Talk:Standing (law)

Consolidation

Regarding whether taxpayer standing should be incorporated in this article, I would argue that it should. The concepts of legislative standing, taxpayer standing, citizen's standing, organizational standing, third party standing, and statutory standing can all and should all be discussed in the same article, due to the fact that nearly every course in constitutional law covers them together, and many court cases discuss the sufficiency of plaintiff's standing under many grounds of standing. I'm not volunteering to write the article, but it makes sense to consolidate them together. 65.184.16.79 14:08, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. Taxpayer standing and standing overlap quite a bit to the point that both need to be mentioned in each article. However, taxpayer standing is a notable enough doctrine in its own right. It would require too much length in the standing article to go into all the necessray detail, so that refers over here. That's why we still need this article Non Curat Lex (talk) 01:32, 9 April 2008 (UTC).

Is this purely a U.S. concept? The article discusses it exclusively as such, and I've never heard of it under any other country's legal system. I don't know what category to place it under. Postdlf 19:27, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I placed a source comment at the head of the article to alert future editors. Ellsworth 00:35, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

no it's not an american concept. it's roots come from the common law. for instance the rule within the law of contract that no one but a party to the contract can sue on the back of it involves locus standi issues. also any court in any jurisdiction common or civil law charged with constitutional interpretation will question locus standi of any applicant

preceding comment added 20:05, 24 March 2006 by 136.206.1.17

yes, it seems to be a more heavily-publicized element of the legal system in America, but it's really about having a right to complain -- check out this "standing cross-reference" for most of the 50 states, to get an idea of the case law: http://www.adventuresinlegalland.com/index.php?/content/view/52/27/ (I added this URL to the "external links" section since it is pretty bare, and it is valuable information on the topic)199.214.24.30 22:37, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure that this should be dealt with as a substantive legal matter at all. It would perhaps be better dealt with as a Latin definition and broad statement of effect, leaving elaboration of its legal content to the articles requiring to refer to it since, even within the same jurisdiction, its meaning can differ. For instance, in the UK it has a narrower meaning in judicial review actions than it does in other contexts and is narrowed still further when Human Rights Act considerations are in play. Antisthenes 14:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

PROBLEM - The Lujan case is mis-cited. There was no majority opinion by the Court as to redressability. If you look at the opinion, Scalia's Part III-B (redressability) did not receive a majority of votes, as Justice Marshall did not take part in the opinion.

Removed

i removed this sentence from the last part of the first paragraph because it was redundant. "To put it simply, the party suing has to have something to lose if the law is left on the books." (24.242.221.231 09:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC))

Separate Article for US

It would seem better to me that articles that contain significant technical information and citations of case law that are tied to one country should be represented in the Wikipedia by individual articles for each country. Kevin (talk) 14:17, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Is Martin relevant?

The article on Martin_v._Ziherl indicates that the plaintiff didn't challenge standing until appeal, and the appellate court simply ignored the issue because they're not supposed to consider standing arguments that were only made on appeal. This article, however, argues that the defendant does have standing. Which is correct? It's entirely possible that the defendant had standing, but the court didn't say so, and so we'll need a source for something other than the decision in Martin for verifiability for that claim; in the absence of such a source, though, we should probably find a better example than Martin here. --Geoffrey 11:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

vs. Right of Action

This article seems to need major editing, especially the US section. It's my understanding that to have standing is to have a Right of Action, and that what this article describes as standing is actually only one meaning of the word. Am I mistaken? If so, we should have citations.

I don't think I'm mistaken; It's simply "The legal right to initiate a lawsuit", per http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/s064.htm ! Right of Action I think the best remedy is for this US section of this article to be moved, e.g. to Constitutional Standing or [[Standing in the US Supreme Court], and a new article take its place, or it should redirect to Right of Action. Thoughts?

FYI, I got interested because of questions raised when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals punted the Prop 8 case back to the SCOTCA for a ruling on standing ([1]) --Elvey (talk) 23:33, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

No, you're totally confused. You need to first try understanding what is a form of action under common law pleading, then the concepts of the cause of action and the primary right under code pleading, then the concepts of a claim and standing under notice pleading. There is no such thing as a "right of action," only a form of action, a cause of action, or a claim. --Coolcaesar (talk) 09:15, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm... no such thing? The editors of Implied cause of action] have decided to use the phrase "right of action" 6 times. And a google search for the phrase, in quotes, results in 12 million hits. So there are a heckuvalot of folks talking about this thing that you say doesn't exist. Perhaps you could clarify or cite, e.g. a source that defines standing as necessarily relating to a constitution rather than "The legal right to initiate a lawsuit", instead of simply saying 'No'. http://www.ecy.wa.gov/biblio/rtc95137.html I understand the difference between common law and code claims. Google hits on the phrase "standing under notice pleading" : 0. --W☯W ^t/c 04:45, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh. Well, some older cases and statutes used "right of action" interchangeably with "cause of action." Nowadays, "cause of action" and "claim" are the preferred terminology. The only context where "right of action" regularly appears in contemporary jurisprudence is in the phrase "private right of action." But that's a distinct concept from standing.

