Supreme Court decides Winter v. NRDC
November 16, 2008
My daughter has to write a monthly current events story for her 5th grade class, & she gave a presentation in October on the oral argument in Winter v. NRDC.
My introduction to this case was at a symposium last year at William and Mary. There, Navy and NRDC lawyers did pitched battle on whether the Navy should be allowed to conduct its training exercises, when the sonar causes injuries to marine mammals.
The Supreme Court decision is really appalling, all about putting the thumb on the injunction equities scale in favor of the Navy’s arguments that it just has to keep these training exercises going or national readiness will suffer. Needless to say, we know one young woman who’s disappointed today.
Comments
2 Responses to “Supreme Court decides Winter v. NRDC”
Your input is more than welcome . . .
Do you see this as a one-off case, or does it set a precedent for other military vs. environmental rulings?
I will be curious to see what happens to the court under the coming administration.
There is a LOOONG debate about this taking place on my envlawprofs bulletin board right now! I’ll let you know what I find out.
Some time ago I taught one class in environmental law as a guest lecture for students taking a Military Law course. It not only opened my eyes to the different way the services are sometimes treated in environmental law but also sparked an interest that I’ve kept to this day. So, for example, in my last brownfields article I compared civilian regimes to cleanup procedures in the BRAC base closure process.