The New York Times reported on April 2, 2007 that the United States Supreme Court had made some significant rulings from the bench on environmental law. Even in the nine months since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the first case, the Times reported that Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 05-1120, and accelerating since the elections in November, there has been a growing interest among industry groups in working with environmental organizations on proposals for automobile emissions limits.
Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the main industry trade group, said in response to the decision that the alliance “looks forward to working constructively with both Congress and the administration” in addressing the issue. “This decision says that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be part of this process,” Mr. McCurdy said. If the decision sowed widespread claims of victory, it left behind a prominent loser: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who argued vigorously in a dissenting opinion that the court never should have reached the merits of the case or addressed the question of the agency’s legal obligations.
His dissent, which Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. also signed, focused solely on the issue of legal standing to sue: whether the broad coalition of states, cities and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit against the environmental agency four years ago should have been accepted as plaintiffs in the first place.
This was the issue on which the coalition’s lawsuit had appeared most vulnerable, given that in recent years the Supreme Court has steadily raised the barrier to standing, especially in environmental cases. Justice Scalia has long been a leader in that effort, and Chief Justice Roberts made clear that, as his statements and actions in his pre-judicial career indicated, he is fully aboard Justice Scalia’s project.
Chief Justice Roberts said the court should not have found that Massachusetts or any of the other plaintiffs had standing. The finding “has caused us to transgress the proper — and properly limited — role of the courts in a democratic society,” he said, quoting from a 1984 decision. And, quoting from a decision Justice Scalia wrote in 1992, he said, “This court’s standing jurisprudence simply recognizes that redress of grievances of the sort at issue here is the function of Congress and the chief executive, not the federal courts.”
www.suntreksolar.com
www.celebrityphotola.com
No comments:
Post a Comment