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Grains Of Sand Or Butterfly Effect: Standing, The Legitimacy Of Precedent, And Reflections On Hollingsworth And Windsor, Maxwell L. Stearns

Maxwell L. Stearns

One test of whether a scholarly work has achieved canonical status is to ask respected scholars in the field which works, setting aside their own, are essential reads. William Fletcher’s article, The Structure of Standing, now in its twenty-fifth year, would almost certainly emerge at the top of any such lists among standing scholars. And yet, while many at this conference have built upon Fletcher’s insights, there remains notable disagreement concerning standing doctrine’s normative foundations. The central dispute concerns whether standing doctrine should be celebrated as furthering a “private-rights,” or instead, condemned as thwarting a “public-rights,” adjudicatory model. In a …