A. Standing to Challenge Legislation Former Chief Justice John Marshall established the Court’s authority to determine the constitutionality of statutes and laws within the United States. However, although it is a generally agreed upon principle that it is the duty of the Court to interpret the Constitutionality of legislation, the Court will refuse a case if the plaintiff lacks standing. Unique prudential concerns arise in unique circumstances. Windsor is the quintessential example of unique circumstances helping a plaintiff meet the minimum threshold for standing. Windsor concerned a same-sex couple who had been married in Canada but lived in New York City. When one of them died, the other attempted to claim a federal tax exemption on …show more content…
He went as far as to state, “[T]he plaintiff and the government agree entirely on what should happen in this lawsuit. They agree that the court below got it right; and they agreed in the court below that the court below that one got it right as well. What, then, are we doing here?” For Justice Scalia, adverseness is a crucial prerequisite for any case or controversy. Furthermore, because BLAG’s participation in the adjudication did not satisfy adverseness, Justice Scalia did not believe that the Court could hear the case.
Over Justice Scalia’s protests, the holding in Windsor indicates that the Court views adverseness as a prudential concern. As alluded to earlier in this paper, there are serious consequences if a threshold element is considered a constitutional standard versus a prudential concern. If it is prudential, then Congress has the authority to statutorily overrule the Court’s decision. However, if the threshold element stems from the United States Constitution, then only a Constitutional Amendment will change the Court’s interpretation.
After Windsor, adverseness is a prudential concern that only Congress can force the Court to consider in the future. Therefore, the Court may choose to find adverseness when there is arguable none as they did in Windsor, if the plaintiffs have Article III standing.
B. Standing to Challenge Agency
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However, the true distinguishing factor appears to be the Court’s concerns regarding state authority. In Lujan, the plaintiffs were private citizens. In Mass., the plaintiff was a state. This difference was enough for the Court to grant “special solicitude” to Massachusetts. Nothing within the Case-or-Controversy Clause indicates that states should have special considerations in standing analysis. Therefore, granting special solicitude to states is a prudential concern, not one that stems from the