Read the following dual passages regarding environmental litigation and legal standing. Then, match each statement (Left Items) to the correct characterization of the authors' viewpoints on that statement (Right Items).
Passage A
The traditional 'injury-in-fact' requirement in environmental jurisprudence—which predicates legal standing on a plaintiff's ability to demonstrate concrete harm to their own use or aesthetic enjoyment of a resource—is structurally incapable of addressing systemic ecological degradation. This anthropocentric bottleneck limits redress to localized, human-experienced damages, ignoring the intrinsic value of ecosystems. The necessary remedy is granting legal personhood to natural entities. Skeptics argue this is procedurally impossible, yet the law regularly accommodates non-human entities like corporations and municipalities. Just as courts appoint guardians *ad litem* to represent the interests of incapacitated persons, dedicated trustees must be authorized to articulate and defend the autonomous interests of a river or forest, independent of human utility.
Passage B
Calls to confer legal personhood upon natural resources stem from a misplaced frustration with standing doctrine. The 'injury-in-fact' standard is not an insurmountable barrier to environmental preservation; rather, it is a malleable framework that courts have consistently expanded to recognize generalized aesthetic, recreational, and scientific harms. Conjuring legal personhood for a river introduces perilous legal fictions without altering the practical reality of litigation: human advocates will inevitably project their own normative priorities onto the natural entity they ostensibly represent. A guardian acting for a river does not channel the river’s 'autonomous interests'—an epistemological impossibility—but merely leverages the fiction of personhood to advance a specific human ecological agenda. We need not abandon the requirement of demonstrating human harm to protect nature; we need only recognize that ecological degradation inherently constitutes profound human harm. Indeed, recent appellate decisions under the Clean Water Act demonstrate that existing statutory frameworks already provide ample room for expansive ecological protection.
- The procedural mechanism of guardianship can successfully isolate and represent the intrinsic objectives of an ecological entity free from human normative projection.Passage A explicitly affirms this proposition; Passage B explicitly rejects it.
- The jurisprudential mandate of injury-in-fact possesses sufficient plasticity to accommodate comprehensive ecological preservation without requiring a structural overhaul.Passage A explicitly rejects this proposition; Passage B explicitly affirms it.
- Recent jurisprudence interpreting the Clean Water Act proves that legislative frameworks can be construed broadly enough to provide expansive environmental protection.Passage B explicitly affirms this proposition; Passage A provides no clear indication of agreement or disagreement.
- The actual courtroom articulation of environmental interests is a process necessarily mediated through human representatives.Both Passage A and Passage B explicitly affirm this proposition.