 
to the relatively warm temperature of the lake. 
As a 
result, the amount of water that evaporates into the air 
exceeds the water vapor that condenses back into the lakes. 
Any precipitation that falls on the lands surrounding the 
lakes is in the solid form of snow, and, thus, is not 
returned to the lake via runoff. 
As a result, more water 
leaves the lake than enters it in this season, resulting in 
a decline in lake levels.40  As snow begins to melt in the 
early spring, runoff into the lakes increases. Further, as 
temperatures increase, the warm, moist air above the 
relatively cold lakes limits evaporation to an amount less 
than the rate of condensation. 
As a result, average water 
39 
See, 
generally, 
United 
States 
Army 
Corps 
of 
Engineers and the Great Lakes Commission, Living with the
Lakes (1999), pp 13-18. 
This publication may be accessed
at  (accessed June 24, 2005). 
40 
According to the United States Army Corps of 
Engineers, the lowest average lake level from 1918 to 2003
occurred as follows: 
Lake Superior (March, 601.21 feet
above sea level); Lakes Michigan and Huron (February,
578.48 feet above sea level); Lake St. Clair (February,
573.43 feet above sea level); and Lake Erie (February,
570.8 
feet 
above 
sea 
level). 
See 
<http://www.lre.usace.army.mil/greatlakes/hh/greatlakeswate
rlevels/historicdata/longtermaveragemin-maxwaterlevels/>
(accessed June 24, 2005). 
44  
 
 
  
 
                     
 
   
levels rise throughout the spring and eventually peak 
during midsummer.41 
These natural phenomena suggest the unworkability of 
placing the public trust boundary at the “ordinary high 
water mark” as it is defined by the majority. 
If the 
“ordinary high water mark” is defined as a static boundary, 
then the public trust doctrine would include unsubmerged 
lands that are only covered by the water on an infrequent 
basis. Under the English common-law definition, such lands 
should be treated in a manner similar to lands covered by 
the spring tides, i.e., they are not subject to the public 
trust doctrine. 
If the “ordinary high water mark” is 
defined as a floating boundary, then it becomes nearly 
impossible for either a beach user or a littoral property 
owner to determine where the boundary is located. 
To 
account for the hydrologic cycle, the “ordinary high water 
mark” would need to be redefined on a monthly or seasonal 
basis. 
Further, the boundary would have to be readjusted 
on a year-by-year basis to account for long-term changes to 
41 
According to the United States Army Corps of 
Engineers, the highest average lake level from 1918 to 2003
occurred as follows: Lake Superior (September, 602.23 feet
above sea level); Lakes Michigan and Huron (July, 579.43
feet above sea level); Lake St. Clair (July, 574.77 feet
above sea level); Lake Erie (June, 571.95 feet above sea
level). Id. 
45  
 
 
 
   
                     
 
lake levels caused by weather fluctuations. 
Since 1918, 
the Great Lakes have experienced three periods of extremely 
low water levels, in the late 1920s, mid-1930s, and mid­
1960s. 
Periods of extreme high water were experienced in 
the early 1950s, early 1970s, mid-1980s, and mid-1990s. 
The “point on the bank or shore up to which the presence 
and action of the water is so continuous as to leave a 
distinct mark either by erosion, destruction of terrestrial 
vegetation, or other easily recognized characteristic” in 
1926 would have been in a completely different location 
than the point reached in 1986. 
Likewise, that point in 
February of each year would be a completely different 
location than the same point in July of each year. 
Thus, 
any definition of where “the presence and action of the 
water is so continuous as to leave a distinct mark either 
by erosion, destruction of terrestrial vegetation, or other 
easily recognized characteristic” must vary depending on 
what method is used to calculate that level.42 
42 For example, on Lake Huron, the average yearly level
of the lake in 2003 was 577.07 feet above sea level. 
The 
average yearly level of the lake from 1918 to 2003 was
578.94 feet above sea level. 
The monthly average for June
2003 was 577.43 feet above sea level. 
The monthly average
for the month of June, from 1918 to 2003, was 579.33 feet
above sea level. 
46  
 
