Some Lessons for Crafting a State Constitution-Based Right to a Clean Environment

While New York most recently added an environmental rights amendment to its constitution, Pennsylvania and Montana have had these amendments in their constitutions since the seventies. Hawaii, Rhode Island, Illinois, and Massachusetts have enacted weaker iterations of rights to a clean environment. Other states, like Maine, have faced challenges that blocked an amendment’s passage. This Article provides an initial analysis of the state environmental rights amendments currently in place, examining their origins, language, placement in the constitutions, and the major judicial decisions impacting their interpretation.

It concludes by comparing the existing environmental rights amendments to the proposed amendment that failed to clear Maine’s legislature and suggests model language for future environ- mental rights amendments.