Excerpt from Equal Access to Courts Under Esa and Citizen's Fair Hearing Act: Hearing Before the Committee on Resources, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session on Equal Access to Courts Under the Endangered Species Act and H. R. 3862 Thank you, Madam Chairman. I am pleased to be here today. Let me begin with a little bit of caution, concerning the fact that there are some pending court cases, particularly the Bennett case in the Supreme Court, involved here. The Solicitor General of the United States, as you probably know, sets the litigating position of the us. Government. And the Solicitor General has a wise and long standing policy about not commenting on the details Of pend ing cases. That's why he doesn't give press conferences and the like. He doesn't want to be accused of trying our cases in the Con gress or in the newspapers. So I'll have to be very cautious about commenting on details of pending litigation. I'm certainly happy to be here to share our views on this legislation and our views on the general approach about how the esa ought to be applied in litiga tion under the government, but I do want to put that caution in the record. The basic position Of the United States is simple: that litigants who meet the Constitutional standards for going to court ought to be able to take us to court, to challenge our decisions implementing the esa or any other statute. And the playing field should be as level as possible, so that no matter where you come from, or what property interest you have or don't have, whether you're environ mentalist, regulated industry or whatever, you ought to be able to and, generally speaking, are able to take us to court to challenge our actions. In fact, we're involved at any one time in about different lawsuits challenging our decisions under various laws, and the vast majority Of those are brought by people with economic interests. In the Endangered Species Act in particular, there have been any number of important recent cases that have been brought by regulated industry. Mr. Macleod referred specifically to the Sweet Home case. That's probably the most important case ever litigated on the Endangered Species Act, and was brought by local governments and timber industry associations, and litigated on the merits to conclusion in the us. Supreme Court. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.