 
 
 
 
The majority’s “ordinary high water mark” also fails 
to account for changes to the location of the waterline 
caused by events unrelated to lake levels. First, wind and 
barometric forces can raise water at one end of the lake, 
causing a dip in water level at the opposite end. 
If the 
forces raising the water on one end suddenly cease, the 
entire lake may move in a see-saw fashion, alternatively 
rising and falling on each end in a “pendulum-like” 
movement. 
This phenomenon, called “seiche,” can last from 
minutes to hours to days. 
Second, ice or foreign bodies 
such as plants may block the normal flow of rivers and 
channels connected to the Great Lakes, thereby causing an 
increase or decrease in the water level of connected lakes. 
Finally, most of the Great Lakes basin is rising, as the 
Earth’s crust slowly rebounds from the removed weight of 
the glaciers that covered the area around 14,000 years ago. 
Because the glaciers were thickest in the northern part of 
the basin around Lake Superior, this region is rebounding 
at a faster rate, nearly twenty-one inches a century, than 
the rest of the basin. 
As a result, the Great Lakes are 
“tipping” in a way that causes water increasingly to pool 
in the southern portions of the Great Lakes basin. 
The 
shoreline is receding in the northern basin and advancing 
in the southern basin. 
Thus, while the “ordinary high 
47  
 
 
 
water mark” makes sense in tidal waters, it does not make 
sense in the nontidal Great Lakes because of the irregular 
nature of lake level fluctuations. 
Further, the majority’s new definition fails to 
account for those times when the waters of the Great Lakes 
go beyond the “ordinary high water mark,” assuming that 
such an event could even occur under the majority's new 
definition. 
The majority justifies its new rule, on the 
basis of this Court's statement in Peterman, supra at 198, 
that “‘the limit of the public's right is the ordinary high 
water mark . . . .’” (Citation omitted.) 
Ante at 40. 
However, the majority also states that the public trust 
doctrine serves to protect “the waters of the Great Lakes 
and their submerged lands . . . .” Ante at 31. Thus, when 
the water’s edge is beyond the “ordinary high water mark,” 
there is a conflict between the majority’s stated limit of 
the public right to the “ordinary high water mark” and its 
inclusion of submerged lands within the public trust. Is a 
property owner or a member of the public to understand that 
use of submerged lands between the “ordinary high water 
mark” and the water’s edge is forbidden? 
Does this mean 
that a member of the swimming or walking public is trapped 
within the Great Lakes until the water recedes to the 
“ordinary high water mark?” 
How does a member of the 
48  
 
 
 
 
                     
