WASHINGTON, Nov. 12, 2008
Supreme Court: No Limits On Navy Sonar Use
Enviro Groups Had Said Sonar Affects Whales; Arguments Begin In Religious Monuments Case
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The Suprme Court Ruled Nov. 12 that lower courts exceeded their authority by limiting the Navy's use of sonar in training drills. Environmental groups say that the sonar adversely affects whales. (CBS/iStockphoto)
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Interactive The Supreme Court History, traditions and key cases, plus what it takes to get on the bench.
The court, in its first decision of the term, voted 5-4 that the Navy needs to conduct realistic training exercises to respond to potential threats by enemy submarines.
Environmental groups had persuaded lower federal courts in California to impose restrictions on sonar use in submarine-hunting exercises to protect whales and other marine mammals.
The Bush administration argued that there is little evidence of harm to marine life in more than 40 years of exercises off the California coast.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
The court did not deal with the merits of the claims put forward by the environmental groups. It said, rather, that federal courts abused their discretion by ordering the Navy to limit sonar use in some cases and to turn it off altogether in others.
The overall public interest tips "strongly in favor of the Navy," Roberts wrote. He said the most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of the marine mammals.
"In contrast, forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine force jeopardizes the safety of the fleet," the chief justice wrote.
In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the Navy's own assessment predicted substantial and irreparable harm to marine mammals from the exercises. She said that "this likely harm ... cannot be lightly dismissed, even in the face of an alleged risk to the effectiveness of the Navy's 14 training exercises." Justice David Souter joined in Ginsburg's dissent.
Roberts pointed out that the federal appeals court decision restricting the Navy's sonar training acknowledged that the record contained no evidence marine mammals had been harmed.
Read the Supreme Court ruling and dissenting opinions in the Navy sonar case.
The exercises have continued since the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in February that the Navy must limit sonar use when ships get close to marine mammals.
A species of whales called beaked whales is particularly susceptible to harm from sonar, which can cause them to strand themselves onshore.
In other activity this week:
The Salt Lake City-based reigious group hopes to erect a monument in the city's Pioneer Park, which is already home to a Ten Commandments monument that donated by another private group.
The Summum argued, and a federal appeals court agreed, that Pleasant Grove can't allow some private donations in its public park and reject others.
Cities and states worry that a ruling for the Summum would allow almost anyone to erect a monument in a public park, including people with hateful points of view, or lead to the removal of war memorials and other longstanding displays.
The question arises from a Massachusetts drug case and turns on whether defendants' constitutional right to confront witnesses against them extends to lab reports. Prosecutors use such reports in thousands of cases each year. Typically, jurors are given the official reports with no accompanying testimony.
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- You want to come and help me plow snow? We had a little over 100 inches last year! I need help feeding animals when it is 30 below also. Global Warming my A$$! The earth goes through its cycles and there is nothing we can do about it.
Posted by coopster41
Why does last year''s (or the near futures) precipitation have anything to do with global warming? The effects the earth will go through to recover from increased greenhouse gases (the next ice age) will not happen in our lifetime. Stop measuring your snow and try measuring the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and compare and see how rapidly it''s increasing. - Reply to this comment
- Let them go. If a bunch of whales show up beached, then we expect that the people that approved this will be there to help clean up the mess. (I know they wont but we expect it) As for Gore and the global warming you guys are talking about, WHATEVER!
You want to come and help me plow snow? We had a little over 100 inches last year! I need help feeding animals when it is 30 below also. Global Warming my A$$! The earth goes through its cycles and there is nothing we can do about it. - Reply to this comment
- The military often employs bad ideas and later learns from them. Case in point, the US Army Air Corps thought that gyro instruments inside aircraft were not a safety enhancing device and instead ruled that the human sense of balance was superior. After numerous crashes and misfortunes, they reversed their position.
The use of high power sonar will likely take the same route. It won''t take sick animals to prove this, but instead it will take disasters and misfortunes to prove that high power sonars are inferior to other detection techonologies.
Our country survived loosing many aircraft and pilots to the limitations of Army Air Corp thinking, and it will survive loosing many vessels and seaman to the limitations of Navy thinking. The quest for military advantage is proven or disproven with losses or victories.
In the end, our military achievements are more possible without a hostile relationship.
Now that the cold war is over, I would like for the DIA and NSA to reveal what they do know about extra-terrerstrial life or vessels. I would be in favor of a Federal Constitutional Amendment that mandates disclosure of all extra-terrestrial life and vessels by all agencies within 24 hours, not 30+ years after an incident has been declassified. - Reply to this comment
- i''d like to learn english from a native american, please send your YM or Skype account to my mailbox if you have interesting:
xiaoyaliyi@163.com. :) - Reply to this comment
- ALl of you people that want to cry for the whales and say there is no threat are the exact people that would scream that the Govt didn''t do enough to protect us if something did happen
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- There are only about 150 USN ships with high powered sonar spread across the entire world''s oceans.
