Environmental Law
Earth Day 'Reflections' from 1972 ABA Journal archives
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On this Earth Day, we bring to you a poem from our archives.
The poem is in response to a dissent by Justice William O. Douglas in the seminal environmental standing case Sierra Club v. Morton. It was published in the August, 1972, American Bar Association Journal, and was penned by California lawyer John Naff.
Specifically, Naff was responding to this line in the Douglas dissent: “Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation.”
Reflections on the Dissent of Douglas J. in Sierra Club v. Morton
–John M. Naff, Jr.
San Mateo, California
If Justice Douglas has his way –
O Come not that dreadful day –
We’ll be sued by lakes and hills
Seeking a redress of ills
Great Mountain peaks of name prestigious
Will suddenly become litigious
Our brooks will babble in the courts,
Seeking damages for torts
How can I rest beneath a tree
If it may soon be suing me?
Or enjoy the playful porpoise
While it’s seeking habeas Corpus?
Every beast within his paws
Will clutch an order to show cause
The Courts besieged on every hand,
Will Crowd with suits by chunks of land.
Ah! But vengeance will be sweet
Since this must be a two-way street.
I’ll promptly sue my neighbor’s tree
For shedding all its leaves on me.
Succeeding in my prosecution
I’ll get my writ of execution.
If ants my picnic cart away,
I’ll sue in trespass d.b.a.
‘Ganst bugs that eat without compunction
I’ll obtain a prompt injunction.
The federal marshals we’ll provide
With tons of strong insecticide.
Since the thing’s entirely fiction,
We’ll pay no heed to jurisdictions;
Who in the world could give a curse
Whether citizenship’s diverse?
Enormous sums at stake must be
For only God can make a tree;
And controversy we will find
From mere litigious state of mind.
We’ll doubtless find a federal question
If our fish get indigestion.
While Douglas hikes his favorite trail
Let all polluters rot in jail.
But ‘fore the Justice brings us all
‘Neath threat of suit by waterfall,
Please tell him that the Muskrat case
Involved one of the human race
And not Ondatra in a fight
Over a riparian right.
We’ll right misdeeds of every board
Regardless of whose ox is gored.
What bearing does tripartite state
Have on the right to litigate?
The Founding Fathers lacked the knowledge
Of ecology as taught in college.
If secretaries fail to heed
Demands of clubs asserting need
To save the world from degradation,
Let there be no deprivation.
We’ll grant the right to litigate
To objects quite inanimate.
The stones against hem will cry out
And get a judgment without doubt.
If courts below should tend to tarry
We’ll slap them down on certiorari
‘Til the day when every towering peak
Gets its First Amendment right to speak,
And secretaries dare not move
Les some boulder disapprove.
Let Nature hold unfettered sway
O’er mere Man who’s made of clay.
“Yours is the Earth” the poet says,
“and everything that’s in’t.”
But if you get a use permit,
Bill Douglass will dissent.
–John M. Naff, Jr.
San Mateo, California
Hat tip: Policy Innovations: “The Rights of Nature: Reconsidered”
