Article III, Section 2, Clause 1:

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State, between Citizens of different States,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

Although the Supreme Court had broadly outlined the basic elements of modern standing doctrine during the 1970s, the Court did not clearly articulate the now-classic three-part test that federal courts must apply when inquiring into a litigant’s Article III standing until its 1992 decision in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife.1 In that case, which involved an environmental group’s challenge under a citizen-suit provision to the Department of Interior’s decision not to apply the consultation rules of the Endangered Species Act to federal agency actions outside of the United States and high seas, Justice Antonin Scalia synthesized several of the Court’s standing cases from 1970s and 1980s to produce a three-part test.2 Writing for the Court, he stated that a litigant seeking to invoke the jurisdiction of a federal court must demonstrate that:

• He has suffered an “injury in fact” that is “concrete,” “particularized,” and “actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical” ;

• That a causal connection exists between the injury and the challenged conduct of the defendant, such that the injury is “fairly traceable” to the defendant’s conduct and not the result of action by third parties not before the court; and

• That it is “likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.” 3

This section explores the modern doctrine of Article III standing by examining cases in which the Supreme Court has interpreted and applied the three elements of the Lujan test in specific factual situations. Notably, although each standing element imposes an independent requirement on litigants, the three basic elements are interrelated.4

The first prong of the Lujan test requires a litigant to allege (and ultimately prove) that he has suffered an injury-in-fact. According to the Supreme Court, this key requirement has three components, obligating the litigant to demonstrate that he has suffered an injury that is (1) “concrete,” (2) “particularized,” and (3) “actual or imminent.” 5 The meaning of each of these three components is best illustrated by a discussion of specific factual situations in which the Court has interpreted and applied it. The Lujan test also requires that a plaintiff be able to show causation and redressability.

Footnotes

1

504 U.S. 555 (1992).

2

Id. at 560–61.

3

Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Although the Court has characterized all three standing elements as constitutionally required, it has at times suggested that Congress may, to an extent, relax the causation and redressability requirements when it creates procedural rights for private citizens to exercise. For example, a plaintiff that is harmed by an agency decision, and alleges a procedural defect in that decision, “can assert that right . . . even though he cannot establish with any certainty” that the correct procedure would have resulted in a different decision. E.g., id. at 572 n.7. See also Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 497 (2009) (suggesting in dicta that Congress may, by according a procedural right to private parties, “loosen the strictures of the redressability prong of [the] standing inquiry” so that standing exists even if the Court’s enforcement of a procedural right would not necessarily result in the redress of the plaintiff’s concrete injury). Despite this, a plaintiff must always show injury from an agency decision, even to claim a procedural error. See id. at 496 ( “[D]eprivation of a procedural right without some concrete interest that is affected by the deprivation—a procedural right in vacuo—is insufficient to create Article III standing.” ).

4

See Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 753 n.19 (1984) ( “To the extent there is a difference [between the causation and redressability requirements of standing], it is that the former examines the causal connection between the assertedly unlawful conduct and the alleged injury, whereas the latter examines the causal connection between the alleged injury and the judicial relief requested.” ). See also Sprint Commc’ns Co. v. APCC Servs., Inc., 554 U.S. 269, 288 (2008) ( “[T]he general ‘personal stake’ requirement and the more specific standing requirements (injury in fact, redressability, and causation) are flip sides of the same coin. They are simply different descriptions of the same judicial effort to ensure, in every case or controversy, ‘that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination.’” ) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

5

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–61 (1992).