Does a plaintiff need to suffer injury if their constitutional rights were violated?
Wouldn't this be closer to a class action since there's broad injury and violation?
Yes, they do. Even in a class action the class plaintiffs need to be able to show that they were injured. This stems from longstanding judicial interpretation of the "case or controversy" clause of Article III of the U.S. Constitution.
It's an interesting question what substance the Petition Clause has. Unfortunately, it looks these days like it doesn't have much, since the First Amendment has never been interpreted to give petitions any binding legal effect. But I think it is clearly correct that the judicial branch, at least, does not have the power to adjudicate them under Article III.
Edit: By the way, an 'injury' does not necessarily have to be a monetary injury to support standing, though the law about what sorts of injuries count is exceedingly difficult and, perhaps, incoherent at the margins. One interesting wrinkle is that courts assume a fairly concrete definition of "injury", but also permit Congress to expand the applicable conception of injury (within some limits) in particular situations by statute. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife is a good entry point to this area of law, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/504/555 (I do not think that the opinion itself is very good, but its discussion of other cases is helpful.)
Edit: Removed an imprecise first sentence.
1) The Congress,
2) The President (and executive branch more generally),
3) Insofar as the former two entities are Constitutionally prohibited from redressing the grievance raised satisfactorily and/or choose to exercise their discretionary power to not do so, the State governments, who can initiate Constitutional changes which may resolve the issue.
It is, however, not a Constitutional obligation of the federal judiciary to inform people of this in response to lawsuits that are outside of the power of the judiciary to resolve (though, its not uncommon for them to do so, at least as far as pointing to the first two alternatives.)
You are now the second person to make this claim. It's not true. Specifically, the courts are empowered to hear such petitions by Article III, Section 2 of the US Constitution:
>The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution
I didn't make any claim about the courts being empowered or not empowered to hear particular cases, which is why you had to cut out a small phrase from the middle of the sentence out of context to respond to with your irrelevancy.
I made a claim about the parts of governments that can be petitioned for things that the judiciary is not empowered to resolve, without any discussion of what the judiciary is empowered to resolve.
(The question of the correctness of the well-established legal principle that the existence of a "Case" requires the allegation of a concrete, particularized, redressable injury is perhaps an interesting discussion, but not one which I made any claim regarding.)
That claim is trivially false, again by Article III, Section 2, Sentence 1:
>The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
If you already accept that something is a case, the judicial Power extends to it, it does not matter what the particulars are.
His view, as espoused in the comment above, is a minimal one: there are some petitions that courts are not empowered to hear. This is only incoherent under Art III if one conflates "petitions" with "cases," contrary to the well-established legal meanings of those terms.
(Although, actually, there is another hole in your logic: a petition could be a 'case' but not a case in either law or equity "arising under this Constitution" etc. etc. The most obvious example would be a suit between two citizens of the same state arising under state law. It is well settled that federal courts cannot hear such cases. But since petitions and cases are quite distinct legal categories to begin with, I won't go any farther down that particular rabbit hole.)
Since HN likes to severely rate-limit my speech, I'll respond here to some other points people are making. dragonwriter gave a counter-example where a hypothetical group attempting to amend the Constitution is viewed as a petition for redress of grievances that courts are not empowered to hear. It may be correct that such a move could be labeled as a petition (though, I might contest such labeling), an Amendment is not a redress of grievances, it's merely the changing of text in a document. It is therefore not (nor is the act of attempting it) a petition for (nor actual) redress of grievances and is not a counter-example. The meaning of Amendments is even explicitly given in Article V.
tptacek seems to think that my argument means that we are subject to the whims of unelected philosopher kings. I ask, when has that not been true? The US Supreme Court usurped its power very early on in US history. The fact that we, people in 2015, live by the words of people who are no longer alive (and haven't been for a coupleish centuries) is bare testament. But, my answer is that it depends on the structure of the court. If the judge is an unelected philosopher king, then yes, we are subject to them. If you have some other, 'democratic' (or whatever system you propose) judge, court, or other arbiter, then you are subject to whatever rules exist in that system (which...maybe could be something other than the whims of philosopher kings? Not sure).
