 Last time on damages. You heard a little bit about how wild rice got rights,

 It's part of who we are. I know it's one of those fundamental core pieces of our identity.

we're, we're part of that, that thing that gives us some, something had to give us substance, something has to, they give us substance and the agreement was we would remember, and, you know, I can look at water and see a spirit there.

 The unique case names, wild rice, which is sacred. And . As the lead plaintiff, the lawsuit in white earth tribal court is the first rights of nature enforcement case brought in a us tribal court

 And look, I realize that for some folks, that might sound pretty weird. How can rice have the same rights as me? Or you a thinking, feeling human? I'm saying that because I had that reaction when I first started digging into rights of nature, I'm not native and I didn't grow up with the idea of nature as a relative, as equal to humans.

I grew up catholic, a religion that comes with two approaches to nature. Both of them pretty human centric. One is stewardship, the idea that it's our job to take care of nature, because it's a gift to us from God. The other is dominion. This gift of nature has been given to us and it's ours to do with, as we please.

I've challenged. Most of the beliefs I grew up with over the years, but hadn't really faced this one head on. So when I heard about the wild rice case or the Ganges in India, getting rights and a guardian to protect those rights, even. It, you know, it sounded cool, but it also sounded a little out there.

 Nice for poetry maybe, or a ritual, but not something that could work in an actual courtroom. And then someone asked me a question, one of those super simple questions that just shifts your perspective at an instant, they asked. Yeah. But

Is it any weirder to give nature rights than it is to give a corporation?

 Mr. Olson, are you taking the position that there is no difference in the first amendment rights of an individual, a corporation after all is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights. So is there any distinction that Congress could draw between corporations and natural human beings?

 For purposes of campaign finance, what the court has said in the first amendment context, New York times versus Sullivan gross Jean versus the associated press.

And over and over again is that corporations are persons entitled to protection under the First Amendment.

 Back in 2010, conservatives won a long running campaign to grant corporations the complete rights of humans. The citizens United case was that final win, with the Supreme court granting first amendment rights to corporations, including the right to political speech and to donate money anonymous. That one court decision has been credited with sparking a huge amount of dark money in politics.

So, yeah. Is it any weirder to grant rights to an ecosystem than it is to protect the free speech of a, not at all living organism like a corporation? That's the question we'll grapple with today. I'm Amy Westerveldt and this is Damages. In the United States, the push for rights of nature started with of all things.. Disney.

 In the 1970s, Walt Disney productions wanted to build a ski resort in Sierra national forest. They were sued. That case went all the way to the Supreme court and our reporter Meg Duff is going to bring us that story right after the break.

 the odd thing about this thesis is it didn't come out. Environmental thinking and environmental law class, it initiated the the thesis initiated in a property class.

I was teaching the basic property class, the introductory property class. So the class you can teach without knowing a lot of the technical details.

 That's Christopher Stone. He was an environmental lawyer and law professor at the university of Southern California for over 50 years. He actually passed away last may. So I wasn't able to talk with him, but I was able to find a lecture he gave back in 1996 in it. He's talking about a class he taught more than 20 years early.

 it was getting towards the end of the hour. And anyway, a lot of profs in here. No, it has end of the hour that you are aware as the students are so looking around and figuring, you know, uh, now let's do real estate investment trust or something like that.

And I was trying to think of what would a radically different consciousness that would be law linked. And I said, and someone might've asked me that I think I said it would be where nature had rights trees warming to it, rivers and the place broke. It's pandemonium the place, just excuse me, at the end of the hour, thank goodness students where this is like enough.

 And I walked out into the hall and I was not exaggerating at all. I said to my, I, I don't usually put myself in the third person since stone. What have you done now? Stone had just proposed an idea that even he thought was bonkers. The idea that nature itself could have rights, but to defend his honor, he rolled with. That decision would sink Stone's reputation, inspire hate poetry and put the rights of nature smack in the middle of a massive Supreme court battle with Walt Disney productions on one side and Sequoia national park on the other.

 The largest tree and the largest living thing on the face of the earth.

uh, early ancestors are the giant Sequoia ranged over the Northern Hammond.

now the big trees, natural arrange is restricted to the Western slope of the Sierra, Nevada and California skipped 260 miles long in 15 months. Only here in isolated groves is a Sequoia able to reseed and regenerate itself by nature.

Mr. Chief justice Berger. And may it please the court, the Sierra club brought this proceeding against the secretaries of agriculture and interior and their assistance to establish that their plans to authorize a huge private recreational development that mineral king in Sequoia national game refuge, and for a state highway across the koi national park to reach that development were illegal.

 That's the Sierra club's lawyer Leland Cellnet Jr. Arguing before the Supreme court in November, 1971, just a month before in October, Walt Disney world opened in Florida. And now Disney was planning another resort and mineral king valley in the giant sequoias range.

mineral king is located in the Sierra Nevada.

