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The Standing Doctrine's Dirty Little Secret, Evan Lee, Josephine Mason

Evan T. Lee

For at least forty years, the Supreme Court has insisted that the standing doctrine’s requirements of imminent injury-in-fact, causation, and redressability are mandated by Article III of the Constitution. During that same time, however, the federal courts have consistently permitted Congress to relax or eliminate altogether the imminence, redressability, and even injury-in-fact requirements in most so-called “procedural rights cases”—cases in which there exists a statutory right to judicial review regardless of the plaintiff’s own personal interest in the matter. After asking whether the Necessary and Proper Clause could augment Article III to close up this gap, we conclude that the …