Changing law (including the Constitution) is as much a redress of grievances as issuing judicial orders (which is no more than "creating a new document with text" when looked at on the same level of analysis at which a change to law or Constitution is "changing the text of a document".)
(1) No, I'm saying that there are petitions protected by the First Amendment right to petition that are not cases within the power of the courts to resolve, and
(2) More particularly to the issue in this thread, the concrete, particularized injury (where injury is a violation of a legally-protected interest) requirement is a threshold test for whether something is a case, and
(3) Finally, there are cases that the federal courts are not empowered to address; the reason that Article III has to spend so many words enumerating all the kinds of cases and controversies that are within the judicial power is that all the other kinds of cases (and controversies) are not within that power.
Such as? If I'm reading the text correctly, the judicial power extends to every case and controversy of any human being.
For one example: Cases in law or equity arising under state law, between citizens of the same U.S. state, none of whom are ambassadors, public ministers, or consuls, and who are not claiming land under grants from different states.
> If I'm reading the text correctly, the judicial power extends to every case and controversy of any human being.
You are not reading the text correctly.
>The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution [,etc]
Well, assuming the case between the citizens of the same state are Cases of Law and/or Equity (is there another type?). Some of these cases are explicitly protected by the US Constitution itself (c.f. Amendment VII).
Can you point me to a Particular Case that the judicial Power does not extend to?
Are you seriously arguing that States can act without judicial oversight?
1. "United States" is, of course, a proper noun. That "States" in pluralized within it tells us nothing.
2. It is, in fact, very well established that the federal judicial power does not extend to suits between citizens of the same state that arise under federal law and, likewise, that "laws of the United States" refers to federal, and not state laws. This rule is as old as the United States itself: see Martin v. Hunter's Lessee,. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/14/304.html. In fact, Alexander Hamilton discussed this in Federalist 80. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed80.asp Here is a fairly accurate overview: http://litigation.findlaw.com/legal-system/federal-vs-state-...
3. I had assumed it was clear that Article III only relates to the powers of the federal judiciary. State courts are totally unaffected by it. (This is, a result of the fact that Article III, by its terms, only vests powers in courts "of the United States" which, again, means "federal courts.") This means that, although federal courts cannot hear cases between citizens of the same state arising under state law, state courts still can and do. In fact, with a few exceptions, state court can hear all the cases that federal courts can, and then some.
But you will not be able to find a single case in the last 200 years where a U.S. federal court constituted under Article III (without later getting reversed on appeal) has ruled on the merits of a dispute between citizens of only one state, where the dispute involved only a question of state law. Guaranteed. (Though I'm intentionally being precise in my language here. Things do get tricky when there are multiple plaintiffs and defendants, multiple state and federal claims, etc. all in the same case. This gets into some of those nasty details: http://www.pavlacklawfirm.com/blog/2013/01/25/federal-divers...)
You are confusing courts, jurisdiction, and judicial Power. While certain courts may be established with particular jurisdiction, the judicial Power extends over them.
Congress has actually already ruled on this (See 28 U.S. Code § 1257(a) https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1257). You will be able to pull in any State law on (at least) Amendment IX and/or Amendment X grounds.
Again I ask, can you point to a Particular Case where the US Supreme Court is not empowered to rule (or will not be able to eventually, once all other levels have failed)?
You can also see that the first clause is talking about the collection of States in the use of 'their' at the end:
>The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority
In Article III, Section 2, Sentence 1, United States does not refer to a monolithic entity and Laws does not refer to a specific unit of law (U.S. Code). The sentence refers to the totality of all laws that exist within the United States (that is, all states which the Constitution subsumed).
Can someone show a valid parse of that sentence that means otherwise?
The singular form, IIRC, didn't become common until sometime in the mid- to late-19th century (maybe after the civil war.)
