Identity Crisis

In the United States, and I would surmise this is true anywhere else, elections are big business.  Campaign managers are professional electioneers, not necessarily working for a set of ideals or an influential candidate, but more for the professional success that can come with winning elections.  Campaign workers use a bevy of statistics, psychological analysis, opinion polls, and a host of other tools in order to shepherd an electorate towards their candidate.  They are the people, along with hyper-reactive analysts that create the politically correct world in which we all must live.

These people identify us using specifications that we probably would never use for ourselves (White, Black, Latino, Male, Female, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Gay, Young, Old, Conservative, Liberal, etc) outside of the politically correct world.   They entice us into supporting their candidate because that candidate will do something that might benefit the group that they told us we’re apart of. 

 A lot of people don’t really like political correctness when we talk about an issue as being politically correct.  However, these same people reverse their view when it’s an issue that they’ve been told to care about(i.e. Latinos should care about immigration policy because they are immigrants).  The front page opinion article of the New York Times online website embodies this idea:  “In a Divided America, It’s Old vs. Young” --David Leonhardt.  The author produces a bevy of statistically supported ideas based around the idea that young people are significantly more liberal than older people.  The ideas are based on mostly-scientifically conducted polls where a pollster will question random people about their age and their view on a certain issue.

When we read the article, we automatically identify with the one of the categories that that Leonhardt presents.  We become either young or old.  We could be somewhere in the middle, but when we are presented with the choice we choose the identifier that most resembles our view of ourself.  From then on, we have decided that we are either young or old. The suggestion plants the identifiers that analysts, politicians and their organizations use to drive voters to their ticket.  We respond to them as much or more than they respond to us.

So, how to we prevent ourselves from becoming victims of identifier planting? We must know who we are.  And if you don’t really know who you are, pick some identifiers that you think you can relate to.  Evaluate them and refine your own identity in the politically correct world before succumbing to the campaign/analyst-identifiers of who you are.  Don’t participate in political arguments, supporting an idea that you’ve been told to support.  Find the ideas that you truly espouse and fight for them.  We can only fight the analysts and campaigners by being individuals, not their groups.

Can Trees Sue You?

Can trees and other inanimate objects be given standing in Federal Courts?  That is one of the most pertinent questions asked in Sierra Club v Morton. The decision came against the Sierra Club, but it was a close, 4-3, majority.  Justice William Douglas wrote a dissenting opinion establishing the idea that inanimate objects, specifically natural objects, should be defended as entities such as ships, corporations, or even the government.  This would allow the court to see cases where only the environment is harmed, and no human can prove specific and substantial harm to him/herself. The idea seems to simplify the legal process surrounding cases that protect the environment, but it takes for granted inherent contradictions in accepting the standing of inanimate objects, as well as expanding the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to areas in which it has no power to act.

