I agree with the Colorado River lawsuit, seeking standing for an entire river ecosystem. Justice William O. Douglas agreed in dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Sierra_Club_v._Morton/Dissent_Douglas
Corporations Have Rights. Why Not Rivers?
By JULIE TURKEWITZSEPT. 26, 2017
Continue reading the main storyShare This Page
Photo
DENVER — Does a river — or a plant, or a forest — have rights?
This is the essential question in what attorneys are calling a first-of-its-kind federal lawsuit, in which a Denver lawyer and a far-left environmental group are asking a judge to recognize the Colorado River as a person.
If successful, it could upend environmental law, possibly allowing the redwood forests, the Rocky Mountains or the deserts of Nevada to sue individuals, corporations and governments over resource pollution or depletion. Future lawsuits in its mold might seek to block pipelines, golf courses or housing developments and force everyone from agriculture executives to mayors to rethink how they treat the environment.
Several environmental law experts said the suit had a slim chance at best. “I don’t think it’s laughable,” said Reed Benson, chairman of the environmental law program at the University of New Mexico. “But I think it’s a long shot in more ways than one.”
The suit was filed Monday in Federal District Court in Colorado by Jason Flores-Williams, a Denver lawyer. It names the river ecosystem as the plaintiff — citing no specific physical boundaries — and seeks to hold the state of Colorado and Gov. John Hickenlooper liable for violating the river’s “right to exist, flourish, regenerate, be restored, and naturally evolve.”
Because the river cannot appear in court, a group called Deep Green Resistance is filing the suit as an ally, or so-called next friend, of the waterway.
If a corporation has rights, the authors argue, so, too, should an ancient waterway that has sustained human life for as long as it has existed in the Western United States. The lawsuit claims the state violated the river’s right to flourish by polluting and draining it and threatening endangered species. The claim cites several nations whose courts or governments have recognized some rights for natural entities.
The lawsuit drew immediate criticism from conservative lawmakers, who called it ridiculous. “I think we can all agree rivers and trees are not people,” said Senator Steve Daines of Montana. “Radical obstructionists who contort common sense with this sort of nonsense undercut credible conservationists.”
The office of Mr. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, declined to comment.
The lawsuit comes as hurricanes and wildfires in recent weeks have left communities across the country devastated, intensifying the debate over how humans should treat the earth in the face of global climate change.
Mr. Flores-Williams characterized the suit as an attempt to level the playing field as rivers and forests battle human exploitation. As it stands, he said, “the ultimate disparity exists between entities that are using nature and nature itself.”
Imbuing rivers with the right to sue, he argued, would force humans to take care of the water and trees they need to survive — or face penalties. “It’s not pie in the sky,” he said of the lawsuit. “It’s pragmatic.”
Jody Freeman, director of Harvard’s environmental law program, said Mr. Flores would face an uphill battle.
“Courts have wrestled with the idea of granting animals standing,” she wrote in an email. “It would be an even further stretch to confer standing directly on rivers, mountains and forests.”
The idea of giving nature legal rights, however, is not new. It dates to at least 1972, when a lawyer, Christopher Stone, wrote an article titled ]“Should Trees Have Standing?”
Mr. Stone had hoped to influence a Supreme Court case in which the Sierra Club wanted to block a ski resort in the Sierras. The environmental group lost.
“But Justice William Douglas had read Stone’s article,” Ms. Freeman wrote, “and in his famous dissent, he embraced the view advocated by Stone: that natural objects should be recognized as legal parties, which could be represented by humans, who could sue on their behalf.”
That view has never attracted support in the court. But it has had some success abroad.
In Ecuador, the constitution now now declares that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.” In New Zealand, officials declared in March that a river used by the Maori tribe of Whanganui in the North Island to be a legal person that can sue if it is harmed. A court in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand has called the Ganges and its main tributary, the Yamuna, to be living human entities.
The Colorado River cuts through or along seven Western states and supplies water to approximately 36 million people, including residents of Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego and Los Angeles. It also feeds millions of acres of farmland.
It is as famous for its power and beauty as it is for overuse. Scientists expect that increased temperatures brought on by climate change will cause it to shrink further, leaving many people anxious about its future.
Mr. Flores-Williams is a criminal defense lawyer known for suing the city of Denver over its treatment of homeless people. Deep Green Resistance believes that the mainstream environmental movement has been ineffective, and that industrial civilization is fundamentally destructive to life on earth. The group’s task, according to its website, is to create “a resistance movement that will dismantle industrial civilization by any means necessary.”
Mr. Flores-Williams responded to criticism that his argument, if successful, would allow pebbles to sue the people who step on them.
