Legal News

Navy Wins, Whales Lose at High Court

By Dan Slater

Having grown up in Minnesota — a land-locked, lake-ridden territory next to Canada — the Law Blog, unlike the Law Blog’s editor, has no whale-watching tales from our youth.

So let’s just get to the news. In October, the High Court heard arguments in a case pitting the U.S. Navy against, essentially, whales off the California coast. Today, the whales lost. Here’s the opinion. The Court, in its first decision of the term, ruled the Navy needs to conduct realistic training exercises to respond to potential threats by enemy submarines.

The dispute centered on a series of Naval training exercises involving the use of sonar that began in February 2007 and are scheduled to end in January. In March of last year, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit in federal court in California to stop or modify the use of sonar, which can hurt sea life.

Last month, we mentioned speculation that the Court may not split down its normal ideological lines. At oral argument, Justice Breyer wondered aloud why the parties hadn’t settled. “You’re asking us to figure it out,” Breyer said, adding: “The whole point of the armed forces is to hurt the environment . . . on a bombing mission, do they have to prepare an environmental impact statement?”

So much for our predictions. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Justices Alito, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that the Justices voted 5-4, in favor of the Navy. The vote was 6-3, with Justices Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy joining an opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts. Justice Breyer filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Stevens joined as to the concurrence. Ginsburg and Souter dissented outright.

Photo: Getty Images

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 12, 2008 (boomark / email).