Is it possible to use constitutional rights to protect the intrinsic value of nature?  This Note looks at this question and argues why environmental rights should protect nature’s biodiversity and how this goal can be accomplished within a workable constitutional-rights framework.

Incorporating biodiversity protection into constitutional environmental rights will ensure that the rights will actually guarantee a truly healthy environment for present and future generations.  This Note emphasizes the importance of biodiversity law in environmental protection, explains why a constitutional environmental right should be part of a comprehensive environmental protection regime, and outlines how an effective environmental right should be written to guarantee that it provides biodiversity protection while remaining individually enforceable.  The Note goes on to present a framework for how courts, using current environmental-rights provisions, could incorporate biodiversity protection into current environmental-rights jurisprudence.  The author concludes by arguing that current constitutional provisions on environmental rights should and can protect biodiversity and thus, albeit indirectly, protect the intrinsic value of the natural world in which we all live.