The plaintiffs, preferred stockholders of the Alabama Power Company, had unsuccessfully protested to the corporation about its contracts with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

Plaintiffs then brought suit against the corporation, the TVA, and others alleging breach of contract and advancing a broad constitutional challenge to the governmental program.

[1] In December 1934, Federal Judge William Irwin Grubb held that the government had no right to engage in the power business except to dispose of a surplus incidental to the exercise of some other constitutional function.

[7] Based on the concrete dispute before the court, the majority concluded that Congress had the war and commerce power authority to construct the Wilson Dam.

The court of appeals had decided, like the majority, that Congress had the constitutional authority to construct the Wilson Dam and dispose of the surplus energy thereby produced.

Finally, according to Brandeis, even if plaintiffs had standing under the substantive law, "courts should, in the exercise of their [equitable] discretion, refuse an injunction unless the alleged invalidity is clear."

Brandeis characterized judicial review of the constitutionality of legislative acts as a grave and delicate power for use by fallible, human judges only when its use cannot conscientiously be avoided.

The concurrence's theme of judicial restraint is not inconsistent with the majority's decision: a federal court should only decide an actual Article III controversy when the facts present one, and should refuse to render an advisory opinion on the entire TVA program.

Brandeis described how the court had developed "prudential" rules – meaning nonconstitutional, self-imposed restraints – by which to avoid "passing upon a large part of all the constitutional questions" presented to it, despite having jurisdiction to hear them.

Brandeis relied on Atherton Mills v. Johnston, in which the court dismissed a challenge to a congressional act regulating child labor as moot, in support of the first rule.

[14] As Professor Alexander Bickel points out, however, Atherton Mills was "a case of quite conventional mootness, hardly apt as an illustration of judicial self-restraint in constitutional litigation".

[17] Brandeis elaborated on this concern in Ashwander, declaring judicial review of the constitutionality of legislative acts legitimate only as a last resort, and as a necessity in the determination of real, earnest and vital controversies between individuals.

[24] In Poe, Justice Felix Frankfurter described the Ashwander rules as arising from the "historically defined, limited nature and function of courts" and from the separation of powers principle.

[25] Moreover, the rules recognize that adjudication within an adversary system functions best in the presence of "a lively conflict" between actively pressed antagonistic demands, making resolution of the controverted issue a practical necessity.

"[27] The first two rules of the avoidance doctrine are, thus, closely linked to well-recognized justiciability requirements, and serve as alternative, but not distinctive, limitations on the federal judicial power.

[34] A second prudential restriction is the bar against finding standing for a generalized grievance – a harm shared in substantially equal measure by all or a large group of citizens.

[35] The court has also linked this standing bar to the avoidance doctrine: the requirement of an individualized injury serves to ensure that "there is a real need to exercise the power of judicial review in order to protect the interests of the complaining party".