Environmental Philosophy | Christopher D. Stone

In 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case of Sierra Club v. Morton. The Sierra Club was suing the US Forest Service for having granted Disney the right to develop a massive ski resort in the Mineral King Valley of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The Sierra Club alleged that the development would do "irreparable harm to the public interest." What they hadn't shown, according to a lower court ruling, was that the Sierra Club's own interests would be harmed, which is what would be required for the Sierra Club to bring the suit. In a landmark legal paper written as the case came before the Supreme Court, Christopher Stone argued that natural entities like the Mineral King Valley should have legal standing in their own right—that is, the Mineral King Valley should itself be allowed to press a suit and claim injury. The Supreme Court ruled against the Sierra Club but Justice William O. Douglas wrote a dissent that cited Stone's paper. The paper is commonly seen as laying a foundation for legal recognition of natural entities, and has had an impact in cases as far from the United States as New Zealand.

This is the topic of the sixth week of my online course, "The World Around Us: Philosophy and the Environment."

https://eganphilosophy.com/the-world-...
https://eganphilosophy.com/

#environment #environmentalism #environmentalphilosophy #philosophy #christopherdstone #legalstanding

0:00 Introduction
0:42 The story behind "Standing"
3:32 Legal standing and personhood
4:57 Criteria for legal standing
7:38 Changing the law and changing consciousness