Updating New York’s Constitutional Environmental Rights

The stakes are high as New York State considers whether to amend the constitution. The electorate contemplates the gathering crises of sea level rise, disruption of weather patterns, intensified summer heat waves, and other climate change impacts. New York also faces escalating environmental problems, which the newly perceived climate impacts in turn exacerbate. It is timely to debate whether or not New York should recognize the right to the environment to its constitution. In 2016, the House of Delegates of the New York State Bar Association adopted the report of its committee on the constitution, regarding the environmental conservation article XIV. That report did not take a position on whether to expand the Constitution’s existing environmental rights to recognize a broad environmental right explicitly. A task force of the association’s section on environmental and energy law examined the issue for six months and concluded that there is merit in recognizing the right to the environment. This article introduces the emergence of this issue in its historical context