 
public or a property owner determine where the “ordinary 
high water mark” is in such a circumstance? 
Does limiting 
public access to a submerged "ordinary high water mark" 
conflict with our holding in Warner, supra at 239, that the 
public trust begins where the water is, “whether the water 
be deep or shallow”? 
Or is the majority’s reliance on 
Peterman somehow silently qualified to apply only when 
water levels on the Great Lakes lie below the “ordinary 
high water mark”? The majority again does not say. 
By contrast, limiting the public’s right of access to 
the “water’s edge,” i.e., the point at which wet sands give 
way to dry sands, addresses all of the various forces at 
work on the lakes and is consistent with the common-law 
definition of the high water mark. 
First, the “water’s 
edge” principle reflects the dynamic natural forces at work 
on the Great Lakes. As the waters of the Great Lakes move, 
so too does the area where wet sands give way to dry sands. 
The littoral property owner’s title, and with it his or her 
littoral 
rights, 
including 
the 
right 
of 
exclusive 
possession, follows the movement of the water.43
 As we 
43 However, as noted in Peterman, supra at 193-198, the 
littoral owner’s rights are subject to regulation by the
state. 
See e.g., MCL 324.32503 (prohibiting filling or
altering land below the statutorily defined high water mark
without a permit), MCL 324.32512 (prohibiting certain acts 
49  
 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
explained in Warner, the littoral property owner’s rights 
end where the water is “whether the water be deep or 
shallow, and although it be grown up to aquatic plants, and 
although it be unfit for navigation.” 
Warner, supra at 
239. At that point, the state’s public trust title begins. 
Id.  As correctly observed by the DNR, the area “where the 
water is” includes the wet sands where the waters of the 
Great Lakes have marked their current and continuous 
presence. 
Because by definition such sands are infused 
with water, the wet sands fall within the definition of 
“submerged lands.” 
As a result, the “water’s edge” is the 
point at which wet sands give way to dry sands. 
The 
water’s edge marks the boundary between submerged and 
unsubmerged lands.44
 This position is consistent with the 
position of the defendant littoral owners in the instant 
case. 
Contrary to plaintiff’s expressions of concern that 
of 
waterway 
maintenance 
without 
a 
permit), 
and 
MCL 
324.32512a 
(prohibiting 
mowing 
or 
removing 
vegetation
except as permitted by the DNR). 
44 The majority claims that I would “grant an exclusive
right of possession to littoral landowners . . . down to
where unsubmerged land ends, which [I] locate[] at the
water’s edge . . . .” 
Ante at 38. 
A significantly more
precise statement of my position is that the littoral
landowner 
has 
the 
right 
of 
exclusive 
possession 
to 
unsubmerged land, while the public has the right to use
submerged land under the public trust doctrine. 
The 
water’s edge, i.e., where the wet sands give way to dry
sands, where submerged land meets unsubmerged land, marks
the limit of each of these rights. 
50  
 
 
                     
 
  
she would be forced to walk in the water, as a member of 
the public she has always had the right to walk along the 
wet sands abutting the Great Lakes. Because the wet sands 
are submerged lands, a littoral owner has never had the 
right to prevent a member of the public from using such 
lands. 
While I agree with the DNR’s inclusion of the wet 
sands as submerged lands, the DNR reaches the same 
erroneous conclusion as the Court of Appeals, namely that 
the littoral owner holds title only to the “ordinary high 
water mark.”45
 This interpretation apparently is based on 
the following passage from Hilt, supra at 226: 
The riparian owner has the exclusive use of
the bank and shore, and may erect bathing houses
and structures thereon for his business or 
pleasure (45 C.J. p 505; 22 L.R.A. [N.S.] 345;
Town of Orange v. Resnick, [94 Conn 573, 578; 109
A 864 (1920)]); although it also has been held
that he cannot extend structures into the space
between low and high-water mark, without consent
of the State (Thiesen v. Railway Co, 75 Fla. 28
[78 South. 491; L.R.A. 1918E, 718]). 
And it has 
been held that the public has no right of passage
over dry land between low and high-water mark but
the exclusive use is in the riparian owner,
although the title is in the State. 
Doemel v 
Jantz, [supra]. 
45 The DNR’s position is consistent with the Attorney
General’s opinion in 1978 noting that title to property
between the high water mark and the water’s edge remains in
the state, but the right of exclusive use remains in the
littoral owner. 
OAG, 1977-1978, No 5,327, p 518 (July 6,
1978). 
51  
 
 
  
However, this statement from Hilt does not represent a 
conclusion of this Court. 
Rather, it is cited as part of 
this Court's response to the notion that Kavanaugh “gave 
the State substantially absolute title . . . to the upland 
or to use them for any public purposes.” 
Id. at 224. 
In 
rejecting this theory as a justification for maintaining 
Kavanaugh, we noted that the “title” conferred to the state 
in Kavanaugh was confined “to the same trust which applies 
to the bed of the lake, i.e., that the State has title in 
its sovereign capacity and only for the preservation of the 
public rights of navigation, fishing, and hunting.” 
Id. 
Thus, “the right of the State to use the bed of the lake, 
except for the trust purposes, is subordinate to that of 
the riparian owner . . . .” 
Id. at 226, citing Town of 
Orange, supra at 578. 
To support this point, Hilt noted 
that “it has been held that the public has no right of 
passage over dry land between low and high-water mark but 
the exclusive use is in the riparian owner, although the 
title is in the State.” Hilt, supra at 226, citing Doemel. 
This demonstrates that Hilt was not adopting the rule 
from Doemel, but rather was using that case to demonstrate 
that Kavanaugh did not give unlimited title to the state 
and, therefore, that the title granted to the state by 
Kavanaugh was not a valid basis for maintaining the meander 
52  
 
