8 ms·

Citizens allowed to sue on behalf of Lake Erie when it’s being polluted

116 points by howard941 8y ago

egypturnash 8y ago
Damn, this is awesome.
- mc32 8y ago
  I think it could have been done in a better way avoiding the personhood issue some people have: set up a regional (necessarily international) authority made up of various stakeholders which looks after the interests of the lake.
  - joshAg 8y ago
    But that regional authority would have to be a legal person, too, in order to do anything via the legal system. This doesn't avoid the problem of personhood at all, so much as it changes who/what the nonnatural person actually is. Like, say we did it your way. We make a regional authority that's only raison d'etre is looking after the ecological interests of the lake. That's going to be either some NGO or non-profit or government agency, all of which are considered persons under the law.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      Yes it totally avoids the problem, because the hypothetical authority is made up of people, thus granted (some of) the legal rights of persons.
      - joshAg 8y ago
        Nonnatural persons aren't granted rights under the law because they're made up of people though. In America they're granted those rights because it makes dealing with them much easier. That's it. That's why it's so confusing which rights are reserved only for natural persons and which apply to all persons. https://books.google.com/books?id=4K0CWvR2FNEC&pg=RA1-PA284&dq=whence+do+non+natural+persons+derive+rights&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiD0ZzYrd3gAhU0NH0KHaokDuQQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=whence%20do%20non%20natural%20persons%20derive%20rights&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=4K0CWvR2FNEC&pg=RA1-PA284&... I'm trying to link to the section that starts just barely on the page before "Indeterminacy of the Personhood Designation"
    - comex 8y ago
      But it does avoid the problem of having a legal person that lacks a well-defined intent, which is probably the weirdest aspect of this.
  - egypturnash 8y ago
    I like the personhood issue. If a corporation can be a person for purposes of law, then why shouldn't the resources it wants to exploit be a person for purposes of law as well?
- 8bitsrule 8y ago
  Yep. Another recent example is the The White Earth band of Ojibwe recognition of the Rights of Manoomin (“wild rice”). https://www.nationofchange.org/2019/02/04/the-white-earth-band-of-ojibwe-legally-recognized-the-rights-of-wild-rice-heres-why/ https://www.nationofchange.org/2019/02/04/the-white-earth-ba... Linked article reminds us that 'In 2008, Ecuador and Bolivia both added Rights of Nature clauses to their constitutions.' Not a moment too soon. To protect nature is to protect ourselves and our progeny. The same is true for any corporations in any way dependent on extraction (or as they learned to call it 'harvesting').
Proven 8y ago
Things don't have rights, but I am not surprised - today's clueless voters don't even understands what human rights are. For example, they think they somehow have rights to benefits that cannot realized without restricting or hurting the rights of others. The lake legislation is nonsense. The issue is the lake has no owner (or has a bad owner, the government). If it were private, rest assured people would be sued for damaging the owner's property (lake). If you're not the owner, you have no right to sue somebody for anything related to the lake.
tomatotomato37 8y ago
This seems... abusable. I get that's it's going to be great for the lake and everything, but given the clusterfuck of legal problems that come from corporate entities being given legal rights I'm hesitant about giving it to more entities that aren't actual humans.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  we interact with hundreds if not thousands of entities every day that aren't blood and flesh humans. Government institutions, think tanks, firms, cars, vending machines, internet routers, all of which in many ways are subject to regulation and have specific laws set out for them and whatnot. It's not surprising, because we need to manage all the things we interact with and depend on on a daily basis. Honestly a lake is a pretty trivial and important entity because it's a basic part of human ecosystems. It's going to get a lot more interesting when we're going to have more discussions about chatbots, fake news, and other non-human agents in similar situations.
kartan 8y ago
This is the only way to make companies and governments to pay for externalities. It is the only way to make capitalism work. If people can get profit by making other pay the cost, then there is a perverse incentive for destruction.
- ams6110 8y ago
  I agree in theory. In practice I would see this working like any other class action. Most of the money will go into the pockets of lawyers, with very little left to remedy the actual damages.
  - Loughla 8y ago
    So the question becomes does it matter where the money goes as long as the corporation/individual doing harm is punished sufficiently to dissuade them from future abuse of natural resources?
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  It is a way at least if not the only way but I agree that it is a decent counterforce.
supernova87a 8y ago
This movement is a little stupid, or at best trying to capitalize on headline-grabbing aspects of it that appeal to laymen. In the best case, I would give them credit for using "clickbait"-level tactics to get attention on the real cause to be advocated. Objects, geographic features, even animals, don't have rights of their own. Their protection is advocated for by people, for the benefit of people, under our laws. We fight to protect things like these because we value them as people. They don't have inherent rights. Rights come with responsibilities. It's a person-centric view, but what else do we have in our current system? The Constitution talks about individuals, not objects. I think their time would be better spent advocating for laws that are formulated correctly in the legal framework. Though boring, more effective. I give this low odds of survival in the courts. Why not spend the energy on something that will succeed? This only will leave people disappointed when it gets overturned.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- joshAg 8y ago
