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The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition

Document 118: Sierra Club v. Morton (1972)

Not long after Christopher Stone published his essay on the legal rights of natural objects see [Document 117], William O. Douglas reinforced the idea in a dissenting opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court case Sierra Club v. Morton. Douglas, who served as an associate justice on the highest court for more than thirty-five years, was an avid naturalist and aggressive advocate for wilderness preservation. The defendant was Rogers Morton, secretary of Interior in the Nixon administration.

A. The Supreme Court Decision

Action by membership corporation [Sierra Club] for declaratory judgment that construction of proposed ski resort and recreation area in national game refuge and forest would contravene federal laws and for preliminary and permanent injunctions restraining federal officials from approving or issuing permits for the project. . . . The Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Stewart [author of the affirming opinion], held that, in absence of allegation that corporation or its members would be affected in any of their activities or pastimes by the proposed project, the corporation, which claimed special interest in conservation of natural game refuges and forests, lacked standing under Administrative Procedure Act to maintain the action.

B. William O. Douglas’s Minority Opinion

The critical question of “standing” would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation. See Stone, Should Trees Have Standing?—Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects [see Document 117]. This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.

Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. . . . The ordinary corporation is a “person” for purposes of the adjudicatory processes, whether it represents proprietary, spiritual, aesthetic or charitable causes.

* * *

Mineral King is doubtless like other wonders of the Sierra Nevada such as Tuolumne Meadows and the John Muir Trail. Those who hike it, fish it, hunt it, camp in it, frequent it, or visit it merely to sit in solitude and wonderment are legitimate spokesmen for it, whether they may be few or many. Those who have that intimate relation with the inanimate object about to be injured, polluted, or otherwise despoiled are its legitimate spokesmen.

. . . [T]he problem is to make certain that the inanimate objects, which are the very core of America’s beauty, have spokesmen before they are destroyed. It is, of course, true that most of them are under the control of a federal or state agency. The standards given those agencies are usually expressed in terms of the “public interest.” Yet “public interest” has so many differing shades of meaning as to be quite meaningless on the environmental front. Congress accordingly has adopted ecological standards in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 [see Document 111] . . . and guidelines for agency action have been provided by the Council on Environmental Quality. . . .

Yet the pressures on agencies for favorable action one way or the other are enormous. The suggestion that Congress can stop action which is undesirable is true in theory; yet even Congress is too remote to give meaningful direction and its machinery is too ponderous to use very often. The federal agencies of which I speak are not venal or corrupt. But they are notoriously under the control of powerful interests who manipulate them through advisory committees, or friendly working relations, or who have that natural affinity with the agency which in time develops between the regulator and the regulated. As early as 1894, Attorney General [Richard] Olney predicted that regulatory agencies might become “industry-minded.” . . .

Years later a court of appeals observed “the recurring question which has plagued public regulation of industry [is] whether the regulatory agency is unduly oriented toward the interests of the industry it is designed to regulate, rather than the public interest it is designed to protect.” . . .

The Forest Service—one of the federal agencies behind the scheme to despoil Mineral King—has been notorious for its alignment with lumber companies, although its mandate from Congress directs it to consider the various aspects of multiple use in its supervision of the national forests.

The voice of the inanimate object, therefore, should not be stilled. That does not mean that the judiciary takes over the managerial functions from the federal agency. It merely means that before these priceless bits of Americana (such as a valley, an alpine meadow, a river, or a lake) are forever lost or are so transformed as to be reduced to the eventual rubble of our urban environment, the voice of the existing beneficiaries of these environmental wonders should be heard.

Perhaps they will not win. Perhaps the bulldozers of “progress” will plow under all the aesthetic wonders of this beautiful land. That is not the present question. The sole question is who has standing to be heard?

Those who hike the Appalachian Trail into Sunfish Pond, New Jersey, and camp or sleep there, or run the Allagash in Maine, or climb the Guadalupes in West Texas, or who canoe and portage the Quetico Superior in Minnesota, certainly should have standing to defend those natural wonders before courts or agencies, though they live 3,000 miles away. Those who merely are caught up in environmental news or propaganda and flock to defend these waters or areas may be treated differently. That is why these environmental issues should be tendered by the inanimate object itself. Then there will be assurances that all of the forms of life which it represents will stand before the court—the pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the lemmings as well as the trout in the streams. Those inarticulate members of the ecological group cannot speak. But those people who have so frequented the place as to know its values and wonders will be able to speak for the entire ecological community.

Source: Supreme Court Reporter, 768; 92 Supreme Court 1361 (1972), pp. 1361, 1369-71, 1374-75.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Document 118: Sierra Club V. Morton (1972)." The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, edited by Peninah Neimark & Peter Rhoades Mott, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0128.
APA 7th
Document 118: Sierra Club v. Morton (1972). The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, In P. Neimark & P. R. Mott (Eds.), Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0128.
CMOS 17th
"Document 118: Sierra Club V. Morton (1972)." The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, Edited by Peninah Neimark & Peter Rhoades Mott. Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0128.