Document: JOH-3-22-1

Ecology in court to serve environmental justice.

CUBIT, J.D.*

NOAA Damage Assessment Center ¹

Abstract:
Ecological studies are critically important in legal cases involving biological resources and environmental justice. For example, in legal cases regarding oil spills and chemical discharges impacting natural resources, ecological studies identify the causes of the resource losses and quantify the severity, geographical extent and duration of the losses. Ecological studies also determine the types and scales of restoration projects needed to address the losses. When fisheries are contaminated, the people most affected by losses of wholesome fish are often poor subsistence anglers and ethnic groups who depend on nearshore fisheries for food and income. A case presented in point is the contamination of large populations of nearshore fish by DDTs and PCBs near Los Angeles, California, USA, resulting in closure of a fishery plus health advisories to limit the consumption of numerous species of fish. U.S. natural resource laws require polluters to clean up contaminants and restore degraded natural resources. Fixing such problems is often expensive and is subject to intense negotiation and litigation. In this process, underlying ecological studies can be subjected to scrutiny that is much more critical and severe than most ecologists face elsewhere, that is, more severe than most reviews of grant applications or papers submitted for publication. In the 1993 Daubert decision, the U.S. Supreme Court established long-recognized principles of rigorous science as the standards for admitting scientific testimony into Federal Court cases. By these standards, professional credentials are not sufficient to validate and admit scientific testimony; instead, legal defensibility is scientific defensibility. Ecological studies that are admissible into court are those well grounded in rigorous application the scientific method and other principles and procedures of sound science.

Keywords: environmental justice, fish contamination, restoration, science litigation, natural resource law, Daubert, testimony, DDT, PCB, resource injury

This abstract is being presented at: 2:15 PM in session:
Symposium # 12: The Role of Ecology in Environmental Justice.