  We could say the exact same thing about corporations, too, that you said about objects, geographic features, and animals. The reason it makes sense to treat those things as if they were a natural person under the law is because it allows for natural people to group their common interest into a single legal entity that is separate from any individual member. So, take the lake eerie thing. Sure, you could write a law to protect the lake that focuses on natural people and corporations, but if something happens, say an oil spill or algae bloom, then each individual who thinks they are be affected by it would be bringing suit. in the case of a lake oil spill that's possibly hundreds of separate lawsuits for the exact same incident. Or, the lake could be granted juridical personhood and the law making the same protections could be written based on that personhood. If the same theoretical oil spill or algae bloom happened, there'd only be a single case instead of quite possibly millions. And that doesn't even begin to affect issues of standing and actual harm. If I'm some poor schmuck getting water from downstream of Lake Eerie and there's an algae bloom or oil spill, it's going to have to be massive for me to be able to prove i've actually been harmed by the spill and that the harm is enough to justify the costs of hiring a lawyer. Otherwise whoever caused the spill is going to either get the case dismissed because i can't prove i was actually harmed because of their spill, or they're going to argue that my actual harm is something like 86 cents because that's how much extra it costs for water filtration, so even with treble damages I'm entitled to less than the price of a large drip coffee. And even if you think, well, individuals shouldn't be bringing any sort of suit for something like that, it should instead be via the government, the government itself is just another instance of a non-natural person.
Hamuko 8y ago
I thought the US was the land of the free and that no one could tell you who you could and couldn't sue.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > no one could tell you who you could and couldn't sue Anyone can sue anything. That doesn’t mean the court won’t dismiss it.
Scoundreller 8y ago
Canada has a similar law under the Fisheries Act. You can pursue a private prosecution if you can find a court willing to hear your case. You would get half of the fine (if any). The only problem is that the Crown can take over the case if it wants, so you may lose out on your investment if your case is too good. Other laws let you pursue private prosecutions, but you don’t get a cut, so there’s little incentive.
- ovi256 8y ago
  >private prosecutions Is this another name for civil law suit ?
headcanon 8y ago
As a Michigan resident, I would love it if we were able to create a "council of the Great Lakes", made up of all states that share coastlines with one of the 5 lakes, including Ontario and possibly Quebec, and federal representatives from US and CA. The goal would be to align each political unit with environmental regulations that affect the lakes, since what happens to one inevitably affects the rest, especially the downstream lakes Erie and Ontario. One example would be to prevent things like different regulations between the US side and CA side that allow for barges to dispose of semi-toxic sludge they collect in the CA side of Lake Huron, since they have to clean it properly in the US side per EPA regulations. No citations for the above but I've heard rumors. Even more serious is the underwater Line 5 Oil Pipeline that runs parallel to the Mackinac Bridge. A spill in that region affects the entire region, yet only MI and the Trump-led EPA have any decision power as to what to do about it. Natural bodies transcend political units, and environmental regulations need to do the same, as pessimistic as I am about how realistic that is.
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  It sorta exists: the Canadian/U.S. Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries. And the Great Lakes Fishery Commission: http://www.glfc.org/index.php http://www.glfc.org/index.php
- jt2190 8y ago
  > ... I would love it if we were able to create a "council of the Great Lakes", made up of all states that share coastlines with one of the 5 lakes, including Ontario and possibly Quebec, and federal representatives from US and CA. International Joint Commission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Joint_Commission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Joint_Commissi...
- ahartman00 8y ago
  How about a charter, or compact :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes%E2%80%93Saint_Lawrence_River_Basin_Sustainable_Water_Resources_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes%E2%80%93Saint_Lawr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Charter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Charter
Nasrudith 8y ago
This conception is far saner than other "rights to natrual entity" schemes and I must praise for being theoretically workable and fully consistent with other intangibles in property rights - those can be taken too far but there is a valid purpose to them. Prior "ecological entity rite" proposals I heard were emotional appeals from true believers which sounded superficially good on the surface but made no damn sense. Who exactly can speak for the river with any authority? You say the river wants to be clean and unfished? I say it wants to be pretty and colorful with mine run-off! Those being affected by it have a perfectly solid claim to damages ahead of time and can help bring many parties to the table for nuance.
dontbenebby 8y ago
When you got a fishing license in PA, you used to get a booklet on the bodies of water, with a small table of which you cannot eat the fish from. Now, there's a small table listing the ones that are safe. (Or perhaps there are none nowadays? I haven't had a fishing license in years...) The pollution of Lake Erie is a travesty.
somberi 8y ago
A related read on India's top court reversing the lower court's order which held that Ganges and Yamuna, two of India's well known rivers, have the same rights as humans. https://phys.org/news/2017-07-rivers-rights-humans-india-court.html https://phys.org/news/2017-07-rivers-rights-humans-india-cou...
QuamStiver 8y ago
Why this link can be forbidden for me?

