All that follows was too good to be left in the combox:
Karen, the other day you had a post about animals being able to sue. Guess
what? Someone in the Obama administration wants TREES to have the legal
right to sue!
Details here, copied from NRO:
Root and Branch Environmentalist [Jonah Goldberg]
Oh happy day:
In the 70s, Obama's Science Adviser Endorsed Giving Trees Legal Standing to Sue in Court
(CNSNews.com)Since the 1970s, some radical environmentalists have argued that trees have legal rights and should be allowed to go to court to protect those rights.
The idea has been endorsed by John P. Holdren, the man who now advises President Barack Obama on science and technology issues.
Giving “natural objects” — like trees — standing to sue in a court of law would have a “most salubrious” effect on the environment, Holdren wrote the 1970s.
“One change in (legal) notions that would have a most salubrious effect on the quality of the environment has been proposed by law professor Christopher D. Stone in his celebrated monograph, ‘Should Trees Have Standing?’” Holdren said in a 1977 book that he co-wrote with Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich.
“In that tightly reasoned essay, Stone points out the obvious advantages of giving natural objects standing, just as such inanimate objects as corporations, trusts, and ships are now held to have legal rights and duties,” Holdren added.
According to Holdren and the Ehrlichs, the notion of legal standing for inanimate objects would not be as unprecedented as it might sound. “The legal machinery and the basic legal notions needed to control pollution are already in existence,” they wrote.
“Slight changes in the legal notions and diligent application of the legal machinery are all that are necessary to induce a great reduction in pollution in the United States,” Holdren added.
Holdren, who is the new director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Obama’s top science advisor, made the comments in the 1977 book “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment.”
Stone’s article — “Should Trees Have Standing?” — which Holdren called a “tightly reasoned essay,” was published in the Southern California Law Review in 1972.
In that article, Stone plainly states: “I am quite seriously proposing that we give legal rights to forests, oceans, rivers and other so-called ‘natural objects’ in the environment—indeed, to the natural environment as a whole.”
Update: From a reader:
I think that I shall always rue...
...the day a tree got rights to sue.
A tree whose hungry lawyer's plea
Is filed on a contingency
A tree that reads the Volokh blog
And wonders if she becomes a log...
...can her saplings file as her survivors
for harms and torts of reasons diverse?
Joyce Kilmer would be so happy
Please approach the bench.
Oh, you are the bench.
Karen Hall's new hit series:
A TREE SUES IN BROOKLYN
Also, I have a mental image of the courtroom when the tree sues a dog for emotional distress when dog uses tree for a public restroom. Dog's defense? Historic easement.
Fun times.
It gets worse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ss_0BivCBk
Posted by: (Monrovia) Anne | July 31, 2009 at 02:51 AM
This should please elm to no end.
Posted by: joe | July 31, 2009 at 09:04 AM
As a former unborn baby (60 years ago . . .), I endorse giving unborn babies legal standing to sue in court.
Who's with me?
Posted by: T. Shaw | July 31, 2009 at 12:04 PM
Well, first we'd have to determine what KIND of unborn baby. For instance, if your parents have painted the nursery and can't wait to see you and a robber comes in and shoots your mother in the stomach and you die, you are indeed a person with rights and he will be charged with your murder.
If, on the other hand, your mother had a one night stand with an ex boyfriend and didn't anticipate you and finds you grossly inconvenient, then you are a blob of tissue and killing you is not a problem.
Once someone can explain that one to me, I will be able to better advise you as to whether or not the hypothetical unborn baby has the right to sue.
Other than that, yours is a very good point.
Posted by: Karen | July 31, 2009 at 12:29 PM
Please, please when you walk in the woods, be careful to step around the acorns. They are trees in disguise.
Posted by: elm | July 31, 2009 at 04:23 PM
You mean UNBORN trees, no?
Posted by: joe | July 31, 2009 at 04:31 PM
Hey, I just lost 11 trees to the 2009 ice storm in Kentucky. Can I sue nature for the untimely death on behalf of my most beloved yard trees? Will Obama subsidize the effort to pay me for losses if I win the case, say for instance if mother nature doesn't even show up and I win by default judgement?
Posted by: Jason Cunningham | August 09, 2009 at 04:52 PM
Spirits are talking here. Natural way of nature communicating.
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