Public Access and the New England Shoreline: Editors' Foreword

In August 1989, the Marine Law Institute and the Maine Law Review cosponsored a symposium, "Moody Beach and Beyond: Public Use and Private Rights in the New England Shoreline," in Portland, Maine, to provide a forum for presentation of ideas regarding public access rights to intertidal lands. The controversy at Moody Beach was the starting point for the discussion, but the conference included papers dealing with public access issues in other states as well. Four of the papers from this symposium are included in this issue of the Maine Law Review. As were the presentations last August, these articles are only a starting point for the discussion of these issues. They cannot provide conclusive answers, but should raise more questions, engender further thought and debate, and, one hopes, suggest possible solutions to these increasingly pressing problems.