Approximately 225 miles north of Los Angeles. It is a portion of a 15,000 acre game refuge, which Congress created in 1926, the 15th, 2000 acres, the large areas that you've got outlined, or is it the point

 That's former chief justice Warren burger

The area that is in white is 15,000 acres, quite national parks around it on three sides.

the road that you're concerned with will perhaps from left to right into the road.

Uh, the smaller road is an existing road, the road that is in heavier. Uh, that much has proposed to connect the state highway here, cross the financial part here that end at mineral king here. And when you say that it serves no purpose, you lean that it is its only purpose is to serve the white area, which is not part of the park.

That's correct. Mr. Chief justice merely an accident. That's correct.

Well, Disney productions has described mineral king and I'm quoting from the appendix at page 53, a as unsurpassed and natural splendor, perhaps more similar to the European Alps than any other area in the United States and generously endowed with lakes, streams, cascades, caverns, and matchless maps. In 1969, the forest service accepted a proposal from Disney for a huge resort development at mineral king Disney would construct hotels, lodges, restaurants, and other permanent facilities.

So the 14,000 persons could ski at mineral king at one time.

 to get there though Disney would have to build a busy highway through the heart of Sequoia national.

 to solve the problem of transporting 14,000 persons. At one time to mineral king was the, uh, was a problem. And the state of California agreed to construct a high standard freeway to dead end had been ruled king provided that it could cut across the park.

 It might sound weird, but the ideal for the road actually came from the forest service. They'd been hoping to make mineral king, a more accessible recreation area for more than 20 years. So it's good for the forest service and it's good for Walt Disney productions and it's probably even good for the local economy who it's not good for our, the hikers and the tree.

 excess human curiosity and affection for the big three. However, presented the threat from Trump and it's young and damaging it's fragile to,

and finally there was a threat of. Not too much. The two little fire for millions of years, lightning set fires have been part of the life cycle of supporting

a long standing policy of suppressing fire in Sequoia groves has tended to frustrate the trees adaptations to its environment and doing danger.

 If Californians have learned anything in the past few summers, it's that building and fire prone areas makes natural fire cycles difficult to maintain. And this disputed road would lead to a ski resort, which creates a huge conservation problem. That's one reason the Sierra club filed suit. The question is, does the Sierra club really have any right to speak for the tree? Solicitor general Erwin Griswold said no

 this case in a very real sense is the ultimate case on standing.

If the petitioner here has standing, then I believe it's fair to conclude that anyone who was searching Andrews in the controversy has.

 standing means you need to be able to show that you were hurt in some way. It's the thing that allows you to file a case. Griswold is saying no injury, no case.

 It did not allege that it had any financial interest in the controversy. It did not allege the ownership of any property involved or any interference with any activities that is conducting. It did not even alleged a special interest in mineral king.

 The solicitor general is saying really it's none of their business. If we let the Sierra club plead this case, things could really spiral.

I don't think there's any magic in the fact that the Sierra club was a club or that has members or a long and distinguished history. Many of which members may well share the underage, which its management now advances, if it is the fact that it is a group that gives it standing, how big a group must've.

Three members or five or 50 or 50,000. What reason is there for picking any number, if any group has standing because it has an intellectual or emotional interest, does it not inevitably follow that? Any individual who was searching embers? Likewise has standing to raise these legal questions. If the Sierra club has standing as Mr.

Justice Blackman suggested would not. John Muir have standing

Just one month before that Supreme court argument, Christopher Stone was just a few hundred miles south of Sequoia national park at the university of Southern California in Los Angeles, teaching his intro to property law class.

 And I was trying to think of what would a radically different consciousness that would be law linked. And I said, and someone might've asked me that I think I said it would be where nature had rights

 What stone had just done was questioned one of the most fundamental taken for granted premises in Western law:

that nature is property and that it exists to be used.

 the phrase is whoever owns the soil, it is there is up to heaven and down to hell.

 Environmental sociologist Colin Jerolmack is an expert on the intersection of property rights and nature. And he says that in the U S this idea goes back to the colonial period.

 And so England had the strongest property rights before the United States. And there's a huge caveat though, to that, to that, uh, whoever, you know, owning the soil down the hell part, which was that the crown retained anything valuable underneath the surface.

So you technically own the soil, but any gold silver oil, uh, precious metals gas that was there, belong to the crown. And so, you know, the United States inherited property law as an inherited many other forms of law from England, but there was a very conscious decision. when the so-called founding fathers, you know, won the revolutionary war to get rid of those caveats.

And this was explicitly consciously pulling on John Locke, who exerted incredibly strong force on the American constitution who made this argument, that it is only through labor. That nature becomes valuable and labor belongs to the individual. Therefore, whatever they transform with the labor should belong to them.

 This argument was also used to take native American land.

 early Americans were afraid of the wilderness and they said, if we leave Indian peoples in, in ownership, They will just waste it as wilderness

 I'm a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee tribe of Oklahoma. And I'm a professor at the Sandra Day. O'Connor college of law, Arizona state university. I primarily teach in our Indian law classes. I am also a tribal judge for several tribes and have spent most of my career researching and writing about Indian law, historical and legal issues.

