“The critical question of "standing" would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concern for protecting nature's ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation. This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.”

—  William O. Douglas

Dissenting, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972)
Often referred to as Douglas' "trees have standing" case.
Judicial opinions

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William O. Douglas52
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1898–1980

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