Federal Government Powers

Question 1

Requirements to Bring a Case

Answer 1

Standing
Ripeness
Mootness (lack of)
No political question

Question 2

What is Standing

Answer 2

Whether the plaintiff is the proper party to bring a matter to the court for adjudication.

Need to show:
- Injury (personally suffered, or likelihood of future harm for injunction)
- Causation (D caused injury)
- Redressability (a favorable decision would remedy the injury)

Question 3

Third Party Standing

Answer 3

Generally, no third party standing. A plaintiff cannot assert claims of other parties who are not before the court.

Exceptions:
Close relationship between the plaintiff and the injured third party

The injured third party is unlikely to be able to assert his or her own rights

An organization may sue for its members, if:
- The members would have standing to sue,
- The interests are germane to the organization’s purpose, and
- The claim nor relief requires participation of individual members

Question 4

Standing: Generalized Grievances

Answer 4

Plaintiff must not be suing solely as a citizen or as a taxpayer interested in having the government follow the law.

Exception: taxpayers have standing to challenge government expenditures pursuant to federal (or state and local) statutes as violating the Establishment Clause

Question 5

Ripeness

Answer 5

Whether a federal court may grant pre-enforcement review of a statute or regulation.

Consider two main factors:
- The hardship that will be suffered without pre-enforcement review
- The fitness of the issue and the record for judicial review (does the court have everything it needs to decide the issue)

Question 6

Mootness

Answer 6

If events after the filing of a lawsuit end the plaintiff’s injury, the case must be dismissed as moot.

3 Exception:
- Wrong capable of repetition but evading review
- Voluntary cessation of wrongdoing, but D is free to resume at any time
- Class actions will not be dismissed if the named plaintiff’s claim becomes moot so long as one member of the class has an ongoing injury.

Question 7

Political Question Doctrine

Answer 7

Constitutional violations that the federal courts will not adjudicate.

Examples:
- The “republican form of government clause”
- Challenges to the President’s conduct of foreign policy
- Challenges to the impeachment and removal process
- Challenges to partisan gerrymandering

Question 8

Appellate Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court

Answer 8

Cases come in front of SCOTUS is two ways:

Writ of Certiorari
- Court has complete discretion to hear these cases
- Come from state courts and federal courts of appeal

Appeal
- SCOTUS MUST hear cases that come to it by appeal from three-judge federal district court panel

Question 9

Limitations on SCOTUS hearing state court decisions

Answer 9

SCOTUS cannot review a state court decision if there is an independent and adequate state law ground of decision.

I.e., If a state court decision rests on two grounds, one state law and one federal law, SCOTUS cannot hear it if the reversal of the federal law ground will not change the result in the case.

Question 10

Lower Federal Court Review

Answer 10

The Eleventh Amendment bars suits against states in federal court

Sovereign immunity bars suits against states in state courts or federal agencies

Exceptions:
- States can be sued by express waiver,
- States may be sued pursuant to federal laws adopted under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment
- The federal government and other state governments may sue state governments.
- Bankruptcy proceedings
- Suits pursuant to statutes adopted by Congress under its power to raise and army and a navy

Question 11

Suits against State Officers

Answer 11

State officers may be sued for:
- Injunctive relief
- Money damages to be paid out of their own pockets

State officers may NOT be sued if it is the state treasury that will be paying retroactive damages

Question 12

What is Abstention?

Answer 12

Federal courts may not enjoin pending state court proceedings