John Locke's theory was to Put land to its best and highest use. And in American society, that seems to be, make the most money off it. As you can plundered for its resources. If there's water, use it, use it, even if you use it up or befalling.

If there are, if there's oil or trees or minerals, it's strip mine until you have it all and then leave it and walk away.

something, I tell my classes more than ever different cultures might see.

Different definition of the best and highest use a native culture. Who's already lived here a thousand years and hopes to live here for another thousand might be a little more in tuned, preserving the. Not cutting every tree, not killing every animal then would corporate America.

 When stone said in his law school class, that nature could have rights. He was echoing ways of thinking about the land that are not actually. In doing so he was rejecting centuries worth of this colonial idea that nature only has value once humans have extracted value from it.

 The justification was Christianity and civilization.

that God wanted European Christians to own these lands and that the Christian God intended that.

And somehow Christian Europeans were superior to everyone around them.

 That's the idea behind what's called the doctrine of discovery.

It goes all the way back to the crusades and says that land not owned by another Christian states like land occupied by indigenous people, for example, or by Muslim or Jewish or Hindu or any non-Christian people. I was up for grabs.

 Europeans assumed that if lands empty, they assumed it's worthless.

 In his college class. Stone was suggesting the opposite: that nature could have value in and of itself.

He was saying something that goes against all of Western property law. That nature could be a subject rather than an object to be owned. Legal subjects can be injured. If you can be injured, you can get standing in court and you can plead your own case.

 In traditional law. If there's an upstream or up river polluter, a factory is polluting and someone down river called Jones is, suffering the effects of the pollution.

The pollution goes down so that the land value of Jones is being diminished. Jones can bring a suit against the polluter

What would ha what would the law have to look like to correspond to a state of affairs in which the river had rights? I said one, the suit would have to be brought or bring a bowl in the name of the river. The river would be the plaintiff.

Secondly, it would be the damage to the river. That would have to be the focal point of interest in the legal system. The attention and the proof in the legal system would be the damage to the river, not the damage to Jones. You see in terms of the loss property value, but the focal point would at least be the loss life that the damage, the ecosystem.

And third, if relief were awarded, the relief would be. To the would run to the river. Now, of course, the river couldn't couldn't couldn't decide to negotiate. The river would have to have a guardian people have guardians all the top.

 Stone called the USC law library stone called the USC law library to ask if any other cases like this had been brought before they told him about the Sierra club and the Disney ski resort

 And I got so excited. I couldn't finish the phone conversation,

 stone realized that the Sierra club didn't have standing. But what if mineral king valley itself did? What if instead of Sierra club versus Spartan, it was mineral king versus more.

Now, remember this is October, 1971, and the Supreme court is set to hear this case in November. So stone only has one month to figure out a way to somehow smuggle this idea that nature could have rights into the. And the arguments are already set. There is no way he can put this idea into the mouth of the Sierra club's lawyer.

His best bet is to get it straight to a judge. So stone starts laying out the argument in an article for the USC law review, where it just might be read by justice Douglas, the most liberal voice on the bench,

 And as we begin to write it and leaked out to my colleagues, what I was doing, and they all came by to talk me out of it. I've got Mike Levine is terrific. A guy lived the Dean of the Yale school of management said, uh, you know, Chris, you know, trees canceled.

I thought, well, I said, yeah, Mike, but corporations can speak. They have somebody speak for them. The lawyer will have a lawyer appointed for the trees. And then my wife Anne who's here, uh, cornered me in the bathroom when I don't know whether you're put up to it by my colleagues, but said now, um, what if the true, you know, what if, uh, nature caused damage?

What if it was sort of a flood, uh, could people collect against.

And then we rushed this thing out to print.

but justice Douglas, um, came out in the first paragraph saying I essentially, I agree with.

 but justice Douglas wasn't writing the ruling. He was writing the. The Sierra club loses the case.

Although the ski resort never actually gets made in California, rethinks the highway to nowhere. The important thing from Stone's point of view is that justice Douglas writes a dissent. Now this wild idea that nature could have her day in court is out in the world from the pen of the esteemed justice himself.

 people that are not strong connections with this world,

so indigenous perspectives, eh, think, uh, you know, about what was perhaps the first time that they came across this ideas and they think, okay, it was a book that was written in the United States, you know, about whether trees have rights.

That would be Stone's book. Should trees have standing? Monica is a lawyer in London. She says that while stone may have popularized the idea of the rights of nature, it has a much longer history

 but it's not, not really, you know, the origin is not really the rational Western mind that came up with these ideas.

S1, Ep2 Transcription

A look at where rights of nature came from and how the concept has played out in the U.S.

S1, Ep3 | The Cloud Forest Vs. The Mine

S1, Ep2 | Who Speaks for the Trees?

Law & Order meets the climate crisis as we dig into the stories behind the hundreds of climate cases around the globe. Listen here or 

S1, Ep2 | Who Speaks for the Trees?

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