 
 
 
 
                     
 
 
  
line as a boundary. 
Thus, the only basis for holding that 
the state holds title to unsubmerged land up to the so­
called high water mark is to misunderstand the importance 
of Hilt’s reference to Doemel. 
It is clear that when Hilt 
said that a littoral owner’s title goes to the water’s 
edge, it meant “water’s edge.” 
Likewise, when Warner said 
that the state’s title begins where the water is, it meant 
“where the water is.” 
Second, the “water’s edge” principle is consistent 
with the common-law definition of the high water mark.46  At 
common law, the area of medium high tide would seldom be 
dry for more than twenty-four hours at a time. 
Lorman v 
Benson, 8 Mich 18, 29 (1860). In other words, the land at 
or below medium high tide was generally covered by the 
ocean during the daily tidal cycle. 
Therefore, this tidal 
land was considered “waste land” that was “‘not capable of 
ordinary cultivation or occupation.’” 
Id. at 28-29 
46 Although I do not agree that the “wet sands area” as
it applies to the public trust doctrine is equivalent to
the “ordinary high water mark” as it applies to the 
navigational servitude, at least one commentator has 
observed that the “wet beach” is the area “between ordinary 
high watermark and ordinary low watermark.” 
Pratt, The 
legal rights of the public in the foreshores of the Great 
Lakes, 10 Mich Real Prop Rev 237, 237 (1983). According to
this commentator, the “high water mark” and the “water’s
edge” are, for all practical purposes, the same in the
nontidal Great Lakes. 
53  
 
 
 
  
                     
 
(citation omitted). 
Similarly, in the instant case, the 
wet sands are being inundated with water by the current ebb 
and flow of the waves. 
However, when lake levels 
fluctuate, any land that is no longer subject to the ebb 
and flow of the waves becomes unsubmerged land, which is 
suitable for “ordinary occupation” and, therefore, as with 
lands affected by the spring tides, is not within the scope 
of the public trust doctrine. 
Finally, the “water’s edge” principle is significantly 
more workable than the majority’s “ordinary high water 
mark.” 
A member of the public can, by simple observation, 
without the use of "aerial photographs, government survey 
maps . . . and stereo [three-dimensional] photographs," 
ante at 28 n 20, determine where he or she is allowed to 
use land without seeking the littoral owner’s permission.47 
47 
The 
majority 
claims 
that 
the 
“water’s 
edge”
principle provides no greater “clarity” than its new rule
and that the “water's edge” standard constitutes a “charade
of clarity.” 
Ante at 41-42. 
The reader might wish to
ponder this assertion. 
On the one hand, the traditional
standard for delineating between public and private lands--
the standard that I would retain-- requires merely that a
person be able to distinguish between wetness and dryness,
between wet sands and dry sands, between where there is
water and where there is not. 
Even a Supreme Court
justice, I would submit, should be reasonably able to draw
such distinctions. 
Contrast this to the majority’s test
that would require a person to locate “the point on the
bank or shore up to which the presence and action of the
water is so continuous as to leave a distinct mark either 
54  
 
 
 
 
                     
