Limitation on Judicial Power: Requirements of Article III

Introduction

The Supreme Court first considered Article III's "case or controversy" limitation on the judicial power when President George Washington forwarded to the Court a request for guidance as to how best to maintain neutrality, during an outbreak of hostilities between England and France, consistent with international law and treaties to which the United States was a party. Chief Justice Jay responded by informing the President that the Court was without power to help (the President had said he would be "much relieved" if the Court answered his questions). Jay said that the Constitution authorized the Court to interpret the law only in the context of a real case or controversy--it had no power to render an advisory opinion about the law. (Note that this limitation on the judicial power is not shared by many state supreme courts, which often do issue advisory opinions.)

STANDING

Among the essential elements of what the Court considers a case or controversy is an injured plaintiff. The requirement that a plaintiff show that he or she has suffered "injury in fact" is a key requirement of the Court's doctrine of standing. (Note: Since standing is necessary to establish jurisdiction, courts will undertake to examine the issue even if not raised by either of the parties.)

Standing doctrine confuses both lower courts and litigants, because the Court manipulates the doctrine to serve other objectives. When the Court wants to reach the merits of a case, the standing doctrine is often relaxed. Conversely, when the Court wishes to avoid deciding the merits of a case--or perhaps, when it wants to shut a whole category of cases out of court--, the requirements for standing are tightened.

The standing doctrine consists both of constitutionally-derived rules and judicially-created gatekeeping ("prudential") rules. The Court has found Article III to require that plaintiffs demonstrate injury-in-fact, that the injury in question is fairly traceable to the defendant's challenged action, and that the injury is one that could be redressed by a favorable decision.

Standing has been an issue when taxpayers have challenged expenditures of general tax revenues. In 1923, in Frothingham v Mellon, the Court announced that a taxpayer's mere ideological opposition to an alleged illegal expenditure of federal tax revenue failed to provide a sufficient basis for standing. In Flast v Cohen (1968), however, the Court found that Florene Flast had standing as a taxpayer to challenge as a unconstitutional exercise of the taxing and spending power the use of federal dollars to pay for instructional materials in religious schools.