116 points by howard941 8y ago

egypturnash 8y ago

Damn, this is awesome.

mc32 8y ago
I think it could have been done in a better way avoiding the personhood issue some people have: set up a regional (necessarily international) authority made up of various stakeholders which looks after the interests of the lake.
- joshAg 8y ago
  But that regional authority would have to be a legal person, too, in order to do anything via the legal system. This doesn't avoid the problem of personhood at all, so much as it changes who/what the nonnatural person actually is. Like, say we did it your way. We make a regional authority that's only raison d'etre is looking after the ecological interests of the lake. That's going to be either some NGO or non-profit or government agency, all of which are considered persons under the law.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Yes it totally avoids the problem, because the hypothetical authority is made up of people, thus granted (some of) the legal rights of persons.
    - joshAg 8y ago
      Nonnatural persons aren't granted rights under the law because they're made up of people though. In America they're granted those rights because it makes dealing with them much easier. That's it. That's why it's so confusing which rights are reserved only for natural persons and which apply to all persons. https://books.google.com/books?id=4K0CWvR2FNEC&pg=RA1-PA284&dq=whence+do+non+natural+persons+derive+rights&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiD0ZzYrd3gAhU0NH0KHaokDuQQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=whence%20do%20non%20natural%20persons%20derive%20rights&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=4K0CWvR2FNEC&pg=RA1-PA284&... I'm trying to link to the section that starts just barely on the page before "Indeterminacy of the Personhood Designation"
  - comex 8y ago
    But it does avoid the problem of having a legal person that lacks a well-defined intent, which is probably the weirdest aspect of this.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  I like the personhood issue. If a corporation can be a person for purposes of law, then why shouldn't the resources it wants to exploit be a person for purposes of law as well?
8bitsrule 8y ago
Yep. Another recent example is the The White Earth band of Ojibwe recognition of the Rights of Manoomin (“wild rice”). https://www.nationofchange.org/2019/02/04/the-white-earth-band-of-ojibwe-legally-recognized-the-rights-of-wild-rice-heres-why/ https://www.nationofchange.org/2019/02/04/the-white-earth-ba... Linked article reminds us that 'In 2008, Ecuador and Bolivia both added Rights of Nature clauses to their constitutions.' Not a moment too soon. To protect nature is to protect ourselves and our progeny. The same is true for any corporations in any way dependent on extraction (or as they learned to call it 'harvesting').

