Standing

Standing refers to a bundle of doctrines with the following common core: they determine whether someone's stake in litigation is real. In this section, we will examine just two of these standing doctrines: constitutional standing and statutory standing.

Constitutional standing stems from Article III, which empowers courts to hear only "cases or controversies"--language which has been interpreted, relatively recently, to limit litigation where 1) the plaintiff or challenger has suffered an "injury in fact," 2) there is a fairly traceable causal connection between the plaintiff's injury in fact and the defendant's action, and 3) the court must have the power to redress the injury through a favorable decision. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992). These prongs seem straightforward, but they are anything but, as you will see when you read the cases in this subsection. Constitutional standing is notoriously messy, and some would say unprincipled.

Statutory standing, by contrast, is both easier to apply and much less consequential than constitutional standing. Beyond the "case or controversy" requirement under the Constitution, Congress must actually authorize a class of challengers to bring suit. In the APA, Congress did just that by passing Section 702. As we will see in the cases, this provision has been read as creating something called the "zone of interests test" to determine whether challengers have standing under the APA to challenge agency action. As we will see as well, Congress can replace the zone of interests test under special review statutes--in fact, it can effectively do away with statutory standing requirements altogether by authorizing so-called "citizen suits."

This power to effectively enlarge standing to anyone interested in litigating creates some of the most interesting questions in standing law. Accordingly, we will spend some time addressing whether Congress violates Article III of the Constitution and the constitutional standing requirements by authorizing expansive statutory standing. The TransUnion v. Ramirez case is the latest episode in an increasingly volatile relationship between constitutional and statutory standing.