June 30, 2011, Lakewood, CO
08:51:29, hours MDT
...continued hiker’s journal…
08:51:29, hours MDT
...continued hiker’s journal…
http://supreme.justia.com/us/405/727/case.html
U.S. Supreme Court
Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972)
Sierra Club v. Morton
No. 70-34
Argued November 17, 1971
Decided April 19, 1972
405 U.S. 727
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT Syllabus
Petitioner, a membership corporation with "a special interest in the conservation and sound maintenance of the national parks, game refuges, and forests of the country," brought this suit for a declaratory judgment and an injunction to restrain federal officials from approving an extensive skiing development in the Mineral King Valley in the Sequoia National Forest. Petitioner relies on § 10 of the Administrative Procedure Act, which accords judicial review to a
"person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or [who is] adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute."
On the theory that this was a "public" action involving questions as to the use of natural resources, petitioner did not allege that the challenged development would affect the club or its members in their activities, or that they used Mineral King, but maintained that the project would adversely change the area's aesthetics and ecology. The District Court granted a preliminary injunction. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the club lacked standing, and had not shown irreparable injury.
Held: A person has standing to seek judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act only if he can show that he himself has suffered or will suffer injury, whether economic or otherwise. In this case, where petitioner asserted no individualized harm to itself or its members, it lacked standing to maintain the action. Pp.
405 U. S. 731-741. 433 F.2d 24, affirmed.
STEWART, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and WHITE and MARSHALL, JJ., joined.
DOUGLAS, J., post, p. 405 U. S. 741, BRENNAN, J., post, p. 405 U. S. 755, and BLACKMUN, J., post, p. 405 U. S. 755, filed dissenting opinions. POWELL and REHNQUIST, JJ., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. Page 405 U. S. 728
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting. I share the views of my Brother BLACKMUN, and would reverse the judgment below.
The critical question of "standing" [Footnote 2/1] 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
Page 405 U. S. 742
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, 45 S.Cal.L.Rev. 450 (1972). This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.
Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. [Footnote 2/2] The corporation sole -- a creature of ecclesiastical law -- is an acceptable adversary, and large fortunes ride on its cases. [Footnote 2/3] The ordinary corporation is a "person" for purposes of the adjudicatory processes,
Page 405 U. S. 743
whether it represents proprietary, spiritual, aesthetic, or charitable causes. [Footnote 2/4]
So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes -- fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it. Those people who have a meaningful relation to that body of water -- whether it be a fisherman, a canoeist, a zoologist, or a logger -- must be able to speak for the values which the river represents, and which are threatened with destruction.
I do not know Mineral King. I have never seen it, nor traveled it, though I have seen articles describing its proposed "development" [Footnote 2/5] notably Hano, Protectionists vs. recreationists -- The Battle of Mineral King
Justice Douglas
So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes -- fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it. Those people who have a meaningful relation to that body of water -- whether it be a fisherman, a canoeist, a zoologist, or a logger -- must be able to speak for the values which the river represents, and which are threatened with destruction.
I do not know Mineral King. I have never seen it, nor traveled it, though I have seen articles describing its proposed "development" [Footnote 2/5] notably Hano, Protectionists vs. recreationists -- The Battle of Mineral King
Justice Douglas Thank God, this man Douglas made his way into the world whereby his actions did some good.
Thank God for all those naturalists before, during and after his time. The more I read and become informed about the wilderness the more I understand that my philosophy is not so different than these men and women. I am of similar mind in that I have on occasion found the place in which the spirit comes alive and society’s clutch on my wallet and the so called “owned” things are just the trappings of those that are under- initiated.
I found one year on the Kaibab Forest― the elk in rutting season being moved by the coyotes at just about day break. I’ve written about this experience before. Some of you may be familiar.
The long and short was that I heard and listened most of the morning, after midnight, to the bugling and ruffling on the pine needle strewn floor. The floor was hard packed sandy on top of Kaibab limestone, in the ponderosa forest. When the elk sensed me, there was I newly awake and staring, gaping at them. Maybe 25 to 30 of them, sows, yearlings, new borns and a male staring back motionless from approximately 200 yards on the other side of a fire line in those trees alike as the tree stand I awoke from.
They appeared single-file with bodies facing east and all heads turned south toward me. They may have been aware of this tent with me in it and certainly heard my noise as I made my way to my feet. It was one of those moments which some of you are altogether familiar with.
A coyote barked and they set in motion at a full- gallop after maybe 5 seemingly endless minutes. Single file; I could feel the reverberation of their hoof beats on the forest floor, the birds stilled from their raucousness and it seemed as though the sun- up waited in this moment.
I observed the spectacle that the tourists, just 15 miles away sleeping in their over- night accommodations, had no idea was unfolding. I was awed by the resoluteness of the solitude and the noisy silence of the thumping of their legs on the ground. I could feel the resonance up in my chest cavity.
This experience along with others similar has solidified, deep inside me, the draw to those unpredictable experiences such as this.
No amount of Whole Food advertised gluten- free bargains can fill this God- like spiritual moment. Some of you know the feeling, know this sentiment, Right?
Thank God for all those naturalists before, during and after his time. The more I read and become informed about the wilderness the more I understand that my philosophy is not so different than these men and women. I am of similar mind in that I have on occasion found the place in which the spirit comes alive and society’s clutch on my wallet and the so called “owned” things are just the trappings of those that are under- initiated.
I found one year on the Kaibab Forest― the elk in rutting season being moved by the coyotes at just about day break. I’ve written about this experience before. Some of you may be familiar.
The long and short was that I heard and listened most of the morning, after midnight, to the bugling and ruffling on the pine needle strewn floor. The floor was hard packed sandy on top of Kaibab limestone, in the ponderosa forest. When the elk sensed me, there was I newly awake and staring, gaping at them. Maybe 25 to 30 of them, sows, yearlings, new borns and a male staring back motionless from approximately 200 yards on the other side of a fire line in those trees alike as the tree stand I awoke from.
They appeared single-file with bodies facing east and all heads turned south toward me. They may have been aware of this tent with me in it and certainly heard my noise as I made my way to my feet. It was one of those moments which some of you are altogether familiar with.
A coyote barked and they set in motion at a full- gallop after maybe 5 seemingly endless minutes. Single file; I could feel the reverberation of their hoof beats on the forest floor, the birds stilled from their raucousness and it seemed as though the sun- up waited in this moment.
I observed the spectacle that the tourists, just 15 miles away sleeping in their over- night accommodations, had no idea was unfolding. I was awed by the resoluteness of the solitude and the noisy silence of the thumping of their legs on the ground. I could feel the resonance up in my chest cavity.
This experience along with others similar has solidified, deep inside me, the draw to those unpredictable experiences such as this.
No amount of Whole Food advertised gluten- free bargains can fill this God- like spiritual moment. Some of you know the feeling, know this sentiment, Right?
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