Defending the Environment: The Court as Catalyst

Based on a chapter of Professor Sax's new book, Defending the Environment: A Strategy for Citizen Action, published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., N. Y., and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Copyright 1970 by Joseph L. Sax; reprinted with permission of the publisher. If every state were to pass a law making clear that courts should consider the merits of citizen-initiated environmental cases, part of the problem considered in the preceding chapter would be mitigated - that is, judges and attorneys would not feel compelled to twist the questions that the litigants are actually trying to raise into such traditional issues as a claim of arbitrariness or a failure to comply with some explicit statutory command such as how a dike must be authorized or how wide a highway right-of-way may be.