For example, let's say your spouse's health insurer wrongfully denies coverage for a kidney transplant (which was clearly covered and for which a matching organ was available) and your spouse dies as a direct result. Let's further assume her health insurance was provided through her employer. Both you and her estate would clearly have standing to bring a lawsuit, but neither would have a private right of action because ERISA doesn't provide one for survival or wrongful death situations. Furthermore, because ERISA federal preemption is so broad, you wouldn't be able to sue on any other cause of action, either. That's a situation where the difference between standing and a private right of action is really important. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:36, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. I see they're not the same now. I see we have Cause of action and Standing_(law). Thanks. But the main reason I started this thread is that the page indicates that in the US, at least, standing is necessarily about the constitution. That's not true, or are you saying you disagree with that as well?--W☯W ^t/c 17:45, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

The lead paragraph was clearly written by someone who doesn't quite understand standing. The remainder of the discussion (under the "United States" heading) is largely correct. That is, standing in U.S. federal law is a judicial gloss on the "cases and controversies" requirement in the Constitution. The idea is that the Framers of the Constitution put that in there to prevent the judiciary from deciding advisory questions in the abstract, which are thought to interfere with the legislature's prerogative to thoroughly investigate difficult questions of public policy (that's why Congress has subpoena power) and write appropriate laws in response.

What is really messy about Perry v. Schwarzenegger---and why it got bounced to the Supreme Court of California---is that because it involves the ability to defend the constitutionality of a state law, it contains a difficult Erie doctrine issue. Erie Railroad v. Tompkins is one of the hardest and most fundamental cases in federal civil procedure which can take up to three to seven days of a standard civil procedure course. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:19, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Countering systemic bias

This was touched on earlier in the talk page, but this article tends to reflect a US point of view. Fully 2/3 of the article is about the US, not counting the intro, which references the US throughout. We need more perspectives and from different places for this article. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 02:24, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

There's several reasons for this, including the failure of most countries to adopt common sense reforms suggested by David Dudley Field II and the atrocious quality of their legal education systems. (I wrote most of the Lawyer article and added most of the citations, so I've actually read all the academic literature documenting these issues at length.) American lawyers are always drilled early on in law school to never stop asking "cui bono"---who is the real party in interest and who has standing. So they litigate those issues like crazy, which is why we have most of the case law on these issues. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:36, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Third-party standing

Essentially the same topic Rathfelder (talk) 21:51, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose: The question of whether "third-party standing" and "standing" are essentially the same is really a matter of semantics. However, in American standing jurisprudence, one of the prudential limitations for standing is the prohibition against third-party claims (with many exceptions). To that extent, third-party standing is a well-definied subtopic within the broader subject of standing. Furthermore, the topic of third-party standing is such an expansive topic that I think it warrants its own article. It has received extensive coverage in legal scholarship, and I think the best way to convey that information to readers is through a standalone article (per WP:PAGEDECIDE). I think both the standing article and the third-party standing article could use some editing to help readers understand the context and scope of those concepts, but these really should be separate articles. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 17:13, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose, basically per Notecardforfree. Third-party standing is a substantial subtopic. Discussion of third-party standing could be expanded in this article a bit, but to include all of the topic here would make it overwhelm the other aspects of standing discussed here. bd2412 T 17:46, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose, for the reasons stated above. At first I was going to say they're the same topic, then I checked Google Books and realized a number of sources such as Linda Mullenix's textbook do treat third-party standing as a distinct subtopic of standing. --Coolcaesar (talk) 13:28, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose, for the cogent reasons stated above. In addition, this is more an issue of US law than that of other countries. Therefore, I suggest we change the title of Third-party standing to Third-party standing under US law. PraeceptorIP (talk) 02:22, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I strongly disagree with that last suggestion. For things or concepts that are unique to one country, we normally do not mark that in the title unless disambiguation is actually required because of a collision with something somewhere else. That would be as silly as renaming Barack Obama to "Barack Obama in the United States." --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:30, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected

I have semi-protected this article for three months due to significant vandalism/insertion of irrelevant conduct by IP-hopping anonymous editors. Neutrality^talk 19:59, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Texas abortion law

Assuming usable sourcing exists (the question must have come up somewhere), could something to be added to this article or the third-party standing one, about the TX abortion law that allows uninvolved parties to sue anyone involved in an abortion procedure? This is not about the surrounding political controversy about abortion, but only about how the usual concept of standing is bypassed. Here is a newspaper article[2] quoting some lawyers calling the statute a radical expansion of standing, but it is probably better to have (e.g.) some viewpoints from law journals. I don't have anywhere near enough legal knowledge to figure out how to write about this. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:D4A (talk) 19:23, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Added: the TX law is the Texas Heartbeat Act, and the current article about it doesn't say anything about this issue. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:D4A (talk) 01:45, 2 November 2021 (UTC)