The constitutional right to save the environment

• Date: 01 January 2022

1-2022 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 52 ELR 10007

DIALOGUE

THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT

Chandler Randol (moderator) is Manager of Educational

Programs at the Environmental Law Institute.

Sen. Franklin L. Kur y is a Former Member of the

Pennsylvania State Senate and the Pennsylvania House of

Representatives.

John C. Dernbach is Director of the Environmental Law

and Sustainability Center, and Commonwealth Professor

of Environmental Law and Sustainability at the Widener

University Commonwealth Law School.

Julia Olson is Executive Director and Chief Legal

Counsel of Our Children’s Trust.

Barry E . Hill is Adjunct Faculty at Vermont Law

School and a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law

Institute.

Chandler Randol: I would like to introduce today’s pan-

elists. Sen. Franklin Kury served rst in the Pennsylvania

House of Representatives from 1966 to 1972, and in the

Pennsylvania Senate from 1972 to 1980. As a state repre-

sentative, he was the author and lead advocate of the leg-

islative proposal that became the Environmental Rights

Amendment (ERA) to the Pennsylvania Constitution. He

is also the author of e Constitutional Question to Save the

Planet: e Peoples’ Right to a Healthy Environment, pub-

lished by ELI Press earlier this year.

John Dernbach is a professor at Widener University

Commonwealth Law School. He is a nationally and inter-

nationally recognized authority on sustainable develop-

ment, climate change, and environmental law. He is the

director of the Environmental Law and Sustainability

Center and brings his expertise into the classroom on

courses on property, environmental law, international law,

and sustainability.

Julia Olson serves as executive director and chief legal

counsel for Our Children’s Trust. Julia founded Our Chil-

dren’s Trust in 2010 to lead a strategic legal campaign on

behalf of the world’s youth against governments every-

where. Julia leads Juliana v. United States,¹ the constitu-

tional climate change case brought by 21 youth against

the U.S. government for violating their Fifth Amendment

rights to life, liberty, property, and public trust resources.

Barry Hill is a visiting scholar at the Environmental

Law Institute and adjunct faculty at Vermont Law School.

Barry has experience in government, where he served as

senior counsel for environmental governance at the Oce

of International and Tribal Aairs as well as the director

of the Oce of Environmental Justice, both at the U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as in pri-

vate practice. He is also the author of Environmental Justice:

Legal eory and Practice, a textbook/handbook published

by ELI Press.

Franklin Kury: I’d like to start by describing the book—

how it came to be and what I think it does for the future.

e idea for the book came to me about three years ago

when I realized that the 50th anniversary of Article I, §27

of the Pennsylvania Constitution would be observed on

May 18 of this year.

e whole thing began in 1966, when I ran for the

Pennsylvania House of Representatives. I ran on the clean

streams issue. e incumbent representative, who was the

senior Republican in the state legislature and chairman

of the Appropriations Committee, voted against bringing

coal companies under the Clean Stre ams Law.² I made that

my issue and I won. is was such an upset that my picture

was carried in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh papers as

the beginning of the movement of environmental issues as

a political issue.

1. 947 F.3d 1159, 50 ELR 20025 (9th Cir. 2020).

2. H.B.585 of the 1965 session that was later incorporated into the revised

clean streams law enacted in 1970, 35 P.S. §691.

SUMMARY

More than 50 years ago, Franklin Kury drafted and championed an Environmental Rights Amendment to the

Pennsylvania Constitution. His book, The Constitutional Question to Save the Planet: The Right to a Healthy

Environment (ELI Press 2021), expands upon the story of his amendment to demonstrate how its principles

can be the basis for addressing climate change in the rest of the world. On October 13, 2021, the Environ-

mental Law Institute hosted Kury and leading experts to explore the impact environmental rights amendments

can have on stabilizing the climate system through legal channels at the state and federal levels. Below, we

present a transcript of that discussion, which has been edited for style, clarity, and space considerations.

Copyright © 2022 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.