Benjamin Kaplan, one of the commonwealth’s foremost jurists and a Vineyard seasonal resident, died last week at 99. Justice Kaplan was an eloquent man who brought his soaring intellect and sparking wit to the classroom as a professor at Harvard Law School, and to the bench as a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and after his retirement from that court, as a senior justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court. I had the good fortune to appear before him on several occasions.

Justice Kaplan’s legacy includes the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court opinion he authored in 1977, which decided the case Island Properties v. Martha’s Vineyard Commission (372 Mass. 216 1977). No other opinion issued by any Massachusetts court has had more of an impact on the preservation and protection of Martha’s Vineyard than the Island Properties case.

The breadth of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s powers and the legal validity of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission act, which was passed by the Massachusetts legislature in 1974, were untested when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court heard the case. The facts were complicated.

The Strock family, organized as Island Properties, had filed a subdivision plan before the MVC act became law. The family proposed to subdivide 507 acres with substantial frontage on Sengekontacket Pond into 850 building lots. (The land covered by the proposal now includes Farm Neck Golf Club and the Waterview Farm subdivision.)

Following passage of the MVC act, the commission adopted regulations for various districts of critical planning concern (DCPCs), which overlay town zoning. The DCPC regulations are much more restrictive on development and protective of the environment than the zoning laws which exist in our towns. A number of the DCPCs, including the Coastal District, which protects land within 500 feet of water bodies, were adopted by the commission and by all six Island towns in the mid-1970s. The commission was also empowered by its enabling legislation to review large-scale developments, commonly referred to as developments of regional impact (DRIs). The Strock family proposal, due to its proximity to Sengekontacket Pond and its massive size, fell within the Coastal District and qualified as a DRI, requiring commission review.

The issue presented to the court was whether the Strock family’s ability to subdivide their land was governed by the much more lenient provisions of town zoning and the Massachusetts Subdivision Control Act, or by the newly enacted commission regulations, and whether the statute was legal under Massachusetts law.

Justice Kaplan, writing for a unanimous court, held that the provisions of the MVC act controlled, and that the commission, under the powers granted by the legislature, was entitled to review the plans for the 507 acres before Oak Bluffs could issue any development permits.

Justice Kaplan’s language in the Island Properties decision has formed the bedrock for subsequent rulings by Massachusetts courts, including the Supreme Judicial Court, on the powers of the commission (and thereafter the Cape Cod Commission — which was modeled on the MVC act).

Since Justice Kaplan wrote so eloquently, I am going to simply quote several statements from his opinion:

“[The MVC Act] was intended to respond . . . to the threat of destruction of the ecological and other special values of the Island through steeply increasing commercial developments of its land and water resources which would not be adequately contained or regulated merely by action that could or would be initiated by the individual towns.”

In ruling that the commission regulations are substantially different from local zoning bylaws, he wrote:

“Not only is [the MVC act] a statute of the [legislature]; the reason of its being is to import regional — Islandwide and statewide — considerations into the protections of the land and water of Martha’s Vineyard, considerations which, the legislature could believe, the towns themselves had not and would not severally bring to bear.”

Finally, in ruling that the Strock family had to proceed to have their subdivision plan reviewed by the commission as a DRI, even though they had filed their plan before the enactment of the MVC act, Justice Kaplan wrote the following words frequently quoted by various courts over the years:

“It might be thought a perverse anomaly if these regional purposes could be thwarted, as to undeveloped resources requiring [DCPC] or [DRI] status, by freezing and preserving . . . pre-existing local by-laws with a narrow orientation.”

Justice Kaplan concluded his decision in a very understated way:

“We need hardly add that we are not entitled to express any opinion as to whether [the MVC act] is good or bad legislation, or whether the commission has or has not done a useful job. Our function is limited to the issues of law presented by the record.”

The commission, due in large part to the broad language of the Island Properties case, has withstood virtually every court challenge to its powers over the years. It is unarguable that the commission has had a dramatic impact in preventing inappropriate development and the destruction of the unique resources of Martha’s Vineyard. As you drive along the Beach Road between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown and look across Sengekontacket Pond, the landscape would be dramatically different if 850 homes were located there instead of Farm Neck Golf Club, and the limited development which has been allowed under commission regulations.

The beauty of this Island rests, in large measure, with the environmental protections contained in the numerous DCPCs passed over the years by the commission (and approved by our six towns), and by the multitude of DRI decisions issued by the commission during the past 35 years.

Justice Kaplan is now gone, but his legacy will be with us for a long time.

A partner at Reynolds, Rappaport, Kaplan and Hackney in Edgartown, Ronald H. Rappaport is town counsel to five of the six Island towns.