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1 (February 23, 1999)

handle is hein.crs/crsahba0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Order Code RS20084 February 23, 1999 Right to a Clean Environment Provisions in State Constitutions, and Arguments as to A Federal Counterpart Robert Meltz Legislative Attorney American Law Division Summary The issue arises occasionally whether it might be desirable to amend the U.S. Constitution to add an environmental provision -- such as one declaring an individual right to a clean environment. Some attention was given this issue during the 1970s, when over a dozen states adopted clean environment or other environmentally oriented provisions in their constitutions. Our focus here is solely personal right to a clean environment provisions and the questions they raise. Are they self-executing, or dependent instead on implementing legislation? Do they create private rights of action? If so, on whose behalf, for what remedies, and against what categories of defendants? What is the standard to be enforced, and the level of proof needed to show injury? And so on. All these issues would arise as well were a federal right-to-a-clean-environment provision to be proposed. In addition, a federal provision would implicate federalism concerns if its scope exceeded that of the Commerce Clause. From time to time, the issue arises whether it might be desirable to amend the U.S. Constitution to add some sort of environmental provision - for example, one declaring an individual right to a clean environment. To be sure, the heyday of this idea was the environmental Seventies, quite some time ago, when two unsuccessful efforts were made in the Congress to accomplish this.' In their wake, efforts to convince courts that there 'According to one writer, Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1968 first proposed such a constitutional amendment -- one that would have recognized the inalienable right of every person to a decent environment. H.R. J. Res. 1321, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968). Two years later, Representative Richard Ottinger made a second, more comprehensive attempt at federal constitutional recognition of such a right. H.R. J. Res. 1205, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. (1970). Mary E. Cusack, Judicial Interpretation of State Constitutional Rights to a Healthful Environment, 20 B.C. Envtl. Affairs L. Rev. 173, 175-176 (1993). Congressional Research Service + The Library of Congress CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web

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