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Saturday, January 16, 2010

Courts - "Something's Fishy at the High Court"

Tony Mauro of The National Law Journal explains how the case got to the Supreme Court so fast, in this entry today. Some quotes:

The answer is that Michigan, in its effort to keep the carp from overtaking Lake Michigan, used as its vehicle three original-jurisdiction Supreme Court cases dating back to 1922.

In that year, states surrounding the Great Lakes sued the state of Illinois and the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Chicago to halt the diversion of Great Lakes water by Chicago to flush its sewage into the Mississippi River.

These suits, known then as the "Great Lakes cases," have a rich history, including the appointment by the Court of Charles Evans Hughes, the then-future chief justice, as special master to gather facts and offer a recommendation to resolve the dispute. The cases have remained open ever since. Michigan said the imminent danger of the carp reaching Lake Michigan was within the scope of the original cases. Illinois and the U.S. solicitor general disagree.

It was no surprise that Michigan would use the 90-year-old cases to raise the current controversy, said Noah Hall, professor at Wayne State University Law School, who has written extensively on Great Lakes water issues. "Those cases are the defining source of law for Great Lakes management, not some forgotten artifact," he said.

And it turns out Prof. Hall has a blog titled Great Lakes Law, with a special page collecting the links to all the Supreme Court filings involving the Asian carp.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 16, 2010 12:16 PM
Posted to Courts in general | Environment