Trump wants the power to stop the public from suing polluters
摘要
美国国会制定《清洁空气法》《清洁水法》等环保法律时，为避免仅依赖行政机构执法，专门写入“公民诉讼条款”，允许公众和倡导团体在政府不作为时起诉违法企业，也可起诉未尽责的联邦机构。自20世纪70年代以来，此类诉讼已超过2000起，占环境案件多数，曾用于阻止大坝建设、制止地下水污染，并为非法排放争取到1420万美元民事罚款，深刻影响了现代环境法的发展。
Reducing rampant pollution across the United States was so important that when Congress passed many environmental protection laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act, it didn’t want to leave enforcement only to the executive branch.
Congress specifically wrote into those laws ways for citizens to enforce them through the courts when the government does not act to address the problem. Called “citizen suit provisions,” those parts of the laws allow regular people and advocacy groups to sue companies they believe are violating the law. Citizens can also sue federal agencies that fail to enforce the laws.
Since the 1970s, those provisions have been used in over 2,000 lawsuits. In fact, a majority of environmental cases are citizen suit cases. Citizen suits have been used to halt the construction of dams to protect endangered species, end the injection of wastewater into groundwater, and secure US$14.2 million in civil penalties for illegal emissions from a petrochemical facility. In short, these cases have shaped modern environmental law.
转载信息
评论 (0)
暂无评论，来留下第一条评论吧