The Availability of State Environmental Citizen Suits (original) (raw)
Related papers
1997
Citizen suits under the Clean Water Act' are more prevalent than those filed under any other federal environmental law that authorizes citizen suits.2 Not surprisingly, one of the most important cases in environmental citizen suit jurisprudence, Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Found., Inc.,3 arose in a Clean Water Act citizen suit. The Supreme Court's decision in Gwaltney is perhaps the most extensively analyzed yet most frequently misunderstood standard in citizen suit jurisprudence under federal environmental laws. Ten years after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Gwaltney, federal courts continue to struggle to ascertain the scope and applicability of the Gwaltney standard. In Gwaltney, the Supreme Court held that subject matter jurisdiction does not attach for wholly past violations of National Pollutant Discharge Elimina
NOW MORE THAN EVER: TRENDS IN ENVIRONMENTAL CITIZEN SUITS AT 30
2003
This article surveys and analyses trends in the astonishing arena of environmental citizen suits. Environmental citizen suits matter. Borne in a fulcrum of necessity due to inadequate resources and resolve, and borrowing a bit from common law qui tam without the bounty, Congress has experimented by providing citizens the remarkable authority to file federal lawsuits as "private attorneys general" to enforce many of the nation's environmental laws. And enforce they do. Despite ever more cascading burdens respecting notice, jurisdiction, preclusion, actions against EPA and third parties, remedies, SEPs and attorney fees, there are more reported environmental citizen suits than ever. On average, citizens send more than one notice of intent to sue a day, and file more than one lawsuit a week. These efforts help advance the rule of law and keep agencies honest. But there are signs citizen suits are needed now more than ever. EPA is referring fewer cases to DOJ. Trend data shows EPA civil judicial settlement, the value of injunctive relief, judicial and administrative penalties, and SEP values are in overall decline. Even without these considerations, environmental enforcement is losing ground. This article concludes by explaining the need and worth of environmental citizen suits.
Opportunity to utilize the citizen lawsuit mechanism for environmental protection
E3S web of conferences, 2022
Citizen lawsuits have become an adequate mechanism to control government actions related to environmental issues. The dynamics of citizen lawsuit decisions are developing positively, but behind the absence of regulation, the pattern of decisions is highly dependent on judicial activism. Meanwhile, constitutional guarantees only sometimes make the Government improve to manage responsibilities in environmental management. This paper uses normative legal research methods. A citizen lawsuit with an environmental aspect is a form of environmental right that includes access to information, the right to participate, and access to justice. Public distrust of the Government in environmental governance is manifested in civil lawsuits as a form of citizen control over government actions. Public trust finally transferred to the judiciary with a breakthrough in the citizen lawsuit mechanism based on judicial activism. This evidence can be seen from the characteristics of the Judge's decision that have led to something constructive in environmental management by assessing that the Government and the Defendants have committed acts against the law. However, it has not explicitly used rights-based arguments and the principle of intergenerational justice in the environment and natural resource conflicts.
Emerging State-Level Environmental Justice Laws
2021
Environmental justice (EJ) has grown in prominence in the political discourse in the last several years While most of the attention has gone to federal actions, several states have just adopted their own laws to advance EJ. The basic idea behind EJ is that disadvantaged communities should not be disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards, that these communities should have a say in the actions that affect their environment, and that the environmental laws should be vigorously enforced there
2018
Pennsylvania voters overwhelmingly added environmental rights to the other rights protected by the state constitution in 1971 at the height of the modern environmental movement. In two cases decided shortly thereafter, however, state courts essentially buried the amendment, most prominently with a judicially invented test that served as a substitute for the text. In 2017, in Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation v. Commonwealth, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the text of the amendment, Article I, Section 27, provides the legal basis for deciding environmental rights claims, not the judicially invented test. For many lawyers, judges, and citizens, the change is so dramatic that it is as if Article I, Section 27 was adopted in 2017. This Article describes the background of this landmark case, including the cases in which the Pennsylvania courts put the Environmental Rights Amendment into a state of near dormancy for more than four decades. After briefly reviewing Robinson Township, it then reviews each of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s opinions in PEDF. It then addresses a variety of issues about the interpretation and application of Section 27 after PEDF. This article also explains how this case is adding momentum to the growing use of constitutional environmental amendments in other states and countries.
The Future of Environmental Rule of Law Litigation (2000 Garrison Lecture)
Pace Environmental Law Review, 2002
I. Introduction: Environmental Law as Litigation What is environmental law? There is no easy answer to this simple but complex question. The most common answer is that environmental law consists of the regulatory programs that have been enacted by Congress and the states since 1969 and the cases interpreting those statutes and regulations. A slightly more expansive answer includes post-New Deal administrative law of increased citizen access to the courts and heightened judicial scrutiny of resource allocation decisions, and common law tort remedies for pollution damage. Put differently, environmental law could be defined as the law found in the standard law school casebooks. 1 These are correct, but ultimately unsatisfactory answers because the mass of statutes, administrative regulations,