\n\u201cLake Mary Jane is shallow\u2014twelve feet deep at most\u2014but she\u2019s well connected. She makes her home in central Florida, in an area that was once given over to wetlands. To the north, she is linked to a marsh, and to the west a canal ties her to Lake Hart. To the south, through more canals, Mary Jane feeds into a chain of lakes that run into Lake Kissimmee, which feeds into Lake Okeechobee. Were Lake Okeechobee not encircled by dikes, the water that flows through Mary Jane would keep pouring south until it glided across the Everglades and out to sea.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIn an effort to protect herself, Mary Jane is suing. The lake has filed a case in Florida state court, together with Lake Hart, the Crosby Island Marsh, and two boggy streams. According to legal papers submitted in February, the development would \u2018adversely impact the lakes and marsh who are parties to this action,\u2019 causing injuries that are \u2018concrete, distinct, and palpable.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Yup, it\u2019s all based on \u201csocial constructs\u201d with the claims that all rights<\/em> are \u201csocially constructed\u201d rather than being inalienable…<\/p>\n\n\u201cThe notion that \u201cnatural objects\u201d like woods and streams should have rights was first put forward half a century ago, by Christopher Stone, a law professor at the University of Southern California. Stone, who died last year, was a son of the crusading journalist I. F. Stone, and as a kid, in the nineteen-fifties, he sometimes helped put out his father\u2019s newspaper, I. F. Stone\u2019s Weekly. In the fall of 1971, the younger Stone was assigned to teach U.S.C.\u2019s introductory course on property law, and in one class he delivered a lecture on how ownership rights had evolved over time. Near the end of the hour, sensing that his students\u2019 minds were wandering, he decided to shake things up. What would happen, he asked, if the law were to further evolve to grant rights to, say, trees or even rocks? \u2018This little thought experiment,\u2019 he later recalled, created an \u2018uproar.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil that moment, Stone hadn\u2019t considered this question. But, having tossed it out, he found himself intrigued. He set about writing a law-review article. In the article, \u201cShould Trees Have Standing?\u2014Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects,\u201d Stone noted that rights are always socially constructed. In America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many groups\u2014Blacks, Native Americans, women, children\u2014were denied rights; then, as society, or what counted as society, changed, rights were slowly and painfully (and often incompletely) extended to them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The idea of \u201crights\u201d being fungible? Sounds like the court case Dred Scott v. Sandford\u2026 on chronic weed laced with angel dust.<\/p>\n
Oh, and Mary Jane the lake is talking to ya man, it\u2019s talking to ya!!1!<\/p>\n
\n\u201cA wood stork arrived and started poking its beak into the muck at the lake\u2019s edge. More storks swooped down and similarly began poking. One of them bent its legs, dipped its white-and-black wings into the water, and then held them out, as if airing a blanket. Another stork did the same, and soon they were all rolling around in the water and stretching their wings. I wasn\u2019t sure what, exactly, they were doing, but it looked like fun. I took off my shoes and waded in. As I approached, most of the storks flew away. The water, around my ankles, was the golden brown I had seen in Dierdorff\u2019s exhibit. I spent a while listening. I didn\u2019t hear any blips from Mary Jane; still, it seemed to me, the lake\u2019s wishes were pretty clear, as were the wood storks\u2019. What they really wanted was to be left alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
A little 420 mood music\u2026<\/p>\n
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