Proven 8y ago

Things don't have rights, but I am not surprised - today's clueless voters don't even understands what human rights are. For example, they think they somehow have rights to benefits that cannot realized without restricting or hurting the rights of others. The lake legislation is nonsense. The issue is the lake has no owner (or has a bad owner, the government). If it were private, rest assured people would be sued for damaging the owner's property (lake). If you're not the owner, you have no right to sue somebody for anything related to the lake.

tomatotomato37 8y ago

This seems... abusable. I get that's it's going to be great for the lake and everything, but given the clusterfuck of legal problems that come from corporate entities being given legal rights I'm hesitant about giving it to more entities that aren't actual humans.

Barrin92 8y ago
we interact with hundreds if not thousands of entities every day that aren't blood and flesh humans. Government institutions, think tanks, firms, cars, vending machines, internet routers, all of which in many ways are subject to regulation and have specific laws set out for them and whatnot. It's not surprising, because we need to manage all the things we interact with and depend on on a daily basis. Honestly a lake is a pretty trivial and important entity because it's a basic part of human ecosystems. It's going to get a lot more interesting when we're going to have more discussions about chatbots, fake news, and other non-human agents in similar situations.

kartan 8y ago

This is the only way to make companies and governments to pay for externalities. It is the only way to make capitalism work. If people can get profit by making other pay the cost, then there is a perverse incentive for destruction.

ams6110 8y ago
I agree in theory. In practice I would see this working like any other class action. Most of the money will go into the pockets of lawyers, with very little left to remedy the actual damages.
- Loughla 8y ago
  So the question becomes does it matter where the money goes as long as the corporation/individual doing harm is punished sufficiently to dissuade them from future abuse of natural resources?
Nasrudith 8y ago
It is a way at least if not the only way but I agree that it is a decent counterforce.

supernova87a 8y ago

This movement is a little stupid, or at best trying to capitalize on headline-grabbing aspects of it that appeal to laymen. In the best case, I would give them credit for using "clickbait"-level tactics to get attention on the real cause to be advocated. Objects, geographic features, even animals, don't have rights of their own. Their protection is advocated for by people, for the benefit of people, under our laws. We fight to protect things like these because we value them as people. They don't have inherent rights. Rights come with responsibilities. It's a person-centric view, but what else do we have in our current system? The Constitution talks about individuals, not objects. I think their time would be better spent advocating for laws that are formulated correctly in the legal framework. Though boring, more effective. I give this low odds of survival in the courts. Why not spend the energy on something that will succeed? This only will leave people disappointed when it gets overturned.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
joshAg 8y ago
We could say the exact same thing about corporations, too, that you said about objects, geographic features, and animals. The reason it makes sense to treat those things as if they were a natural person under the law is because it allows for natural people to group their common interest into a single legal entity that is separate from any individual member. So, take the lake eerie thing. Sure, you could write a law to protect the lake that focuses on natural people and corporations, but if something happens, say an oil spill or algae bloom, then each individual who thinks they are be affected by it would be bringing suit. in the case of a lake oil spill that's possibly hundreds of separate lawsuits for the exact same incident. Or, the lake could be granted juridical personhood and the law making the same protections could be written based on that personhood. If the same theoretical oil spill or algae bloom happened, there'd only be a single case instead of quite possibly millions. And that doesn't even begin to affect issues of standing and actual harm. If I'm some poor schmuck getting water from downstream of Lake Eerie and there's an algae bloom or oil spill, it's going to have to be massive for me to be able to prove i've actually been harmed by the spill and that the harm is enough to justify the costs of hiring a lawyer. Otherwise whoever caused the spill is going to either get the case dismissed because i can't prove i was actually harmed because of their spill, or they're going to argue that my actual harm is something like 86 cents because that's how much extra it costs for water filtration, so even with treble damages I'm entitled to less than the price of a large drip coffee. And even if you think, well, individuals shouldn't be bringing any sort of suit for something like that, it should instead be via the government, the government itself is just another instance of a non-natural person.

