Hak Mengajukan Gugatan dalam Sengketa Lingkungan Hidup

Penelitian ini ingin menjawab keberadaan pihak-pihak yang dapat mengajukan gugatan ke pengadilan apabila terjadinya kerugian akibat perbuatan melawan hukum dalam lingkungan hidup. Perbuatan melawan hukum yang menimbulkan kerugian akibat pencemaran atau perusakan lingkungan yang dilakukan oleh pengusaha atau penanggungjawab usaha dan/atau perusakan lingkungan hidup. Penyelesaian sengketa lingkungan hidup melalui pengadilan dapat dilakukan melalui gugatan perdata biasa yang diajukan oleh pihak korban atau anggota masyarakat biasa yang mengalami kerugian. Dengan melakukan studi dokumen, ditemukan bahwa dengan berlakunya Undang-Undang Nomor 32 Tahun 2009 telah memberikan kesempatan untuk mengajukan gugatan melalui legal standing/LSM, prosedur class action atau melalui citizen suit yang merupakan hak gugat tanpa adanya kepentingan hukum. Pemerintah atau Pemerintah Daerah sebagai penanggung jawab di bidang lingkungan hidup juga dapat mengajukan gugatan terhadap pelaku pencemaran dan/ atau perusakan lingkungan hidup untuk kepentingan dan kesejahteraan masyarakat. Right to Submit a Law in the Environmental Disputes This study wants to answer the existence of parties who can file a lawsuit to the court if there is an unlawful act that results in a loss to the environment. Unlawful acts that cause losses due to pollution or environmental damage carried out by employers or business people responsible for and/or environmental damage. Settlement of environmental disputes through a court can be carried out through civil lawsuit filed by victims or community who suffer losses. By conducting document studies, it was found that with the enactment of Law No. 32 of 2009, it has provided an opportunity to file a lawsuit through legal standing, class action or through citizen suits which constitute a claim right without any legal interest. The Government or Regional Government as the person in charge of the environmental sector can also file a lawsuit against the perpetrators of environmental pollution and/or damage for the benefit and welfare of the community.

United States of America

This chapter examines environmental law in the United States. It begins with a discussion of the US approach to environmental law, describing it as a system striving for balance, including balance in terms of the allocation of powers between federal and state legislatures. The chapter provides an overview of the constitutional bases of US environmental law, delegation of authority to regulatory agencies, and environmental regulation in relation to private property. It then considers the structure and substance of environmental law, focusing on five pieces of legislation: Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA). The chapter concludes with an analysis of the implementation framework and how it affects environmental law in practice, taking into account the role of agency authorities, administrative enforcement, civil remedies, criminal sanctions, and relevant provisions on citizen suits.

Returning Separation of Powers Analysis to its Normative Roots: The Constitutionality of Qui Tam Actions and Other Private Suits to Enforce Civil Penalties

This paper examines the status of debates concerning the constitutionality of private suits to enforce civil fines in light of the Supreme Court's decisions in Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens and Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, as well as a pending Fifth Circuit decision in United States ex rel. Riley v. St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital. The two Supreme Court opinions have upheld qui tam and citizen suits against standing challenges, but have reserved the question of their constitutionality under Article II. The Riley panel opinion held qui tam actions to be unconstitutional under Article II, but the Fifth Circuit took the matter en banc on its own motion on the very day the opinion was published. (Subsequent to the publication of this article, the Fifth Circuit overturned the panel opinion and upheld the constitutionality of qui tam actions, Riley v. St. Luke's Episcopal Hosp., 252 F.3d 749 (5th Cir. 2001).) In the author's judgment, all such private suits to enforce civil fines are plainly constitutional under both Article II and Article III. That such suits appear to raise constitutional doubts is the consequence of missteps in the Supreme Court's implementation of separation of powers principles. The Court, led chiefly in this respect by Justice Scalia, has written often as if constitutionally vested executive authority guarantees the President plenary policy control over all federal civil administration, and as if the purpose of standing doctrine were largely to protect such executive authority from judicial interference. The author believes that the vesting of executive power is better understood as an effort to remove Congress from the business of administration. Standing rules, for their part, ought chiefly to be understood as protecting the judiciary from the dilution of judicial power that would come from the resolution of abstract or collusive litigation. The author explains why the Court should go back to requiring no more as a matter of standing doctrine than that a case be presented in an adversary context and in a manner historically viewed as capable of judicial resolution. The Court's injury, causality, and redressability inquiries should be abandoned in favor of a more straightforward questioning whether plaintiffs in federal lawsuits have constitutional or statutory causes of action to support their complaints. In Article II cases, the Court should adhere to the analytic framework of Morrison v. Olson, and abandon the more wooden and categorical approach to interpreting executive power that informs Justice Scalia's Morrison dissent and his alternative holding in Printz v. United States.

THE LAW OF WORDS: STANDING, ENVIRONMENT, AND OTHER CONTESTED TERMS

Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167 (2000), exposes fundamental incoherencies within environmental standing doctrine, even while it ostensibly makes standing easier to prove for plaintiffs in environmental citizen suits. According to Laidlaw, an environmental plaintiff needs only to show personal injury to satisfy Article ill’s standing requirement; she need not show that the alleged statutory violation actually harms the environment. This Article argues that Laidlaw’s distinbtion between injury to the plaintiff and harm to the environment is nonsensical. Both the majority and dissent in Laidlaw incorrectly assume that there exists an objective standard by which a plaintiff, society or a court can measure harm or injury. Using examples drawn both from history (the 7) aiI Smelter. Arbitration (1930-41)) and fiction (Barbara Klngsolver’s novel Animal Dreams), this Article illustrates that the inherent contingency of language renders it impossible to define harm or injury without acknowledging the systemic perspective from which the concepts are viewed. The path to an intelligible standing doctrine lies not in focusing on this artificial opposition, but instead in acknowledging statutory violations as injurious to the social and legal system of which we all form a part. Assuming the violated statute contains a citizen suit provision, the resulting harm to the system could and should enable individuals to sue. This policy would conform the Court’s standing jurisprudence to the language and intent of the statutes before Ii. Moreover, this policy would counter the undermining of the rhetoric of environmental protection that persists so long as the Supreme Court continues its frequent yet unsucceesfid efforts to retool its definition of cognizable legal injury.