  
When the waters recede, land that is no longer subject to 
the current ebb and flow of the waves will become 
unsubmerged land and, therefore, will again be under the 
exclusive control of the littoral property owner. 
In conclusion, as we noted in Warner, supra at 239, 
although in dictum, the absence of tides “practically makes 
high and low water mark identical for the purpose of 
determining boundaries [along the Great Lakes].” 
The 
“water’s 
edge” 
principle 
recognizes 
this 
reality 
by 
defining the rights of both the littoral property owner and 
the public in terms of the actual location of the water. 
This definition is consistent with the natural forces at 
work on the Great Lakes; it is consistent with the common­
law scope of the public trust doctrine; it is consistent 
with historical practice in Michigan; and it creates a 
public trust area that can readily be identified. 
The 
majority has presented no reason why this longstanding rule 
no longer represents a reasonable balance between the 
competing interests at issue in this case. 
Yet, the 
by erosion, destruction of terrestrial vegetation, or other
easily recognized characteristic.” 
The majority does not
even attempt to offer guidance to the public or property
owners as to the meaning of this standard. 
Rather, the
majority suggests that expert witnesses will be able to
identify this mark by using “aerial photographs . . ., the
government survey maps, the site’s present configuration,
and stereo [three-dimensional] photographs . . . .” 
Ante 
at 28 n 20. 
55  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
majority discards this clear standard, which has operated 
for most of the history of our state to create harmonious 
relations between the public and littoral property owners, 
and replaces it with an unknowable standard of its own 
invention that requires littoral property owners and the 
public to guess where the “ordinary high water mark” is 
located. 
III. MISUNDERSTANDING OF JUS PRIVATUM/JUS PUBLICUM 
The majority’s determination to apply what it has 
defined as the “ordinary high water mark,” despite a lack 
of foundation in Michigan law, appears to be rooted in its 
fundamental misunderstanding of the distinction between the 
jus privatum and jus publicum. 
The majority notes, 
correctly, that the title to the submerged lands of 
navigable waters is bifurcated; with the jus publicum 
safeguarding the rights to the public and the jus privatum 
safeguarding private property rights, subject always to the 
jus publicum. Nedtweg v Wallace, 237 Mich 14, 20; 208 NW2d 
51 (1927). 
However, rather than limit application of the 
doctrine to submerged lands, the majority instead holds 
that any conveyance of lakefront property consists solely 
of the jus privatum, with the state’s jus publicum title 
including unsubmerged lands up to the “ordinary high water 
mark.” 
I disagree, and instead believe that the jus 
56  
 
 
                     
 
publicum applies only to the submerged lands of the Great 
Lakes. 
The distinction between jus privatum and jus publicum 
was first addressed by this Court in Lorman, supra. 
In 
Lorman, a former lessee of property abutting the Detroit 
River claimed that he had a right to use and maintain a 
boom constructed in the water.48  Under the English common 
law, private title to the bed of a navigable river was 
determined by whether the river was subject to the ebb and 
flow of the tides. 
Lorman, supra at 26-27. 
However, 
regardless of who held the jus privatum, the private 
owner’s rights were limited to those uses that would not 
interfere with “the public easement of navigation[.]” 
Id. 
at 27. 
In tidal rivers, the jus privatum was subject to 
the public’s “right of navigation over the whole bed of the 
stream at high tide, and over the water, so far as it was 
practicable, at all tides.” 
Id. at 27-28. 
However, the 
public’s rights too were not without limit. 
First, the 
public’s rights did not extend to land “not commonly 
submerged by the average ordinary high tides, which would 
seldom leave any of the shore dry more than twenty-four 
48 A “boom” is defined as “a chain, cable, etc.,
serving to obstruct navigation.” 
Random House Webster’s 
College Dictionary (1997). 
57  
 
 
 
