Navy sonar case should balance protecting environment with other legitimate interests Commentary
Navy sonar case should balance protecting environment with other legitimate interests
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Steven Gieseler and Reed Hopper [counsel, Pacific Legal Foundation]: "With this case, the U.S. Supreme Court has an opportunity to restore a semblance of balance to environmental law. For decades, environmental laws and regulations – in particular the Endangered Species Act [PDF file] – have been treated by the courts as super-statutes that subsume all other legal mandates and competing interests. Moreover, courts like the Ninth Circuit in the sonar case functionally have ignored traditional principles of equity in environmental cases, automatically granting injunctions against activities that pose even hypothetical harms to species.

This practice is a poor one not just in terms of academic legal theory, but as a matter of tangible, real world policy. The courts' "species above all else" mindset that leads to injunctions-at-all-costs has blocked projects ranging from a 1970s effort to strengthen New Orleans-area levies to common sense firefighting measures in the Pacific Northwest. The sonar case, therefore, is about more than the specific national security policy at issue, and is a chance for the Supreme Court to re-establish equilibrium between legitimate environmental protection and other valid interests public and private."

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