David Sive

David Sive, Esq.
David Sive at his home in Margaretville, NY
Born	September 22, 1922 Brooklyn, New York
Died	March 12, 2014(2014-03-12) (aged 91) West Orange, New Jersey
Alma mater	Brooklyn College Columbia Law School
Occupation	Environmentalist, lawyer, professor

David Sive (September 22, 1922 – March 12, 2014) was an attorney, environmentalist, and professor of environmental law, who has been recognized as a pioneer in the field of United States environmental law.

Sive was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. on September 22, 1922, the son of Abraham Sive and Rebecca (née Schwartz) Sive. As a teenager, his growing love for the outdoors and fascination with the American wilderness, as well as his interest in the writings of Thoreau, Emerson and Wordsworth, led him to a lifelong passion for the natural environment, to wilderness preservation and environmental protection. Hiking and camping expeditions during his college years, to the Catskill and Adirondack mountains of New York State, foreshadowed his advocacy in later years for the “forever wild” clause in the New York State constitution and his activism for environmental preservation in his home state and throughout the U.S.

Sive graduated from Brooklyn College with a degree in political science in 1943. He had enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942 and was called up in the spring of 1943 shortly before his college graduation. He served in the front lines in Europe, including in the Battle of the Bulge, was wounded twice and awarded the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster. Convalescence at a U.S. Army hospital in Devon, England gave him further opportunity to study the verse of William Wordsworth and other poets who revered the natural world, and to establish what was to become a lifelong commitment to environmental preservation. Sive enrolled at Columbia Law School following his discharge from the Army in the fall of 1945. A Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, he received the Bachelor of Laws degree in 1948.

One of Sive's first lawsuits that gained public attention was David Sive v. Louis Newman (1951). In this case, Sive argued that the owner of a car that is double-parked is liable for damage incurred to car traveling from the curb to the normal traffic stream. The argument was upheld.