Document Type
Article
Abstract
On Election Day in 2021, New York's voters added Section 19 to the state's constitutional Bill of Rights. They reaffirmed a human birthright to clean air, clean water and a healthful environment. New York's constitutional Bill of Rights now guarantees the liberty that “each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.
New York's Legislature had previously concurred, recognizing that these rights are “elemental.” At the New York State Bar Association's Environment and Energy Law Section's annual meeting on Jan. 25, 2022, I was privileged to deliver a lecture entitled “A New Era in Environmental Jurisprudence,” about what this Bill of Rights' guarantee provides. Little did I know then that Judge John J. Ark, of the Supreme Court in Monroe County, would later cite this lecture in the first judicial decisions applying New York's newly minted Bill of Rights' assurance of a personal freedom. This article reflects on legal issues that are likely to emerge in ongoing adjudication about New York's environmental right.
Recommended Citation
Nicholas A. Robinson, The Dawn of Environmental Human Rights in New York, July/Aug. 2023, at 41, https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty/1293.
Included in
Constitutional Law Commons, Environmental Law Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons