In the Supreme Court’s 2008-2009 term, which ended last Monday, the court ruled against the pro-environment side in five out of the five environmental cases it considered.
The New York Times reports:
It was, said Richard J. Lazarus, a director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University Law Center, “the worst term ever” for environmental interests. The court allowed Navy exercises using sonar that threatened whales off California. It limited the liability of companies partly responsible for toxic spills. It made it harder to challenge Forest Service regulations and easier to dump mining waste into an Alaskan lake. And it allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to use cost-benefit analysis to decide how much marine life may be killed by cooling structures at power plants.
Last week, the National Law Journal quoted Lazarus, who explained that in his view, the employment of experienced Supreme Court lawyers may have been important:
Business’ remarkable record may be due in part, Lazarus suggested, to the entry this term of the private sector Supreme Court bar on behalf of business interests in environmental cases, including such well-known, repeat players as former Solicitor General Theodore Olson of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Maureen Mahoney of Latham & Watkins. “In each of these cases, business turned not to the usual retinue of environmental legal experts, but to expert Supreme Court advocates,” said Lazarus, who has studied the influence and effectiveness of those appellate practitioners.