Hamuko 8y ago

I thought the US was the land of the free and that no one could tell you who you could and couldn't sue.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> no one could tell you who you could and couldn't sue Anyone can sue anything. That doesn’t mean the court won’t dismiss it.

Scoundreller 8y ago

Canada has a similar law under the Fisheries Act. You can pursue a private prosecution if you can find a court willing to hear your case. You would get half of the fine (if any). The only problem is that the Crown can take over the case if it wants, so you may lose out on your investment if your case is too good. Other laws let you pursue private prosecutions, but you don’t get a cut, so there’s little incentive.

ovi256 8y ago
>private prosecutions Is this another name for civil law suit ?

headcanon 8y ago

As a Michigan resident, I would love it if we were able to create a "council of the Great Lakes", made up of all states that share coastlines with one of the 5 lakes, including Ontario and possibly Quebec, and federal representatives from US and CA. The goal would be to align each political unit with environmental regulations that affect the lakes, since what happens to one inevitably affects the rest, especially the downstream lakes Erie and Ontario. One example would be to prevent things like different regulations between the US side and CA side that allow for barges to dispose of semi-toxic sludge they collect in the CA side of Lake Huron, since they have to clean it properly in the US side per EPA regulations. No citations for the above but I've heard rumors. Even more serious is the underwater Line 5 Oil Pipeline that runs parallel to the Mackinac Bridge. A spill in that region affects the entire region, yet only MI and the Trump-led EPA have any decision power as to what to do about it. Natural bodies transcend political units, and environmental regulations need to do the same, as pessimistic as I am about how realistic that is.

Scoundreller 8y ago
It sorta exists: the Canadian/U.S. Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries. And the Great Lakes Fishery Commission: http://www.glfc.org/index.php http://www.glfc.org/index.php
jt2190 8y ago
> ... I would love it if we were able to create a "council of the Great Lakes", made up of all states that share coastlines with one of the 5 lakes, including Ontario and possibly Quebec, and federal representatives from US and CA. International Joint Commission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Joint_Commission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Joint_Commissi...
ahartman00 8y ago
How about a charter, or compact :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes%E2%80%93Saint_Lawrence_River_Basin_Sustainable_Water_Resources_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes%E2%80%93Saint_Lawr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Charter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Charter

Nasrudith 8y ago

This conception is far saner than other "rights to natrual entity" schemes and I must praise for being theoretically workable and fully consistent with other intangibles in property rights - those can be taken too far but there is a valid purpose to them. Prior "ecological entity rite" proposals I heard were emotional appeals from true believers which sounded superficially good on the surface but made no damn sense. Who exactly can speak for the river with any authority? You say the river wants to be clean and unfished? I say it wants to be pretty and colorful with mine run-off! Those being affected by it have a perfectly solid claim to damages ahead of time and can help bring many parties to the table for nuance.

dontbenebby 8y ago

When you got a fishing license in PA, you used to get a booklet on the bodies of water, with a small table of which you cannot eat the fish from. Now, there's a small table listing the ones that are safe. (Or perhaps there are none nowadays? I haven't had a fishing license in years...) The pollution of Lake Erie is a travesty.

somberi 8y ago

A related read on India's top court reversing the lower court's order which held that Ganges and Yamuna, two of India's well known rivers, have the same rights as humans. https://phys.org/news/2017-07-rivers-rights-humans-india-court.html https://phys.org/news/2017-07-rivers-rights-humans-india-cou...

QuamStiver 8y ago

Why this link can be forbidden for me?