                     
 
 
hours at a time.” Id. at 29. Second, the public’s use of 
the jus publicum was limited to “water rights,” i.e., the 
right of navigation and fishing. Id. at 30. No matter who 
held title to the river bed, the public’s right to use the 
river was always limited to the water itself. 
Because the 
former lessee sought to use the Detroit River for purposes 
other than navigation or fishing, the Court determined that 
the former lessee’s use was not superior to that of the 
riparian owner and, therefore, the riparian owner could 
bring an action for trespass. 
The limitation of the jus publicum to use of the water 
itself was also expressed by this Court in McMorran Milling 
Co v C H Little Co, 201 Mich 301; 167 NW 990 (1918).49  In 
McMorran Milling, a dredger entered into a contract with 
the riparian owner for the right to remove sand from the 
49 The majority cites Justice Campbell’s dissenting
opinion in Sterling v Jackson, 69 Mich 488, 506-507; 37 NW
845 (1888), in support of its jus privatum/jus publicum
analysis. Ante at 11. The Sterling majority observed that
title to the river bed belongs to the riparian owner, but
that such title is limited by the public’s right of 
navigation. Sterling, supra at 500. However, the public’s
rights in that case were limited to “using the waters of
the bay for the purpose of a public highway in the 
navigation of [the defendant’s] boat over it . . . .” 
Id. 
at 501. Aside from the right of navigation, all other uses
of the river bed belonged exclusively to the riparian
owner. 
Id. 
In other words, the riparian owner’s jus
privatum was limited only by the uses expressly allowed 
under the jus publicum, i.e., the right of navigation. Id. 
58  
 
 
 
 
river bed. 
The federal government, concerned that such 
dredging would adversely affect navigation, ordered the 
dredger to cease operation. 
After the dredger complied 
with this order, the riparian owner brought suit demanding 
the dredger continue to pay for the right to remove sand. 
This Court began its analysis by noting that the riparian 
owner “holds the naked legal title [the jus privatum], and 
with it he takes such proprietary rights as are consistent 
with the public right of navigation [the jus publicum], and 
the control of congress over that right.” 
Id. at 314 
(citation omitted). 
Thus, the riparian owner’s title is 
“‘held at all times subordinate to such use of the 
submerged lands and of the waters flowing over them as may 
be consistent with or demanded by the public right of 
navigation.’” 
Id. at 310 (emphasis added; citation 
omitted). The Court concluded that the dredger was evicted 
from the river bed by the government, which on the basis of 
its right to protect navigation had superior title over the 
riparian owner. 
Therefore, the riparian owner was not 
entitled to further payment after the date of eviction. 
Id. at 318. 
Unlike rivers and inland lakes, the state holds both 
the jus privatum and jus publicum title to the submerged 
lands of the Great Lakes. Nedtweg, supra. In Nedtweg, the 
59  
 
 
 
 
                     
 
state sought to lease several thousand acres of relicted 
land abutting Lake St. Clair that were considered submerged 
in law.50
 In order to do so, the Legislature passed 
legislation authorizing long-term leases of such land to 
private individuals. 
The Department of Conservation 
refused to enter into such leases, arguing that the 
submerged-in-law land was held in trust for the public and 
could not be conveyed. 
We noted that the title to 
submerged land is bifurcated between the jus publicum and 
the jus privatum. Nedtweg, supra at 17. 
The State may not, by grant, surrender such
public rights any more than it can abdicate the
police 
power 
or 
other 
essential 
power 
of 
government. But this does not mean that the State
must, at all times, remain the proprietor of, as
well as the sovereign over, the soil underlying
navigable waters. [Id.] 
In other words, the state may convey the jus privatum 
in submerged Great Lakes land, as long as that conveyance 
does not interfere with the public’s “rights of navigation, 
hunting and fishing.” 
Id. at 18. 
The Court noted that, 
because the land in question was now dry land, it was no 
longer suited for the purposes protected by the jus 
publicum. 
Id. at 22. 
In other words, contrary to the 
majority’s understanding, while the “submerged” lands in 
50 
Nedtweg was decided during the reign of the 
Kavanaugh cases. 
60  
 
 
 
