Abstract
Before the adoption of environmental rights provisions beginning in the 1970s, most state constitutions did not contain provisions that protected the natural environment from degradation. Instead, to the contrary, many constitutions—especially in western states—contained policies that have long entrenched carbon-intensive infrastructures and have favored extractive industries. But starting in the early 1900s, a handful of states began amending their constitutions to incorporate environmental policy provisions. These additions helped preserve forested lands by giving state governments the power to respond to uncontrolled forest fires and adopt policies to prevent deforestation. Other amendments established fish and game commissions as constitutional entities, safeguarding them from political influence. These provisions have largely been ignored in legal scholarship, but they helped form the basis of the environmental constitutionalism that took hold with environmental rights provisions later in the twentieth century. In this Article, I tell the story of these important changes to state constitutional law—and argue that they are highly relevant in understanding the relationship between state constitutions and the environment.
Recommended Citation
Quinn Yeargain, State Constitutions in the Woods, 41 Pace Envtl. L. Rev. 317 (2024)Available at: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pelr/vol41/iss2/8
Included in
Energy and Utilities Law Commons, Environmental Law Commons, Natural Resources Law Commons