There is no reading where Laws of the United States refers exclusively to U.S. Code. As I said, to show that I'm wrong, one only needs to provide a valid parsing of the sentence where United States refers exclusively to a monolithic entity known as the federal government (note that "federal" does not appear anywhere in the document). If you look at the other usages of United States in the document, it becomes even more clear that it refers to the States as a collective and not to a separate entity.
The other thing someone could show that would prove me wrong, is a Particular Case that the US Supreme Court will never be able to hear. I haven't seen anyone even attempt to show such a case. Some hypotheticals and lots of pushing words around, but no actual Case.
At the Supreme Court, one place to see this is in the doctrine of adequate and independent state grounds, that applies when reviewing decisions of a state's highest court. Here is the Wikipedia page on that concept with several citations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adequate_and_independent_state...
For other federal courts, one relevant concept is "federal question jurisdiction." (So called, because raising a "federal question," is synonymous with presenting a case that arises under the "laws of the United States.") Here is a classic case on that issue (though it is much more complex than necessary to prove the present point.) Tennessee v. Union and Planters' Bank, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/152/454/case.htm...
Here is a relevant quote (though if you really want to learn how this all works, I recommend reading the entire case carefully):
> "We find it unnecessary to consider other objections to the maintenance of these three bills, or of any of them, because we are clearly of opinion that each suit is not one arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States, of which the circuit court of the United States has jurisdiction, either original, or by removal from a state court, under the Act of March 3, 1887, c. 373, as corrected by the Act of August 13, 1888, c. 866. 25 Stat. 434."
And here is a more quotidian example: Lake v. Malone, No. CA 3:11-824-CMC-PJG, 2011 WL 2162711, at 2 (D.S.C. May 6, 2011) report and recommendation adopted, No. CA 3:11-824-CMC-PJG, 2011 WL 2162159 (D.S.C. June 1, 2011)
> “This case is subject to summary dismissal because the allegations contained in Plaintiff's Complaint do not fall within the scope of either form of this court's limited jurisdiction, and there is no other possible basis for federal jurisdiction evident from the face of the pleading. There is no viable federal question alleged and there is no apparent diversity of citizenship between the plaintiff and the defendants.
> Generally, a case can be originally filed in a federal district court if there is “federal question” jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 or “diversity of citizenship” under 28 U.S.C. § 1332. Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, “constrained to exercise only the authority conferred by Article III of the Constitution and affirmatively granted by federal statute.” In re Bulldog Trucking, Inc., 147 F.3d 347, 352 (4th Cir.1998). Since federal courts have limited subject matter jurisdiction, there is no presumption that the court has jurisdiction. Pinkley, Inc. v. City of Frederick, 191 F.3d 394, 399 (4th Cir.1999) (citing Lehigh Mining & Mfg. Co. v. Kelly, 160 U.S. 337 (1895). Accordingly, a federal court is required, sua sponte, to determine if a valid basis for its jurisdiction exists, “and to dismiss the action if no such ground appears.” Bulldog Trucking, 147 F.3d at 352; see also Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(h)(3) (“Whenever it appears ... that the court lacks jurisdiction of the subject matter, the court shall dismiss the action.”). “[T]he facts providing the court jurisdiction must be affirmatively alleged in the complaint.” Davis v. Pak, 856 F.2d 648, 650 (4th Cir.1988) (citing McNutt v. General Motors Acceptance Corp., 298 U.S. 178, 56 S.Ct. 780, 80 L.Ed. 1135 (1936)). To this end, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a) (1)requires that the complaint provide “a short plain statement of the grounds upon which the court's jurisdiction depends[.]” If, however, the complaint does not contain “an affirmative pleading of a jurisdictional basis, the federal court may find that it has jurisdiction if the facts supporting jurisdiction have been clearly pleaded.” Pinkley, Inc., 191 F.3d at 399 (citing 2 Moore's Federal Practice § 8.03[3] (3d ed.1997)). Although the absence of subject matter jurisdiction may be raised at any time during the case, determining jurisdiction at the outset of the litigation is the most efficient procedure. Lovern v. Edwards, 190 F.3d 648, 654 (4th Cir.1999). If the court, viewing the allegations in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, finds insufficient allegations in the pleadings, the court will lack subject matter jurisdiction. Id.”
