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Podcast: New Books in Law
Episode: Colin Jerolmack, "Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town" (Princeton UP, 2021)
Description: Up to Heaven and Down to Hell (Princeton UP, 2021) is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet--whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the very land beneath our feet--is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent.The United States is the only country in the world where property rights commonly extend up to heaven and down to hell, which means that landowners have the exclusive right to lease their subsurface mineral estates t...