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Show Ruling Could Reverse Citizens9 Right To Sue Reprinted With Permission From The Traverse City Record Eagle Traverse City, Michigan Feb. 18, 2004 In hearings last week before the state Supreme Court, lawyers for the Cleveland Cliffs Mining Co. asserted that a provision pro-vision of Michigan's Environmental Protection Act of 1970 was unconstitutional. The point being challenged was a portion of the act that says "the attorney general or any person" per-son" can sue the state for failing to enforce environmental laws. While the company's claim wasn't earth-shaking, what drew headlines was the fact that a four-justice majority appeared to agree. While there have long been some restrictions on citizen lawsuits law-suits at the state and federal level, there should also be no doubt that citizens reserve the right to sue their government to force it to do its job. If the court strikes down the right of citizens to sue if they think the state isn't enforcing its own laws, that could open the door to restrictions on other forms of citizen oversight, such as the state's Open Meetings and Freedom of Information acts: While exceptions to those acts exist, it is in citizens' best interests that courts rule as narrowly nar-rowly as possible on such exceptions. The four justices in question, however Chief Justice Maura Corrigan, Justice Cliff Taylor, Justice Stephen Markman and Justice Robert Young, Jr. are known to take a narrow view of citizen standing to sue. That seems to be an ideological ideologi-cal devolution from the bedrock premise that the power of government gov-ernment derives from the consent con-sent of the governed. Lawmakers can make laws because voters give them the right to do so. Judges can throw people in jail because citizens say they can. Without citizen consent, the government doesn't exist. If anything, the justices should be demanding to know why citizen standing should be limited, not why it should be granted. It's a form of judicial activism reminiscent of the liberal lib-eral Earl Warren U.S. Supreme Court, but this time it is aimed at limiting the rights of individual citizens, not enhancing them. ; And it's frightening. Robust, contentious debate over the limits of government authority, the power and standing stand-ing of individual citizens and how the two interact should be welcome. But the starting point of any such debate must be the premise, prem-ise, enshrined in our most valued val-ued documents, that government authority flows from the people to government, not the other way around. Citizens must have a way to hold their government accountable, account-able, to make it do its job. To reverse an existing law that makes that right expressly clear, is to act counter to the idea that government is of, for and by the people, and not the other way around. |