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Supreme Court of the United States

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University of Cincinnati College of Law

Article III

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Voluntary Dismissals, Jurisdiction & Waiving Appellate Review, Bryan Lammon Dec 2023

Voluntary Dismissals, Jurisdiction & Waiving Appellate Review, Bryan Lammon

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Litigants have long tried to manufacture a final, appealable decision by voluntarily dismissing their claims after an adverse interlocutory decision. Recently—and especially since the Supreme Court’s decision in Microsoft Corp. v. Baker—courts have thought that these dismissals created a jurisdictional problem. Either the voluntary dismissal did not produce a final decision, or the dismissal extinguished Article III jurisdiction. But the problem with these appeals is not jurisdictional. It’s waiver. A voluntary dismissal after an adverse interlocutory decision waives the right to appellate review. This Article shows the flaws in the jurisdictional rejection of this kind of manufactured finality and …


State Standing In United States V. Texas: Opening The Floodgates To States Challenging The Federal Government Or Proper Federalism?, Bradford Mank Jan 2018

State Standing In United States V. Texas: Opening The Floodgates To States Challenging The Federal Government Or Proper Federalism?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In United States v. Texas, the Supreme Court by an equally divided vote, 4 to 4, affirmed the decision of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the State of Texas had Article III standing to challenge in federal court the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) directive establishing a Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (“DAPA”) program to grant lawful immigration status to millions of undocumented immigrants. A serious question is whether state standing in this case will open the floodgates to allow states to challenge virtually every federal executive action. On the other hand, …


Article Iii Standing For Private Plaintiffs Challenging Greenhouse Gas Regulations, Bradford Mank Jan 2016

Article Iii Standing For Private Plaintiffs Challenging Greenhouse Gas Regulations, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

An important unresolved question is whether non-state plaintiffs have standing under Article III of the U.S. Constitution to sue in federal courts in climate change cases. In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court held a state government could sue the U.S. government to address climate change issues, and suggested, but did not decide, that private litigants might have lesser rights than states. In Washington Environmental Council v. Bellon, the Ninth Circuit held that private groups did not have standing to challenge Washington State’s failure to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from five oil refineries, and implied that private plaintiffs may …


Data Breaches, Identity Theft And Article Iii Standing: Will The Supreme Court Resolve The Split In The Circuits, Bradford Mank Jan 2016

Data Breaches, Identity Theft And Article Iii Standing: Will The Supreme Court Resolve The Split In The Circuits, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In data breach cases, the lower federal courts have split on the question of whether the plaintiffs meet Article III standing requirements for injury and causation. In its 2013 decision Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, the Supreme Court, in a case involving alleged electronic surveillance by the U.S. government’s National Security Agency, declared that a plaintiff alleging that it will suffer future injuries from a defendant’s allegedly improper conduct must show that such injuries are “certainly impending.” Since the Clapper decision, a majority of the lower federal courts addressing “lost data” or potential identity theft cases in which there is …


Does A House Of Congress Have Standing Over Appropriations?: The House Of Representatives Challenges The Affordable Care Act, Bradford Mank Jan 2016

Does A House Of Congress Have Standing Over Appropriations?: The House Of Representatives Challenges The Affordable Care Act, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In U.S. House of Representatives v. Sylvia Matthews Burwell, the District Court for D.C. in 2015 held that the House of Representatives has Article III standing to challenge certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act as violations of the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on legislative standing is complicated. The Court has generally avoided the contentious question of whether Congress has standing to challenge certain presidential actions because of the difficult separation-of-powers concerns in such cases. In Raines v. Byrd, the Court held that individual members of Congress generally do not have Article III standing by simply holding …


Standing To View Other People's Land: The D.C. Circuit's Divided Decision In Sierra Club V. Jewell, Bradford Mank Jan 2015

Standing To View Other People's Land: The D.C. Circuit's Divided Decision In Sierra Club V. Jewell, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In its divided 2014 decision in Sierra Club v. Jewell, the D.C. Circuit held that plaintiffs who observe landscape have Article III standing to sue in federal court to protect those views even if they have no legal right to physically enter the private property that they view. The D.C. Circuit’s decision could significantly enlarge the standing of plaintiffs to sue federal agencies or private parties over changes to private lands that the plaintiffs have no right to enter. Because the Supreme Court has inconsistently applied both strict and liberal approaches to standing, it is difficult to predict how it …


Does United States V. Windsor (The Doma Case) Open The Door To Congressional Standing Rights?, Bradford Mank Jan 2015

Does United States V. Windsor (The Doma Case) Open The Door To Congressional Standing Rights?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In rare cases, a President refuses to defend a statute he believes is unconstitutional. The law is unclear whether Congress or either House of Congress has Article III standing to defend a statute that the President refuses to defend. In United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court in 2013 addressed the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The Obama Administration took the middle position of not defending DOMA, but still enforcing it despite its view that the statute was unconstitutional to assist federal courts in reviewing the constitutionality of the statute. It was unclear whether an appeal was …


Prudential Standing Doctrine Abolished Or Waiting For A Comeback?: Lexmark International, Inc. V. Static Control Components, Inc., Bradford Mank Jan 2015

Prudential Standing Doctrine Abolished Or Waiting For A Comeback?: Lexmark International, Inc. V. Static Control Components, Inc., Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., Justice Scalia writing for a unanimous Court partially achieved his goal of abolishing the prudential standing doctrine. First, the Court concluded that the zone of interests test concerns whether Congress has authorized a particular plaintiff to sue and is not a prudential standing question despite several Court decisions classifying it as such. However, there is a continuing controversy in the D.C. Circuit about applying the test to suits by competitors, especially in environmental cases. The better approach is to allow competitor standing in at least …