1. The Supreme Court is created and empowered by the Constitution of the United States. That Constitution is a compact among several, sovereign state governments which represent the individual persons residing in the boundaries of those states.  Those individuals are the base of power for the government.  The Court has power to adjudicate only between conflicts that arise among the people or  the governments and organizations created by those people.  Corporations and ships, as Justice Douglas cites in his dissenting opinion, are entities created by individuals and therefore, are under the jurisdiction of the government to which those individuals are subject.  Natural objects, such as plants, do not have the ability to contract or express desire in any way. They are objects that can only be legally expressed as property.  If the Constitution is empowered by the consent, directly or tacitly, of the individuals it governs, then it cannot have power over ‘objects’ that are innately unable to express the desire to be governed by the Constitution.  If the Constitution does not have authority to govern natural objects, then the Supreme Court does not have the power to recognize the standing of natural objects.
2. One may object to the previous argument, citing the power granted in Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution: “The judicial power shall extend to...controversies between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.” One may argue that because natural, inanimate objects are not under the jurisdiction of the Constitution, then they must, by default, be a part of a foreign jurisdiction, and by this granted power are given standing of original jurisdiction in the court.  One can refer to the case of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia: In 1828, the state of Georgia passed a series of laws taking away the rights of local Cherokee Indians. The laws also authorized Cherokee removal from lands sought after by the state. In defense, the Cherokee cited treaties that they had negotiated, as an independent "nation," with the United States, guaranteeing the Cherokee nation both the land and independence. After failed negotiations with President Andrew Jackson and Congress, the Cherokee, under the leadership of John Ross, sought an injunction at the Supreme Court against Georgia to prevent its carrying out these laws. The Court, in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case and could not resolve it. The Court began by expressing sympathy with the Cherokees' dilemma, admitting that they had been persecuted and marginalized by America's European settlers, then asserted that Indian nations were both "foreign nations" and people within U.S. boundaries. In other words, the Cherokee, though at times viewed as an independent nation, were also a dependent people upon the nation that envelopes them. Thus, the Court asserted that "foreign nations," as used in the Constitution, could not include "Indian nations." Because the Constitution only allows the Supreme Court to hear cases brought by "foreign nations," not "Indian nations," the Court was not authorized to entertain this case and dismissed it.  Let us assume that inanimate, natural objects are part of a “natural nation.”  This nation, like Indian nations, while foreign from that of the United States, is also, in part, dependent upon the United States, as United States envelops the nation of natural, inanimate objects. The court is not authorized, by its own admission, to hear a case in which a foreign nation is also part of or enveloped by the United States. 
3. There is a clear definition between an entity that can own and dispose of property and an entity that cannot.  Individuals, corporations, and other entities created by individuals are of the type that can dispose of property.  Natural objects, the kind of which Justice Douglas refers, are entities that cannot dispose of property because they are property.  If inanimate objects were to be granted the same standing in a court as entities that could dispose of property, they would no longer be property.  If those objects were no longer property there could be no physical property; for trees, minerals, water, land, and the such are the base level of property.  The Fifth amendment not only protects the right to property, but recognizes that there is property to be had: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” A pertinent example would be Dred Scott v. Sandford. The Court ruled that Scott was not a citizen and, therefore, lacked standing to sue in Federal Court.  They also ruled that the Fifth amendment held that Sandford could not be deprived of his property without the due process of law.  The decision was eventually overturned with the passing of the 13^th and 14^th amendments to the Constitution, but those amendments abolished slavery and granted equal protection of the laws, regardless of race(among other things). They did not grant that a man’s property(a slave at the time of the Dred Scott case was legally considered property) had the right to sue in Federal Court.  Likewise, natural objects, which constitute property, whether in the possession of an individual, or any other entity that is, at its base, able to discharge of that property do not have standing to sue because of their nature as property. Were the Constitution to be amended to grant natural objects standing, or even ‘citizenship’, which is what occurred to reverse the Dred Scott decision, only then would the Court be able to hear a case with a tree or natural object that was harmed in some way, but did not constitute a substantial effect on an individual as a party.
4. Let us assume that the Constitution was amended to include inanimate natural objects as parties with standing.  What would be the inherent rights attributed to them, and who would be qualified to decide what that was?  Without the ability to ever express, in any way, a desired state of being or rights, the preferred state of being of that object could not be respected by the court with any certainty.  The court could never be certain. in any ruling, that it was actually ruling to the benefit or protection of the object and its undefined rights.  Would an inanimate, natural object be allowed to sue another inanimate, natural object?  Could a shore sue a waterway for the damages that water erosion causes to the shore? Would individual persons have standing to sue a hurricane, a flood, or an earthquake. Without the ability to ever contract an object is property.  Dead men may have contracted during their lives to deal with their property as they see fit after their lives have ended.  However, once those men have died their assets are subject only to those contracts.  The dead men can contract no further and therefore have no right to their property.  They, in fact, become property themselves to be dealt with by those with whom they have contracted during their lives, or the period of time in which they are able to contract and express their desire to contract.  Inanimate, natural objects are as dead men that have never expressed their desire to contract.  The object, without ever expressing desire of any kind, the court, again, is unable to rule with any certainty in favor or against that object, as a party, in a dispute.  Therefore, the object lacks standing in any court of men, including the Supreme Court of the United States, and is a property to be dealt with by those entities who have the ability to express contraction.
5. In the dissenting opinion in the case of Sierra Club v. Morton, Justice Douglas says,  “Those who hike the Appalachian Trail into Sunfish Pond, New Jersey, and camp or sleep there, or run the Allagash in Maine, or climb the Guadalupes in West Texas, or who canoe and portage the Quetico Superior in Minnesota, certainly should have standing to defend those natural wonders before courts or agencies, though they live 3,000 miles away. Those who merely are caught up in environmental news or propaganda and flock to defend these waters or areas may be treated differently. That is why these environmental issues should be tendered by the inanimate object itself. Then there will be assurances that all of the forms of life which it represents will stand before the court - the pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the lemmings as well as the trout in the streams. Those inarticulate members of the ecological group cannot speak. But those people who have so frequented the place as to know its values and wonders will be able to speak for the entire ecological community...”  Justice Douglas admits a legal difference between those who advocate protecting all natural environments as they are, and those who have spent time and energy to enjoy the aesthetic, and psychic benefits that natural environments offer as resources.  That legal difference is that of property and ownership.  In Locke’s 2^nd Treatise on government, from which much of the founders drew ideas to form the Constitution, Locke writes that one gains property by laboring for it.  Once one has labored for something, it is theirs.  Those people that have labored to experience the aesthetic and psychic benefits of the natural environments that have been unclaimed by other legitimate means have a certain type of ownership of that land.  Those people can be granted legal standing under the protection of property.  However, those simply advocating for the protection of the environment as a whole, or those who have not labored to make a specific environment, in a sense, their property have no standing in the court.  Property rights give those with a vested interest in protecting specific environments a means of protecting that specific property, while also protecting the right to pursue happiness and wealth of those, like the Disney company, by allowing them the opportunity to lawfully develop unused resources.