The risk is insignificant.
This should never have gotten past the first judicial case. - Reply to this comment
- It never ceases to AMAZE ME how people pick up the sword for animal rights, yet WALK BY & IGNORE a homeless person.
- Reply to this comment
- I wish someone would do long-wave sonar in Washington DC. That would settle this issue in a hurry.
- Reply to this comment
- Well the peanut gallery is out in force once again. Where is nuclear testing reported in the article? Also all life co-exists in the universe.. What life has been found outside of our atmosphere? Co-exist, I don''''t think happens to much. It seems that life attacks life in everyway. Plants eats animals, animals eat plants and other animals. Insects attack insects as well as plants and animals. There are some instances of symbionic relationships, but not many. Not that I am for harming the whales as they have rights to be there. Just think before you attempt to make conversation!!
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Posted by au_fait at 07:21 PM : Nov 12, 2008
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Yeah, you''re so smart "au-***". I don''t think "co-exist" (sp?) "exists to (sp?) much". LOL - Reply to this comment
- Bush may be gone but the legacy of the Supreme Idiots he, daddy, and Reagan have appointed will live on to haunt all of us for years to come....Maybe we can figure out a way to repeal the lifetime appointment ***. As long as the highest court has a decidedly political slant, there will be NO fairness from the likes of them. I would love to be able to tell Scalia "get over it".
- Reply to this comment
- "The Bush administration argued that there is little evidence of harm to marine life in more than 40 years of exercises off the California coast."
Yes, of course! And where did you say Saddam was hiding those wmd''s? - Reply to this comment
- Submarines: gimme a break
Posted by legacyABQ at 08:27 PM : Nov 12, 2008
Keep thinking like that and your ''legacy'' will probably be a memoir of you life in a Gulag - Reply to this comment
- "The Bush administration argued that there is little evidence of harm to marine life in more than 40 years of exercises off the California coast"
Yeah?? There''s little evidence of harm from enemy submarines for that matter..
What is this, 1957??
Who even has submarines anymore that we care about militarily?
I bet China has like 3 submarines..
So what.
Submarines: gimme a break - Reply to this comment
- The navy has got to develop a better technology other than age old sonar to conduct their military exercises. Are there usable frequencies that won''t harm marine life?
- Reply to this comment
- Well the peanut gallery is out in force once again. Where is nuclear testing reported in the article? Also all life co-exists in the universe.. What life has been found outside of our atmosphere? Co-exist, I don''t think happens to much. It seems that life attacks life in everyway. Plants eats animals, animals eat plants and other animals. Insects attack insects as well as plants and animals. There are some instances of symbionic relationships, but not many. Not that I am for harming the whales as they have rights to be there. Just think before you attempt to make conversation!!
- Reply to this comment
- Da*mn whales and dolphins. Never mind the dead animals turning up on beaches... We should do more sonar and nuclear testing, but we should do it in the gulf of Mexico and the southeast Atlantic where republicans live.
- Reply to this comment
- Roberts, Scalia, and Alito, the "3 Stooges" of the Supreme Court have once again proved their absolute disregard for the environment by allowing the Navy to conduct sonar tests which could and probably will make whales go deaf and probably kill them!
After all, the 3 Stooges argued, national defense is more important than the welfare of the whale population!
Perhaps Roberts (Moe), Scalia (Larry), and Alito (Curly) would think a bit differently if they were thrown into a soundproof room and sat listening to the noise emitted from the Navy''s sonar for 3 weeks!!!
After all, they would be doing their part to promote national defense, even if it meant their ear drums would "POP" in their heads!!!!
SIG HEIL, MY BUDDIES ON THE SUPREME COURT DON''T CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT, JUST LIKE I DON''T!!!, BUSH!!! - Reply to this comment
- If Russia came here in a sub, they would all be dead inside. They''ve proven THAT over and over. If North Korea did so, everyone on the sub would be SO happy to get away from him, they''d give us the sub. The practice is pointless and another fruitless way for the US to spend money and harm the whales. It''s unnecessary.
- Reply to this comment
- If liberals had the right to marry whales, we wouldn''t have this problem.
- Reply to this comment
- Looks like it was a split right down conservative/liberal lines. Scalia, Roberts and Alito are always together....for whatever Bush wants
- Reply to this comment
