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Monday, December 04, 2006
Law - "The Supreme Court Oral Argument in the Global Warming Case Reveals What's Wrong with the Standing Doctrine" [Updated]
Michael C. Dorf, the Isidore & Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia University, has an interesting article on Findlaw.com's Writ, titled "The Supreme Court Oral Argument in the Global Warming Case Reveals What's Wrong with the Standing Doctrine." The lengthy analysis ends with:
Perhaps most damning of all, the standing doctrine does not even accomplish its stated ends, as Massachusetts v. EPA well illustrates. In order to determine whether the plaintiffs face a particularized and imminent injury that a favorable ruling will likely redress, the Justices must grapple with a key question the standing doctrine supposedly avoids: whether, and to what extent, the EPA's failure to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles contributes to global warming. The Court's energy would be better spent addressing the merits of the case directly.More on the global warming case, Mass. v. EPA, here.The Court's rigid standing doctrine simply gets in the way of addressing the real issues. When it comes to global warming, we have had far too much of that approach already.
[Updated 12/5/06] See also this article yesterday, "Global Warming: Time For A Court Order," by Stuart Taylor Jr. of the National Journal.. A quote:
The administration's third escape hatch is its argument that even if EPA is violating the Clean Air Act, the justices are powerless to do anything about it. Rather, they must dismiss the lawsuit because no plaintiff is sufficiently harmed by EPA's inaction to confer legal standing to sue.This is the issue on which the justices split most visibly during the oral argument. Three conservatives supported the administration's no-standing position, seeming at times almost to suggest that only proof of imminent cataclysm would persuade them. (Clarence Thomas was silent, as usual.) The four liberals disputed the no-standing position. Justice Kennedy's comments and questions were hard to read.
The liberals have the better of the argument.
The crux of EPA's no-standing position is that U.S. motor vehicle emissions are such a small fraction (6 percent) of worldwide greenhouse-gas emissions that restrictions would do Massachusetts and other plaintiffs very little good.
It follows, says EPA, that its refusal to restrict emissions does the plaintiffs very little harm.
This may be true. But U.S. motor vehicle and power-plant emissions together come to 16 percent of worldwide greenhouse-gas emissions. And Supreme Court precedents hold that a showing of some harm to plaintiffs -- even very little harm -- is enough to confer standing. Massachusetts, for example, plausibly argues that it is already losing land to rising sea levels.
"They don't have to show that it [EPA regulation] will stop global warming," as Justice David Souter stressed. "Their point is that ... it will reduce the degree of global warming and reduce the degree of coastal loss." This should be enough to establish standing.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 4, 2006 07:43 AM
Posted to Courts in general | Environment | General Law Related