Lee and Mason on Standing's "Dirty Little Secret"

Evan Lee and Josephine Mason ('11) have accepted an offer to publish their article called "The Standing Doctrine's Dirty Little Secret" in Vol. 107 of the Northwestern Law Review. The article points out that, despite the Supreme Court's repeated insistence that all plaintiffs must show "imminent injury-in-fact, causation, and redressability" to have Article III standing to sue in federal court, the Court has not insisted on those requirements in the cases where plaintiffs seek judicial review of federal agency action, such as in Freedom of Information Act cases, where anyone can sue out of sheer curiosity. But, because of the importance of Congress utilizing "private attorneys general," Evan and Josephine argue that the Court should not repudiate its agency review cases but instead recognize that the words "cases" and "controversies" in Article III have a flexible quality to them that accommodates this kind of litigation in a world of administrative agencies that could not be foreseen in 1787.