 
                     
 
question were still part of the public trust, the lease was 
permissible because there was no interference with the uses 
protected by the public trust doctrine.51 
To summarize, under the common law as it has developed 
in Michigan, the jus privatum is held by either the 
adjoining property owner (in the case of rivers or inland 
lakes), or by the state itself (in the case of the Great 
Lakes). 
In either case, the jus privatum title is held 
subject to the public’s rights under the jus publicum. 
However, the public’s jus publicum rights are limited to 
use of the waters themselves. 
Lorman, supra; McMorran 
Milling, supra. 
Further, the jus publicum only protects 
the public’s right to use private property for specific 
purposes, 
such 
as 
navigation, 
fishing, 
and 
hunting. 
Nedtweg, supra. 
There are no cases that support the 
majority’s view that the jus publicum extends beyond the 
water’s themselves to include unsubmerged land.  Lorman, 
supra at 29. 
On the Great Lakes, the overlap between jus 
privatum and jus publicum would only come into play when 
the Legislature conveyed a portion of the submerged lands 
to a third party. 
Because, as argued previously, the 
51 The majority claims that the lands at issue in
Nedtweg were “set[] apart from the public trust.” 
Ante at 
27. 
61  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
                     
 
 
  
littoral owner’s title never extends past the wet sands, 
unsubmerged land between the wet sands and the “ordinary 
high water mark” is simply not, and has never been, part of 
the jus publicum. 
IV. QUESTIONS RAISED BY MAJORITY OPINION 
Questions directly raised by the majority's departure 
from the longstanding status quo in our state include the 
following:52 
(1) Are there property tax consequences to the fact 
that the exclusive rights of littoral property owners would 
now extend not to the water’s edge, but only to the 
“ordinary high water mark”? 
52 The majority maintains that this case “raises none
of the questions that [this dissent] poses,” while, of
course, choosing to answer none of these questions. 
Ante 
at 44. The majority is mistaken if it believes that it can
replace settled law in Michigan with a selective part of
the law of another state-- indeed the least clear part of
that 
other 
state's 
law--
and 
create 
a 
new 
legal
relationship between littoral property owners and the 
public, all the while avoiding giving rise to new legal
questions and generating litigation. Each of the questions
set forth in this section, as well as a great many more 
that neither I nor the majority can anticipate, will be
introduced into the legal system as a direct result of the
majority’s opinion. 
This opinion will be subject to 
cryptanalysis for many years to come and will produce
litigation and dispute where up to now there has been none.
Perhaps equally troubling, when clarity in the law is once
again established in the area of littoral property rights--
many years from now, and only after what is likely to be an
unnecessary period of fractiousness and contention-- it
will 
likely 
come 
as 
a 
function 
of 
administrative 
determinations of private property rights. 
62  
 
 
 
 (2) Given that the majority has expanded the lands 
subject to the public trust doctrine, will there be a 
corresponding 
expansion 
of 
uses 
that 
are 
considered 
“inherent in the exercise of traditional public trust 
uses”? 
That is, given that the public trust now 
encompasses dry land up to at least the “ordinary high 
water mark,” are there new uses of these lands that 
arguably can be connected to traditional public trust uses? 
(3) Given that there are always more members of the 
public who may wish to use a property in a particular 
manner than there are property owners, what permanent 
protections exist to ensure that the Department of Natural 
Resources, as a political institution, will not seize upon 
the vagueness and lack of definition of the majority 
opinion increasingly to broaden the “public trust” at the 
expense of littoral property rights? 
(4) What are the implications of the majority's 
opinion for the rights of other littoral property owners on 
lakes other than the Great Lakes, whose properties also 
afford access to recreational opportunities for the public? 
(5) Given the majority’s conclusion that “the public 
trust doctrine serves to protect resources,” what are the 
implications of the majority’s opinion for the rights of 
non-littoral property owners, whose properties abut or have 
63  
 
