The legal principle behind a more restrained Supreme Court term
It is the first question that must be answered in every U.S. Supreme Court case: Does the court have jurisdiction to hear the case at all?
The question of standing, as it is called, loomed large over the just-concluded term in cases covering everything from immigration policy to student loans to Native adoption law.
Standing doctrine, per the U.S. Constitution, limits federal court jurisdiction to certain “cases” and “controversies.”
If this seems vague – well, not even the nine justices always agree, especially when it comes to cases brought by states against the White House. And it’s something that even the justices have criticized as easy to manipulate.
In 2007, for example, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a dissent that the special consideration for states was emblematic of “how utterly manipulable [standing doctrine is] if not taken seriously as a matter of judicial self-restraint.”
Last week, in her dissent in the student loan ruling, Justice Elena Kagan quoted that line back to him. “After today,” she wrote, “no one will have to go