By the way, you're right in one small, interesting respect: "laws of the United States" does not just refer to the U.S. Code. It also refers to federal regulations, federal common law, state-law claims bound up in the same dispute as a federal-law claim where the state-law issues do not predominate, and the very rare state law issue that raises significant federal interests. As you can see, lawyers and judges have given this phrase a lot of thought over the years. And don't forget that Art III does also allow cases under state law to be brought in federal courts when the litigants are from different states. But you remain quite wrong that Art III, and the term "laws of the United States," refers to all laws in the United States, whether state of federal, as the two cases above clearly demonstrate. If I were wrong about this, I would have done very poorly in my Federal Courts class in law school.
As far as I can tell from reading his opinion, his argument is a purely syntactical one: the language of the original bills does not contain a reference that the court understands and is therefore not a Case. It appears the Supreme Court only heard the case because a circuit court took the case out of the Tennessee courts before they issued a final ruling, not because the Plaintiffs actually brought the case to them [SC].
The case does not appear to have been dismissed with prejudice. It was dismissed on a technicality of the language in the original suits (which, I believe, were never originally intended to be pursued outside of some Tennessee court). Without access to the language in those original suits though, I can't say much more.
But in any event, this case makes clear that the Supreme Court (or any other federal court) will not hear cases that arise under state law.
>In each of the three cases now before this Court, the only right claimed by the plaintiffs is under the law of Tennessee, and they assert no right whatever under the Constitution and laws of the United States. In the first and second bills, the only reference to the Constitution or laws of the United States is the suggestion that the defendants will contend that the law of the state under which the plaintiffs claim is void, because in contravention of the Constitution of the United States, and by the settled law of this Court, as appears from the decisions above cited, a suggestion of one party that the other will or may set up a claim under the Constitution or laws of the United States does not make the suit one arising under that Constitution or those laws. In the third bill, no mention is made of the Constitution or laws of the United States or of any right claimed under either, and no statement in the petition for removal or in the demurrer of the defendant corporation can supply that want under the existing act of Congress.
> The result is that in the first and second cases, the decrees must be reversed at the cost of the plaintiffs, and the cases remanded to the circuit court of the United States with directions to dismiss the bills for want of jurisdiction, and that in the third case, the decree must be reversed at the cost of the defendants, and the case remanded to the circuit court of the United States with directions to remand it to the state court from which it was removed.
What this is saying is that on all three claims, the asserted cause of action arises under Tennessee law, so they cannot hear it. The fact that the defendants may make constitutional arguments in response to the first two claims is not enough to trigger federal jurisdiction.
The entire case revolves around whether the Supreme Court is able to hear the case in spite of the fact that the claims asserted y the plaintiff are state-law claims only. A notable case that came out the other way is Osborn v. Bank of the United States, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/22/738/case.html, where the court concluded that it could hear a case involving only state-law claims, but only because the defendant was a bank of the United States (note, by the way, that this means a federal bank, as opposed to, e.g., a Tennessee state bank) and thus, pursuant to one of the exceptions I mentioned several messages ago, the Supreme Court could hear it because it involved distinctly federal interests. But here too, the whole question was whether a federal court was empowered to hear this case since it involved only state-law claims. The premise being, of course, that ordinarily a federal court cannot hear such claims.
Consider this sentence from Osborn:
> We think, then that when a question to which the judicial power of the Union is extended by the Constitution forms an ingredient of the original cause, it is in the power of Congress to give the circuit courts jurisdiction of that cause, although other questions of fact or of law may be involved in it.
This would be a very silly thing to write if the Constitution extended "the judicial power of the Union" to all cases.
I have directed you to many other sources that say the same thing. I can also tell you (though perhaps you won't believe me, or will not care) that this--the fact that federal courts have limited powers and typically can only hear cases involving federal law, or cases where the parties are from different states--is very basic knowledge for any lawyer who practices regularly in federal court.
Isn't the Petition Clause what makes lobbying a Constitutional right, and not something that Congress could ban or otherwise unduly burden?
