The English Language Prevails

• Author: Franklin L. Kury
• Pages: 65-74

65

Chapter 8: The English

Language Prevails

In the late afternoon of December 19, 2013, my wife Beth and I had just

returned from a trip to Philadelphia. As we entered the door of our home,

the telephone rang. It was Professor John Dernbach of Widener Univer-

sity Commonwealth Law School. “Franklin, have you seen the decision?” I

had no idea what he was talking about.

“What decision?”

“e state supreme court’s decision in the Robinson Township1 case on

Article 1, Section 27. You will love it!” Dernbach exclaimed.

Dernbach emailed me a copy of the opinion. Beth, who is also a law yer,

and I spent the entire evening reading and rereading the opinion in wonder-

ment and elation. Dernbach was right—I loved it!

e plura lity opinion2 written by Chief Justice R onald Castille had nally

done what Professor Dernbach had urged it to do in his 1999 Dickinson Law

Review articles.3 Castille and three of his colleagues took A rticle 1, Section

27, se ri ous ly.

Robinson Township in Washing ton County southwest of Pittsburgh

and Maya van Rossum of the Delaware R iver Keepers Network, along with

several others, had led a lawsuit cha llenging the constitutional va lidity of

Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Law, enacted in 2012 to regulate drilling of Mar-

cellus Shale natural gas, commonly known as “ fracking.”4

Castille took thir ty-four pages of his opinion to do what the court had

never done before. He gave Article 1, Section 27, a complete analytical

review, provision by provision.

1. Robinson Township v. Commonwealth, 623 Pa. 564, 83 A.3d 901 (Pa. 2013).

2. A plurality opinion of a court is one in which less than a majority agree with the opinion, but enough

others concur in its result that it becomes the decision of the court.

3. John C. Dernbach, Taking the Pennsylvania Constitution Seriously When It Protects the Environment:

Part I—An Interpretative Framework for Article I, Section 27, 103 D L. R. 693 (1999);

John C. Dernbach, Taking the Pennsylvania Constitution Seriously When It Protects the Environment:

Part II—Environmental Rights and Public Trust, 104 D L. R. 97 (1999).

4. In her Pulitzer prize–winning book,A  P: O F   F 

A (New York: e Picador Press of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2018), Eliza Griswold gives

a dramatic reporton hownatural gas drilling aected one family. Chapter 27 of her book describes

the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s hearing in theRobinson Townshipcase and the resulting opinion

by Chief Justice Castille that restored teeth to Article 1, Section 27.