The Endangered Environmental Laws Program will defend the existing system of environmental law and regulation by advancing a vision of constitutional and environmental law that underlies all of ELI’s work, and that is based on the following core principles:
The Constitution empowers the federal government to play an active role in establishing and enforcing uniform legal standards to control pollution and conserve natural resources, matters that have clear interstate or transboundary effects on our increasingly interdependent national life.
The Constitution allows for broad access to federal courts to allow citizens both to vindicate their own interests and to serve as “private attorneys general” in enforcing environmental laws.
The Constitution does not simply equate rational lawmaking with economic efficiency and cost-benefit analysis. Rational lawmaking may and should also incorporate such intangible, natural and long-term values as aesthetics, ecosystem integrity, and the interests of future generations.
Constitutional history and practice dictate that judges should give appropriate weight to Congress’s factual findings and purposes for enacting legislation, and that personal ideology and interpretive philosophy are legitimate areas of inquiry in the U.S. Senate’s “advise and consent” review of judicial appointees.
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