Otherwise, the court will rule that the plaintiff "lacks standing" to bring the suit, and will dismiss the case without considering the merits of the claim of unconstitutionality.
[3] Australia has a common law understanding of locus standi or standing which is expressed in statutes such as the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 and common law decisions of the High Court of Australia especially the case Australian Conservation Foundation v Commonwealth (1980).
[4] At common law, the test for standing is whether the plaintiff has a "special interest in the subject matter of the action".
[12][13][14] Standing may apply to class of aggrieved people,[11] where essentially the closeness of the plaintiff to the subject matter is the test.
[19] Frequently a litigant wishes to bring a civil action for a declaratory judgment against a public body or official.
This is considered an aspect of administrative law, sometimes with a constitutional dimension, as when the litigant seeks to have legislation declared unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court of Canada developed the concept of public interest standing in three constitutional cases commonly called "the Standing trilogy": Thorson v. Attorney General of Canada,[20] Nova Scotia Board of Censors v. McNeil,[21] and Minister of Justice v.
[22] The trilogy was summarized as follows in Canadian Council of Churches v. Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration):[23] It has been seen that when public interest standing is sought, consideration must be given to three aspects.
[24]Public-interest standing is also available in non-constitutional cases, as the Court found in Finlay v. Canada (Minister of Finance).
As Lord Diplock put it:[33] [i]t would ... be a grave danger to escape lacuna in our system of public law if a pressure group ... or even a single public spirited taxpayer, were prevented by outdated technical rules of locus standi from bringing the matter to the attention of the court to vindicate the rule of law and get the unlawful conduct stopped.In the law of contract, the doctrine of privity means that only those who are party to a contract can sue or be sued upon it.
"[36] John Rutledge, the second chief justice of the United States, was largely responsible for denying the Supreme Court the right to give advisory opinions at the Constitutional Convention.
Some are based on the case or controversy requirement of the judicial power of Article Three of the United States Constitution, § 2, cl.1.
[40] However, legal standing truly rests its first prudential origins in Fairchild v. Hughes, (1922) which was authored by Justice Louis Brandeis.
[41] In Fairchild, a citizen sued the Secretary of State and the Attorney General to challenge the procedures by which the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.
[47] The case involved a challenge to a rule promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior interpreting §7 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA).
[57] The Court pointed out that the respondents chose to challenge a more generalized level of government action, "the invalidation of which would affect all overseas projects".
Stevens, 529 U.S. 765 (2000),[48] the United States Supreme Court endorsed the "partial assignment" approach to qui tam relator standing to sue under the False Claims Act — allowing private individuals to sue on behalf of the U.S. government for injuries suffered solely by the government.
[58] In a 2009 case, Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U.S. 488 (2009),[59] the Supreme Court held the petitioner environmental organizations' claim that it was "statistically likely" that some of their members would visit the affected lands was insufficient to support Article III standing.
In California, taxpayers have standing to sue for any 'illegal expenditure of, waste of, or injury to the estate, funds, or other property of a local agency'.
There are some exceptions, however; for example, courts will accept First Amendment challenges to a statute on overbreadth grounds, where a person who is only partially affected by a statute can challenge the parts that do not affect him on the grounds that laws that restrict speech have a chilling effect on other people's right to free speech.
She sued him for damages, but because it was illegal (at the time the case was filed) to commit "fornication" (sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who are not married), Ziherl argued that Martin could not sue him because joint tortfeasors – those involved in committing a crime – cannot sue each other over acts occurring as a result of a criminal act (Zysk v. Zysk, 404 S.E.2d 721 (Va. 1990)).
The finding gave Martin standing to sue Ziherl since the decision in Zysk was no longer applicable.
[64] In Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Supreme Court ruled that being the proponents of a ballot measure is not by itself enough to confer legal standing.