Pryor also filed an amicus brief in 2000 asking the Supreme Court to reinterpret wetland protections under the Clean Water Act, in the famous case Solid Waste Authority of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) vs. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The court ultimately authorized the waste authority to use an isolated wetland for a garbage dump, but it took a much more moderate position than Pryor. His brief had argued that it is unconstitutional to federally regulate wetlands because it violates states' rights.

Pryor has also been an outspoken critic of the Clean Air Act's new-source review rules. In 2002 testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee, he argued that federal implementation of the rules "invade[s] the province of the states."

Topping it all off is Pryor's crusade against environmental justice. When a federal court in New Jersey indicated that it would allow private citizens to sue the state for permitting power plants that would disproportionately pollute minority and low-income communities, Pryor dismissed the move as "ridiculous," and in a speech to the environmental section of the Alabama Bar Association he made the staggering declaration that "environmental racism cases should fail generally."

And it's not just environmentalists who shudder at the thought of what Pryor could do with the power of a federal judgeship. Advocates for abortion rights and the separation of church and state, among many others, fear the ideological zealotry revealed in Pryor's rhetoric.

A die-hard pro-lifer, Pryor said in one speech that on the day Roe vs. Wade was decided, "seven members of our highest court ripped the Constitution, and ripped out the life of millions of unborn children." And Pryor waxed evangelical when rallying behind the judge who showcased the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Supreme Court building last year: "God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians ... to save our country and save our courts."

But who will save the country and the courts from Pryor?

Some observers say chances are slim that the Sierra Club will succeed in its effort to bump Pryor from the court, given that two previous efforts to oust recess-appointed judges have failed. But the group's lawyers rate their chances for success as "very high," according to Sierra Club senior attorney David Bookbinder. "The previous cases did not make the argument that the recess appointment was not in fact made during an official recess -- a scenario so preposterous that the judges [on the former cases] said it was one they would never expect to happen," he explained.

But even if Pryor weathers the club's suit, enviros can take some comfort in the fact that his recess appointment expires at the end of 2005, at which point he would have to be renominated or step down from the bench. He may do some damage in a year and a half, but at the relatively young age of 42, there's no telling what he could accomplish with a lifetime appointment.

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