The Governance Role of Local Authorities in Marine Spatial Planning: a Legal Assessment of Prospects and Problems

In the northeastern United States, marine spatial planning requires the integration of local authorities and their concerns, yet the precise manner and degree of their involvement is unknown. Our research will employ well-established methods of legal and public policy analysis to examine judicial opinions, statutes and bylaws to determine how the marine interests of state, local and federal agencies have evolved in the seven Northeastern states. We anticipate that local, state and federal authority-sharing relationships will be shown to differ; by examining the history of the development of particular authority-sharing arrangements, we will determine and classify the influencing factors. We believe that this classification will facilitate identification of distinguishing local-authority characteristics helpful in fashioning or revising shared marine management systems.