standing to sue

standing to sue, in law, the requirement that a person who brings a suit be a proper party to request adjudication of the particular issue involved. The test traditionally applied was whether the party had a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy presented and whether the dispute touched upon the legal relations of the parties having adverse legal interests.

The U.S. Supreme Court noted in Flast v. Cohen (1968) that “the issue of standing is related only to whether the dispute sought to be adjudicated will be presented in an adversary context and in a form historically viewed as capable of judicial resolution.” Clearly, a plaintiff who claims physical injury or economic loss has standing. In the United States, until the 1960s, the courts took a relatively strict approach to standing. For instance, in Frothingham v. Mellon (1923) the Supreme Court held that a plaintiff who alleged that her tax liability would be increased as a result of the Maternity Act of 1921 lacked standing to challenge the act. During the 1960s the court, under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, was lenient in recognizing standing—so much so that a federal trial court commented, in granting standing to a plaintiff challenging the secrecy of Central Intelligence Agency expenditures, that the concept of standing “has now been almost completely abandoned” by the Supreme Court. Under Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, the court signified that it was indeed not willing to abandon the concept completely. Reversing the trial court in the previously mentioned case, United States v. Richardson (1974), Chief Justice Burger, writing for the majority, rejected Richardson’s standing, commenting that Richardson was seeking “to employ a federal court as a forum in which to air his generalized grievances about the conduct of government.”