Judicial Power - Justiciability Doctrines Flashcards
Justiciability
Justiciability refers to the types of matters that a court can adjudicate. If a case is “nonjusticiable,” then the court cannot hear it. Typically to be justiciable the plaintiff must have standing, and the issues must be ripe but neither moot nor violative of the political question doctrine. Typically, these issues are all up to the discretion of the court which is adjudicating the issue.
Ban on Advisory Opinions
Advisory opinions are opinions on the legality of executive or legislative action that do not involve an actual case. They generally aren’t allowed by SCOTUS since it’s a court of last resort and they prefer to have a case or controversy.
The Judicial System does not offer advisory opinions, because every decision is binding. For that reason a case and controversy is crucial to ensuring that the Courts are able to fully understand the case’s full judicial picture.
Case or Controversy Requirement
Under Article III, Section 2 a Court must have a “case” or “controversy” to hear a matter.
A case or controversy means that both sides have fundamental differences in what the outcome of the case should be. However, in Windsor the Court allowed for an amicus brief to satisfy this requirement when both the Plaintiff and Defendant (A.G.) agreed that a statute was unenforceable and therefore no “controversy” existed. Since, the Amicus Briefs argued for the enforcement of the statute, the Court believed that this was sufficient to create a controversy in the case.
Standing - Elements
Basic Requirements 1. Injury-in-Fact 2. Causation (Traceability) 3. Redressability Prudential Requirements (no 3rd party claims, no generalized grievances, must be within zone of interests).
Standing - Injury
Injury in Fact (harm to legally protected interests).
Must be immediate and real, not speculative or hypothetical. “Concrete and particularized” and “actual and imminent”.
Sufficient injuries can include common law rights, constitutional rights, statutory rights, aesthetic or environmental concerns, economic harms, facing criminal prosecution, or loss of right to sue.
Standing - Causation (Traceability)
Causation (traceable connection between the injury and D’s conduct). Can’t be the result of an independent action of some 3rd party not before the court. Usually analyzed together with redressability.
Standing - Redressability
Redressability (it’s probable that a favorable verdict will redress harm). In other words, the court must be able to actually fix the issue or do something about it like provide damages or injunctive relief.
Prudential Standing Requirements
Prudential Requirements of Standing
- May only assert one’s own rights, not claims of 3rd parties.
- No generalized grievances. P can’t sue as a taxpayer who merely shares a grievance with other taxpayers.
- Must raise a claim within the Zone of Interests protected by statute (more about assessing whether P even has a cause of action).
Ripeness
Must not be too early to sue.
When a plaintiff seeks injunctive relief from a harm that has not yet occurred, federal courts often make a prudential inquiry as to the ripeness of the claim, a doctrine which overlaps with standing. As a prudential matter, even though the plaintiff has shown that his future injury is sufficiently likely to occur, the federal court may say the case is nonjusticiable because:
- the factual record is not yet sufficiently developed to facilitate high-quality judicial work, and/or…
- the parties would not suffer any hardship if the courts simply waited longer before taking jurisdiction of the case, possibly even waiting until the injury has actually occurred.
Mootness
Must not be too late/pointless to sue.
Constitutional standing must exist at all stages of litigation, otherwise the controversy becomes moot and is no longer justiciable.
Exceptions:
- If a legal injury is “capable of repetition, yet evading review,” such as pregnancy, the case will not be mooted when the particular plaintiff can show that she, individually, could be placed in that situation again.
- Voluntary cessation: A case will be deemed moot on the grounds of voluntary cessation by the defendant of their injurious conduct only if the defendant asserting mootness meets the heavy burden of proving that “subsequent events made it absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.”
Political Question Doctrine
“Political questions” are cases where there is a political issue at the heart of the case. It is committed by the constitution to another branch OR inherently incapable of resolution and enforcement by the judiciary. These are nonjusticiable for the sake of separation of powers.
Political questions typically involve some of 6 factors:
- Textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to another political branch other than the judiciary (CONSTITUTIONALLY GROUNDED)
- Lack of standards for the judiciary to resolve the case (CONSTITUTIONALLY GROUNDED)
- Impossible to decide without initial policy determination for nonjudicial discretion
- Impossible to undertake independent resolution without disrespecting other branches
- Unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made
- Potential embarrassment from conflicting takes on the issue from multiple branches
It’s unsettled if the political question doctrine is MANDATORY or PRUDENTIAL. If it’s mandatory, then when it applies, courts simply can NOT hear the case. Just as a threshold matter, if it’s a political question, courts can’t step in. But if it’s prudential, then it’s only applied after the court looks at case or controversy and standing. The court would say we could hear it but we will decide not to. If it’s prudential, that’s awkward because then it’s discretionary whether courts hear cases inconsistently or not.
Congressional Standing
If an injury is institutional and affects a legislative seat or political office rather than a personal injury that is individualized and particularized, it will not suffice for standing purposes. But, SCOTUS hasn’t totally excluded the possibility of congressional suits.
Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife
Defenders of Wildlife didn’t prove any of the elements. The injury was too speculative since they didn’t even have plans to go visit the wildlife at issue. There were also redressability problems since there were 3 agencies involved and suing 1 of them wouldn’t have changed what the other two did. Congress lacks the authority to confer standing despite providing a citizen-suit cause of action for failure to enforce the laws.
Citizen Suit Provisions
Congress may not confer constitutional standing, but it can confer a cause of action which is ALSO needed to bring suit. You can have no cause of action but have standing and vice versa.
Citizen suit provisions are a form of Congress conferring a cause of action on citizens at large. Eliminates concerns of prudential standing requirements. But that doesn’t mean those citizens all have standing. Don’t want the people as overseers of the law which burdens the judiciary. Also, for separations of powers reasons, don’t want to allow Congress to ignore Art III.
FEC v. Akins
FEC said the AIPAC didn’t have to disclose its members. Voters sued based on the FEC Act, giving them a cause of action (citizen suit provision). SCOTUS said yes they can sue because they have the standing reqs met even though their cause of action only came from a statute, it still was good enough to be an injury. P’s injury was that they couldn’t get info on AIPAC that they would use in voting.
