Re: Public Trust: Legal Tool
From: Scott Jackson (sjackzen46gmail.com)
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2015 12:10:34 -0800 (PST)
Thanks for the post, Susu. I checked out the book at Amazon.com - it looks
excellent, if pricey. Perhaps it would be an appropriate text for the book
club. I also checked out the links. I like the idea of a 'children's
climate crusade' in the Twin Cities and Minnesota.

Scott Jackson
sjackzen46 [at] gmail.com

On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 1:04 PM, Susu <susujeffrey [at] msn.com> wrote:

>   Coldwater Journal
>
> January 2015
>
> Public Trust Doctrine: People's Inalienable Right
>
>
>
> *Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age* is a book by
> Mary Christina Wood a legal scholar who traces this public trust doctrine
> all the way back to ancient Rome.
>
>
>
> Government is a trustee of the resources that support our public welfare
> and survival. In the case of the public trust, the beneficiaries are the
> present and future generations of citizens.
>
>
>
>   Ding! Ding! Ding! This is a precedent!
>
> In fact, this was articulated by the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania
> Supreme Court in a landmark public trust decision in 2013. And the decision
> basically overturned a statute that the Pennsylvania Legislature had passed
> to promote fracking.
>
>
>
> The Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Chief Justice
> Castille, said this violates the public trust. He began his opinion by
> saying that citizens hold inalienable environmental rights to assure the
> habitability of their communities.
>
>
>
> These rights are ensconced in the social contract that citizens make with
> government. They are inherent and reserved. So they are of a constitutional
> nature. And the point of the public trust is that the citizens hold these
> constitutional rights in an enduring natural endowment that is supposed to
> support all future generations of citizens in this country.
>
> This is so basic to democracy, in fact, the late Joseph Sax (environmental
> legal pioneer,
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/us/joseph-l-sax-who-pioneered-legal-protections-for-natural-resources-dies-at-78.html?_r=0)
> said the trust distinguishes a society of citizens from serfs.
>
>
>
> The public trust doctrine is not just an environmental issue. This is a
> civilizational issue.
>
>
>
> Excerpted from a Bill Moyers program. Please see:
>
>
> http://www.alternet.org/environment/bill-moyers-ingenious-project-save-our-climate-using-ancient-legal-theory
>
>
>
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