 
 
 
an impact upon state lands used by the public for 
recreational purposes? 
V. 
CONCLUSION 
I would not alter the longstanding status quo in 
Michigan, and I, therefore, dissent. 
The majority has 
altered this status quo by: (1) redefining the lands 
subject to the public trust doctrine on the basis of 
Wisconsin’s definition of the “ordinary high water mark”; 
and (2) holding for the first time that the use of 
unsubmerged 
lands 
is 
permitted 
by 
the 
public 
trust 
doctrine. 
The majority fails to identify any defects in the 
present rules of this state, rules that have endured since 
statehood, that would justify its departure from the 
“water’s edge” principle in favor of unclear rules of its 
own design. 
The present rules have created a reasonable 
and harmonious balance between the rights of the public and 
the rights of littoral property owners. Under these rules, 
the littoral owner’s title follows the shoreline, i.e., 
where the wet sands give way to the dry sands, wherever 
this may be from time to time.  Because the boundary is 
dependent on the natural condition of the Great Lakes, it 
is easily identifiable, thus, creating a practical and 
workable rule. 
The public’s legal right to use private 
64  
 
 
 
 
property along the shores of the Great Lakes should remain, 
as it has always been, within this realm. 
The critical flaw in the majority’s decision making is 
that it creates new law, not on the basis of the millions 
of amicable interactions that occur each year between the 
public and lakefront property owners, but instead on the 
basis of the single aberrational dispute in this case. 
In 
the place of a stable and well-understood law that has 
worked well for more than a century and a half to define 
the rights of the public and littoral property owners and 
to minimize litigation, the majority, in reaction to the 
present dispute, finds it necessary to introduce a range of 
novel concepts into Michigan property law. 
Apart from 
lacking any basis in present Michigan law, these concepts 
are essentially undecipherable. 
Thus, in an area of the 
law in which stability and clarity are paramount, the 
majority offers rules that are obscure and that will be 
subject to evolving definition by environmental regulatory 
agencies. 
Almost 
certainly, 
these 
new 
rules, 
in 
conjunction with the majority’s disinclination to define 
the critical aspects of these rules, will lead to an 
escalation in the number of disputes between members of the 
public and property owners along the Great Lakes. 
In the 
65  
 
 
                     
 
 
  
place of harmony, there will be litigation.53  In the place 
of unobstructed beachfront, there will be fences. 
Five 
hundred cases from now, and after the expenditure of 
enormous litigation costs and legal resources, Michigan, if 
it is fortunate, will once again reach the state of 
equilibrium that it enjoys today and that it has enjoyed 
for many decades under current law. 
I would affirm the result of the Court of Appeals, 
reverse that portion of the Court of Appeals opinion giving 
53 In the end, it will not be surprising if the day-to­
day 
rights 
of 
the 
public 
even 
to 
beach-walk--
the 
ostensible triggering concern of this case-- were to be
diminished by the majority’s decision. 
For, in the place
of a rule in which property rights are clearly defined and
protected, and in the place of a regime in which most
littoral property owners have easily accommodated the 
public’s interest in activities such as beach-walking, the
majority creates a far more uncertain rule, one in which
property rights have become more ambiguous and uncertain,
and more subject to political regulation and definition. 
Just as some members of the public are likely to become
more assertive in their claim of a “right” to use the
property of another, so too will some property owners
become more assertive in purporting to “defend” their 
properties from the encroachments of such persons. 
At 
least some of these owners can be expected to assert their
property rights in circumstances where today this has been
thought unnecessary. 
It may well be that a legacy of the
majority opinion is the proliferation of fences along the
beaches of the Great Lakes. Fences and more fences. As a 
result of the majority’s decision to replace clearly 
understood and longstanding rules of private property 
rights with new rules in which the public trust is to be
expanded in an uncertain manner, the rights of both the
public and the property owner will likely become less well
protected. 
66  
 
 
 
 
 
                     
 
the state title to land below the “ordinary high water 
mark,” and reaffirm the longstanding principle of Hilt that 
the littoral property owner’s title extends to unsubmerged 
land and the public’s legal rights under the public trust 
doctrine extend to the submerged lands, including the wet 
sands.54 
Stephen J. Markman 
54 Because I agree with the majority that the GLSLA
does not establish the boundaries of the public trust, I
concur in part II(A) of the majority opinion. 
67