Originating and Enacting Article I, Section 27

• Author: Franklin L. Kury
• Pages: 25-29

25

Chapter 4: Originating and

Enacting Article I, Section 27

The idea came to me while reading the New York Times over a cup of

coee on a Saturday morning in Augus t 1968. A report on a proposed

amendment to the New York Constitution caught my attention. e

amendment proposed to provide further protection to the forest lands of the

Empire State.

Why not a constitutional provision on the environment for Pennsylvania?

Our constitution was silent on the subject.

From my studies at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, I knew

the importance of constitutions. ey establi sh the framework of the govern-

ment, but also declare the rights of the public that government could not

invade.

New York’s constitutional environmental provision was limited to its

unique system of forests and preservation. Any amendment in Pennsylvania

should be broader and inclusive of all of the environment.

For the next several months I gave considerable thought to how to draft

such an amendment. Several ideas predominated.

e public had a right to a livable natural environment, just as they did

to a free and open political climate. e Susquehanna River, for example,

belonged to the public, not the coal companies or power companies. Basse

Beck had preached that point for years in his speeches and newspaper col-

umns. If the public owned the river and other resources, then someone had

to protect them. Why not make the state the trustee of natural resources?

Although I did not identify it as such, the provision making the state

government the trustee of natural resource s inserted the common law public

trust doctrine into the formal st ructure of the state constitution.1

On April 21, 1969, I introduced House Bill 958, a joint resolution to

amend Article I of the Pennsylvania Constitution as follows:

Section 27. Natural Resources and t he Public Est ate. e people have a right

to clean air, pure water, and to the preserv ation of the natural, scenic, historic,

1. e public trust doctrine is an important common law principle that allows the government to regulate

resources such as navigable waters in the public interest of commerce. It is discussed at greater length

in Chapter 12.