As natural areas give way to human construction, trees and other parts of the environment often are displaced to make way for progress. But what if the trees had actual legal rights? What would be the criteria for a tree, or for a river or an animal for that matter, to have its own rights? Christopher D. Stone addresses this issue in his 2010 revised edition of Should Trees Have Standing?: Law, Morality, and the Environment (3rd ed., Oxford ; New York, N.Y. : Oxford University Press). As most of you know, standing refers to the authority of a person or entity to initiate a legal action. It doesn’t imply winning but it is a key issue that a party has to satisfy to get into court.
Christopher D. Stone holds the J. Thomas McCarthy Trustee Chair in Law at the University Of Southern California School Of Law. He is an authority on environmental and global issues, including international environmental law, environmental ethics, and trade and the environment. An earlier edition of this book, originally published in 1972, was a rallying point for the then burgeoning environmental movement. The book launched worldwide debate on the basic nature of legal rights that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Stone notes that 39% of the worlds land surface has been converted to cropland and grazing. As the global population continues to increase, more acres will be needed to feed the population. He also indicates that more acres are needed to feed the population corn-fed beef than to feed the population the corn crop itself. Stone proposes a number of creative solutions to the pressing environmental issues that face us. One way is to allow humans to file suit on behalf of the non-human elements of the natural world. After you read Stone’s book, you can offer your own response to his question: “should trees have standing?”
Joe Parsio is Head of Access Services at Biddle Law. He is also on the Lansdowne Borough Tree Board, which plants more than 100 shade/street trees a year.
Eat Local – buy Local – much is made of these current popular movements for food and local businesses. But don’t forget to Research Locally also. City and county ordinances are important sources of law that may in fact be more relevant to your research needs than state and federal law. A recent article by a fellow law librarian, Mary Whisner at the Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law, points out some interesting and noteworthy facts, about the importance of city and county ordinances.
City and county ordinances have a far greater impact than most of us realize. In fact, the city laws for larger cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, can actually affect more people than the laws of many states. At the same time, we often fail in law school to emphasize the importance of this source of law. Whether the issue is parking, zoning, health and safety, discrimination, or even cleaning up after your dog, the answer to your research question may lie in a city or county ordinance and not in state of federal law.
Philadelphia City Hall, August 29, 1946.
Searching city and county ordinances was difficult before modern search engines. Now all you need to do is Google the name of your city and the word “ordinance” to see the table of contents of most city ordinances. Here are the links to a few cities that might be of interest to you.
Law blogs (sometimes referred to as “blawgs”) can often serve as valuable resources for law students. Resources such as the ABA Journal’s Blawg Directory can help students find blogs covering a range of legal topics.
The Blawg Directory contains features that help to simplify the task of searching for legal information in the blogosphere. The site includes a list of tabs; selecting the appropriate tab enables visitors to the site to search the directory by topic, type of author, geographical region or jurisdiction that the blog covers, or law school with which the blog is associated. When the tab labeled “Main” is selected, a featured blog is displayed. Underneath the featured blog is a list of recently featured blogs, a list of blogs that are currently popular, and a list of random topics.
Various legal blogs found using the directory may be particularly appealing to law students. The Blog of Legal Times (BLT), for instance, covers legal news stories with a focus on Washington, DC. Among its features, the BLT includes a series of posts, called “The Morning Wrap,” which summarizes news articles on other sites and links to the articles described. This blog seems especially valuable for students interested in recent developments in United States federal law.
The Legal History Blog features news, links to scholarly articles, books and events about legal history. The topics of the blog posts are diverse, including the legal history of Daylight Savings Timeand an entry about the recently published autobiography George W. Bush. A law student could possibly use this blog as inspiration for a thesis topic.
Wish I Would Have Known is a kind of advice column for law students. Although some of the humor contained within the posts can be a little off-color, much of the blog’s information, such as suggestions for how to prepare outlines and study for exams, can be particularly useful.
Law blogs can often serve as beneficial supplements, or interesting additions, to the information that students learns in law school. Check out the Blawg Directory regularly, as one way of keeping up with legal blogs.
Fictional lawyers can be found in literature and drama dating back to Shakespeare and Dickens. More modern day examples include Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and the many fictional lawyers and judges in Scott Turow and John Grisham novels.
If you have some down time, why not check out some of these fictional lawyers? Biddle's video and dvd collection contains many of the titles included in the ABA’s list of top 25 and notable characters. You can search for the titles in LOLA or in the Video Library - just take the call number to the circulation desk. Additional copies and titles may be located in Van Pelt’s online catalog, Franklin, and can be borrowed based on Van Pelt’s lending policy.
The biddleblog is a blog written by the librarians of the Biddle Law Library. It shares the latest news and events at Biddle, legal research tips, and other law-related information with the students, faculty, and staff of Penn Law.
For more information about what a blog is, click here.
To see an updated list of Penn Law and other law-related blogs, click here.
