Sierra Club v. Morton
Notes from our first session, on Justice Douglas's dissent and the idea that a valley, or a river, might have standing to sue in its own name.
The Reading
The session centered on the U.S. Supreme Court dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton (also referred to as "Mineral King v. Morton"), particularly Justice Douglas's dissent on standing. This served as a short "teaser" text connected to the longer essay chosen for next session: Christopher Stone's "Should Trees Have Standing?", which the dissent cites.
Overview
This was largely an organizational kickoff meeting for a new personhood research group, combining participant introductions, collection of research questions, and nomination of readings. The group briefly read and reacted to the Sierra Club v. Morton dissent, touching on legal standing, personhood of natural environments, and the tension between adversarial legal systems and ecological wholeness. The deep-dive discussion of the longer text is scheduled for the next session.
Key Points & Themes
- Introductions and interests: How fiction writers began basing characters on what they saw on TV; property and personhood, citing Margaret Radin's work; and the "boundary conditions" of identity — how identity often starts as a porous boundary and later gets rendered crystal clear.
- Group logistics: A research group page has been set up with a list of research questions, so far all written by one person; participants were invited to contribute their own questions as threaded posts and to nominate readings. A recap bot was unavailable for this call (a limited number of concurrent instances), so participants read and typed rather than relying on it.
- Personhood of natural environments: The real-world example of a river in New Zealand granted legal personhood was raised, along with the Te Awa Tupua Act as a case worth examining.
- Category errors and the function of law: One line of argument held that law's core function is to standardize and discretize in order to scale to an entire society, which forces living ecosystems — a whole valley, a river, or its insects — to be broken into discrete, separable units. This raised the question of whether an ecosystem maps better onto an organization or incorporation than onto a single legal entity, and suggested "category errors" in the legal system's framework.
- Standing as a gating doctrine: Re-read in light of advancing AI and a worsening climate crisis, the dissent is striking on standing as the doctrine that gates who can even bring a claim. In an adversarial civil system, aimed at equitable relief or damages, this sits in conflict with the balancing role of federal agencies: if an organization like the Sierra Club lacks standing, then no one can bring an adversarial claim against private interests that would exploit natural resources.
- Compromised agencies: The text notes the compromised nature of federal agencies asked to balance impossibly broad concerns. Justice Douglas is charitable here — explicitly saying the agencies aren't corrupt, only asked to balance many things — which differs from someone who would "speak for the trees." The critique feels even more potent now, with reference to the current Trump administration.
- Personhood as political tool: It may be interesting to think of "deep personhood as a political weapon" within an adversarial legal system that requires an adversary able to make a claim.
Questions & Disagreements
- Who should be able to be the plaintiff — a human who can show harm, or the valley, river, or ecosystem itself? Raised as a central question of the dissent.
- Where do you draw the boundary of what counts as "the valley," river, forest, or ecosystem that is the legal subject? Ecosystems have many possible boundaries of differing fidelity depending on which aspects you examine. This boundary problem does not appear to be addressed in the longer reading.
- How do you standardize and discretize living, interconnected ecosystems into legal units without committing category errors? No resolution reached — framed as an open provocation.
- How does an adversarial system reconcile with the balancing mandate of federal agencies, and who speaks for non-human entities if organizations lack standing?
- No sharp disagreements; the conversation was exploratory and mostly additive.
References Mentioned
- Sierra Club v. Morton / "Mineral King v. Morton" — Supreme Court case and Justice Douglas's dissent, the short reading for today.
- "Should Trees Have Standing?" by Christopher Stone — the longer essay cited in the dissent; deep-dive reading for next session.
- Margaret Radin — paper on property and personhood.
- Te Awa Tupua Act (New Zealand) / a New Zealand river granted legal personhood.
- Geontologies by Elizabeth Povinelli — including the anecdote of the rock formation "Two Women Sitting Down" destroyed by a mining company, and the legal system's inability to hold both frameworks: property destruction versus murder of a being.
- Star Trek — a joke about "collective Star Trek watching."
Action Items & Next Time
- Post research questions, framed as questions, in the thread; similar ones will be combined and added to the group home page. Also drop nominated readings as titles or links.
- Add a proposed readings section to the website, and circulate both the full
(
40 pages) and an excerpted (10 pages, core framework) version of the longer text, emailed to the group at least a week before the next meeting. - Recap bot: another instance being added, as more concurrent meetings were running than expected.
- Next session: 13 September at 17:00 organizer's local time, the first half of the day for North American participants. Deep-dive discussion of "Should Trees Have Standing?"
Memorable Quotes
"In order for you to have multiple perspective, you almost have to discretize... rather than thinking of a living ecosystem."
"That's very different from someone who's going to speak for the trees, so to speak."
"[It may be] extremely interesting maybe to think of depersonhood as a political weapon in that context."