First, the word 'lawsuit' does not occur in Article III (nor anywhere else in the US Constitution). You making a distinction between the word lawsuit and petition here is nonsense.
Second, Article III, Section 2, Sentence 1:
>The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution
A petition for redress of grievance is exactly a case in Equity and is specifically allowed under Amendment I.
But you are way too late to the party when it comes to deciding the legal meaning of these words. The prevailing judicial understanding, for more than 100 years, of the "Case and Controversy" clause has been that Article III courts can only hear lawsuits involving more-or-less concrete injuries.
And as tptacek has pointed out, this is probably for the best. Imagine the chaos if the courts were constitutionally required to hear every grievance brought by a member of the public, even if it did not affect his or her interests in any concrete way. Then also imagine the quality of the legal reasoning that would result from such a farcical system, where there was no guarantee that a plaintiff actually had any interest in its outcome.
You may wish that courts had the power to hear petitions for the redress of grievances when it is your grievance you wish to see redressed. But you should also consider the wider universe of grievances and whether you would really want to see them all ventilated in a court of law.
Edit: There are very many cases that state this clearly but here is is a somewhat random selection:
"The party who invokes the [judicial] power must be able to show, not only that the statute is invalid, but that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as the result of its enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally." - COM. OF MASSACHUSETTS v. MELLON, http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/262/447.html#488
"Over the years, our cases have established that the irreducible constitutional minimum of standing contains three elements: first, the plaintiff must have suffered an "injury in fact" -- an invasion of a legally-protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) "actual or imminent, not ‘conjectural' or ‘hypothetical.'" Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of -- the injury has to be fairly trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not the result of the independent action of some third party not before the court." LUJAN v. DEVENDERS OF WILDLIFE, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/504/555 (very many citations omitted)
"Although the law of standing has been greatly changed in the last 10 years, we have steadfastly adhered to the requirement that, at least in the absence of a statute expressly conferring standing, federal plaintiffs must allege some threatened or actual injury resulting from the putatively illegal action before a federal court may assume jurisdiction." LINDA R. S. v. RICHARD D., http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/410/614.html#t4
Its important to understand the reasoning here: to wit, that if there isn't a concrete, particularized, redressable injury -- where "injury" is understood to be a violation of a legally-protected interest -- then there is no "Case" to resolve.
The contentious part of this is primarily the "particularized" part, since that requirement means that violations of the Constitutional limits of government power do not give rise to a cause of action based solely on the general citizens interest in constraining the government to its bounds, as even though this may be a concrete violation of a legally-protected interest, it is not particularized.
This certainly serves some economy-of-justice purposes, but it also makes it particularly hard to address systemic violations of the Constitution where an integral part of the charged abuse of power is the governments active concealment of the details of its actions and their particularized impacts.
No, it is not. Petition for redress of grievances are much broader than (but include) cases in law and equity as those terms were well understood at the time of the writing of the Constitution. For a fairly obvious case, a request to consider a Constitutional amendment because of the purportedly undesirable effects of the operation the Constitution in the absence of such an Amendment is clearly a petition for redress of grievances -- and clearly not a case in law or equity within the scope of the Article III judicial power.
Your right to petition government for your grievances arising from such an undesirable (to you) state of the Constitution is protected by the First Amendment right of petition, but that protection does not empower the Judiciary to act favorably on such a petition. Congress, however, could act on it by submitting a proposed Amendment for ratification by the States aimed at resolving the issue.
The First Amendment right of petition does not bring all petitions it protects within the power of the judiciary to grant.
Yes, it does. And you are free to petition the government, either in general or any of its particular branches, for redress of grievances.
However, the 1st Amendment right to petition for redress of grievances does not grant the federal government, either in general or any of its particular branches, any additional powers not already provided to it elsewhere in the Constitution to provide redress of those grievances.
Which is, I would think, a good thing: while you might prefer something more of the judiciary in this case, you probably don't want a blank check where just because someone is entitled under the First Amendment to complain to the government, suddenly the government is granted unlimited power to deal with that complaint.