Environmentalism and the Supreme Court: A Cultural Analysis

摘要

In SCRAP I and Overtoil Park, decided early in the environmental movement, the Court seemed poised to embrace the mood of the movement and advance its tenets. But that embrace was short-lived. The Court has since distanced itself and adopted a more neutral and sometimes skeptical stance. In cases as doctrinally diverse as Defenders, SWANCC, Lucas, New York v. United States, and Lyng the Court rejected interpretations that would have incorporated beliefs and values of the NEP in favor of interpretations that reasserted opposing beliefs and values of the DSP. In TVA, while adopting the environmentalist interpretation, the Court's opinion disparaged the outcome. Other decisions such as Laidlaw, Sweet Home, and ATA have countered the tone of resistance to environmentalist tenets that one detects in these cases, but even these more sympathetic rulings lack a strong environmental voice. Thus, invoking the dialectical model, we might characterize the present synthesis as one of accommodation of environmentalist beliefs and values expressed in legislation and regulatory action, but tempered significantly by continuing allegiance to the competing beliefs and values of the DSP.