As most of you are no doubt aware, this past fall, protestors gathered near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to oppose the proposed Dakota Access pipeline, which has been designed to carry oil out of the prolific Bakken fields in western North Dakota.

In November, two MCBA members—Larry Bragman and Ford Greene—travelled to North Dakota to join the protests and consult with the Sioux about legal issues and what might be done to stop the pipeline from being built. The link below takes you to a Marin Independent Journal article about Larry and Ford’s trip.

The Sioux are concerned that the pipeline passes underneath a source of drinking water for them and that it disturbs sacred ground. The article very briefly mentions a couple of the legal issues Larry and Ford discovered. Since the article was written, the Army Corps of Engineers has suspended one of the permits it granted for the pipeline pending further review, which not surprisingly has caused other legal developments.

We invited Larry and Ford to write an article for our February issue to highlight the most significant and/or interesting legal and political issues underlying the dispute, including the most recent actions. The Marin IJ article provides an overview.

We hope you’ll enjoy learning more about the legal issues of a front-page news event next month. We recognize that some members may support the completion of the pipeline and the MCBA is not endorsing any point of view about the dispute. Larry and Ford are obviously aligned on one side of it and we feel privileged to learn more about such a prominent national dispute from two members involved with it. We welcome opposing points of view.