Given that the supreme court frequently ruled against NEPA, why aren’t there more cases involving NEPA in front of the supreme court to curb its excesses?
It’s true, the Supreme Court has ruled against vetocracy with NEPA every time, usually unanimously. I think for potential litigants, there isn’t much value in going all the way to the Supreme Court. It’s possible the court won’t hear your case, so you have to take steps to comply with the lower court’s ruling anyway. Once you’re doing that, spending more on litigation isn’t going to get you anything; you can always just fix the EIS and move forward.
In other words, taking a case to the Supreme Court for the purpose of setting a new precedent is a public good, and a lot of people don’t supply public goods all by themselves.
But there are organizations that bring cases as a public good and they pay for the litigation. On the left, ACLU. For libertarians, the Institute for Justice (IJ). IJ identifies laws or regulations they want to dispute and then find a sympathetic plaintiff to represent. Someone like you would probably do a lot of good by convincing IJ to find some NEPA cases to bring.
That still seems surprising to me. The Koch’s for example seem to be very willing to spend a lot of money think tanks to advance the public good as they see it.
Is there a reason why billionaires like the Koch’s who are willing to spend money on policy changes don’t care about NEPA?
Given that the supreme court frequently ruled against NEPA, why aren’t there more cases involving NEPA in front of the supreme court to curb its excesses?
It’s true, the Supreme Court has ruled against vetocracy with NEPA every time, usually unanimously. I think for potential litigants, there isn’t much value in going all the way to the Supreme Court. It’s possible the court won’t hear your case, so you have to take steps to comply with the lower court’s ruling anyway. Once you’re doing that, spending more on litigation isn’t going to get you anything; you can always just fix the EIS and move forward.
In other words, taking a case to the Supreme Court for the purpose of setting a new precedent is a public good, and a lot of people don’t supply public goods all by themselves.
But there are organizations that bring cases as a public good and they pay for the litigation. On the left, ACLU. For libertarians, the Institute for Justice (IJ). IJ identifies laws or regulations they want to dispute and then find a sympathetic plaintiff to represent. Someone like you would probably do a lot of good by convincing IJ to find some NEPA cases to bring.
The party of record is a federal agency, though. I’m not sure IJ can defend them.
Individuals don’t have standing to sue when NEPA holds up their projects for years?
The NEPA lawsuit is brought by an environmental org against an agency. I could be wrong but I don’t think a different party can appeal the decision.
This list the existing NEPA lawsuits before the supreme court and while some of them have government agencies as the plaintiff many don’t.
Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms is one example.
Good catch. Looks like in the district court Geertson sued federal officials as per usual but Monsanto filed a motion to intervene and join the case.
That still seems surprising to me. The Koch’s for example seem to be very willing to spend a lot of money think tanks to advance the public good as they see it.
Is there a reason why billionaires like the Koch’s who are willing to spend money on policy changes don’t care about NEPA?
This is great to understand.