“Does every pebble in the world now have standing?” he said. “Absolutely not, that’s ridiculous.”
“We’re not interested in preserving pebbles,” he added. “We’re interested in preserving the dynamic systems that exist in the ecosystem upon which we depend.”
Doris Burke contributed research.
A version of this article appears in print on September 27, 2017, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Plaintiff in Federal Lawsuit Over a Violation of Rights Is the Colorado River.
5 comments:
Corporations should not have personhood status.
This lawsuit, laudable in intent, only serves to further validate the xtrevilist privatization corporate ruse.
Sadly, that ship already sailed in 1886. Even though never briefed or argued, the reporter of decisions in the Santa Clara County case dismissed the argument that corporations were not jural persons under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Filing this lawsuit has none of the pernicious effects that you infer. Its point is that a river is an ecosystem entitled to legal standing through its next friend, an environmental group. Completely different issue from corporate personhood. Click link and read WOD's dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton.
Ed said: "Completely different issue from corporate personhood."
It is the exact same issue Ed, we have a corrupt scam 'rule of law' replete with an overabundance of bought and paid for by the immoral xtrevilist wealthy elite case law. The corruption is the issue.
That corporate personhood which you so casually dismiss as sad is in great part responsible for mountains of other bought and paid for 'case law' that contributes to the two tier joke that the scam 'rule of law' has become. Fat cat, grossly overpaid lawyers, who are no more than an expensive administrative tax on the public that serve in reality to validate and justify the corruption with their attention, should be required to wear jester hats and clown suits.
Case law is the ratchet of evil that compounds and elevates immorality in the scam 'rule of law' and pushes it into this fight fire with fire fantasy zone. The whole issue of standing is another ambiguous and arbitrary divisive farce aberration.
When you sit down at a known crooked card table, regardless of the purity of your motives, you will, and you do, deserve to lose.
Keep on pretending...
Warren, you're all wet.
I have argued passionately against corporate crime, and other pernicious evils. And with some stunning results, some people seem to think.
"So casually dismiss?" Dude, that's soooo condescending. How trite.
While it would be nice to amend the Constitution to change corporate personhood, that's not likely to happen.
When I said, "that ship has already sailed," it's because that's a true statement.
You remind me of the Wisconsin Avenue shop proprietor who told four of us Georgetown University students that he'd just heard that Saigon had fallen, on April 30, 1975. I stated, "There goes our empire." He said, in dazed hippy-speak, "Hey man, haven't you learned anything from Vietnam?" In fact, I had, and my statement speaks for the ages -- a truthful statement. He did not hear my words.
Just like my statement about corporate personhood. The law is what the courts will do in fact, as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. stated.
Yes, you conflate legal standing with personhood. Don't fuzz the categories.
And no, I don't think anyone "deserves" anything, and your rodomontade directed at people who would seek to vindicate our rights by resorts to courts is demeaning -- "deserves to lose?"
Really, Warren?
I think I deserve dignity, respect and consideration from you, of all people.
Try tolerance.
Corporate personhood has greater access to legal standing and the courts than the average person who gets corruptly coerced into plea bargaining (over 95%) into a miserable pick pocket oppressive deal, with many becoming life long debt slaves to the corrupt state. Nothing fuzzy about it Ed. It should be called 'wealthy elite standing' rather than 'legal standing'.
The morality in law is a reflection of societal values that ebb and flow over time dependent upon the policy of the controllers of that society at that time. Corporate personhood is clearly in control and is clearly a root cause of the immoral corruption. That you say that changing corporate personhood, created in a deeply immoral trough, is not likely to happen is again dismissive, reflective of the corrupt system and defeatist to boot!
The 'rule of law' is a two tier scam Ed, controlled by corporate personhood — that's a true statement.
When you willingly and knowingly jump off of the edge of the grand canyon you will reap a reward worthy of, fitting of, or suitable for your actions — a 'deserving' reward.
I cut most people some slack because we have been propagandized into a bunch of flag waving TV distracted, vidiots. Deprogramming through honest perception — distilling and saving the best and dissing the rest — is the best one can hope for. The present day scam 'rule of law' does not even make a blip on my 'save'radar.
That you take my comments personally is a reflection of your own viewpoints and indoctrination.
I have great respect for your tenacity and courage in confronting the powers that be and exposing their hypocrisy Ed.
We differ in our remedial beliefs. I am not one to beseech the fox for redress of grievances, especially when the uncivil and disrespectful fox needs instead a good kick in the ass and reprogramming.
There will be no healing until they stop the stealing.
Keep on pretending...
Post a Comment