Did you see the part where Ms. Litman said that there are “few” cases which have been published that deal with this particular issue of Congressional standing? From your own cited case:
Your own cite states that the Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue in the case directly. But given that the Raines case dealt with an act of Congress (whose text stated that Congress and any individual automatically had standing to sue on the ground that any provision violated the Constitution), this case is sufficiently distinguishable from members of Congress who are seeking to sue based on an alleged violation of the Constitution itself without regard to any particular act or statute. Here, any court’s ruling will be heavily fact-dependent on what the Democratic Congressmen have alleged is the personal stakes that establish whether or not they have a sufficiently concrete injury.
So, in other words, Ms. Litman’s statement was not incorrect and the standing issue that courts will have to decide is not so clear cut in relation to Raines, precisely because it will be a fact-intensive examination of the concrete injury alleged. Or did you not wish to discuss the distinguishing facts of the case and how any case brought now will turn on the concrete injury alleged and not merely a rote citation of Raines because it doesn’t help your desired public narrative?
In other words, why do you consistently try to attack the motives of the person making the argument and not the argument itself?
I think that there’s a great deal of confusion here about standing, and, worse, I believe that various law professors interviewed for the question are very willing to opine about what (in their opinion) the law should be when asked what the law is.
I’ve complained about this before, but the phenomenon is captured much better by Ken White, who blogs at Popehat:
I don’t have a belief on it. Do you believe the case in question is an absolute no-go because the standing issue is 100% resolved? If not, what would be your ballpark guess as to the likelihood of the standing issue being resolved against the plaintiffs here?
No kidding! For a change, I didn’t look at the headlines when I first got up this morning, and then in the car, I hear about the shootings in Alexandria. :eek: I swear, you can’t be away from the news for 30 minutes these days. This can’t be good for our mental health.
I have no idea what the law is. But in my view of how the world should be run, congress should have standing to sue. They’ve been elected by their constituents to represent them in government. To the extent that a president is violating the law or constitution, then congress should be able to sue on behalf of their constituents, who have an interest in the government being run according to the law and constitution.
[I also think that courts should be quicker at dealing with lawsuits of all sorts, but that’s perhaps another matter, if somewhat related.]
It offends my sense of order to have this thread in Elections and the DC/Maryland lawsuit thread in Great Debates. I am moving this one from Elections to Great Debates.
I’ll have to just deal with the fact that these will still be two separate threads.
The problem with that is that under the current system there could be laws where no one at all has standing to sue, leaving no check at all on the executive branch. This came up a lot under Obama.
The “common-sense” view expressed by the “standing” rules - if you cannot show any damage to yourself, why should you sue?
Although I am not sure I fully agree with that, I can see the courts cluttered even more than they are now with frivolous cases if this rule was not there.
The premise of the system of government that we have is that we elect legislators who enact laws and the executive branch is required to enforce those laws in good faith. If no one has standing to challenge the executive branch on such laws then they have carte blanche to ignore them.
People need a certain level of direct impact on them to have standing to sue - just the general notion that you believe a certain policy will benefit the country in the long run and you by extension doesn’t cut it. But you could still have an interest in having laws intended to benefit the country in the long run carried out as enacted by elected representatives.
So I think the elected representatives themselves should have the right to sue to enforce the good faith enactment of the laws they passed.
I agree. That could be a disaster. That’s why I put the bracketed comment in my initial post to this thread.
I don’t understand the legal side of the issue. The electorate knew they were voting for a billionaire businessman, so what is the problem with his business income?
The legal side is whether Trump is violating a rule in the Constitution and who has standing to take him to court over it. What the electorate expected or knew has zero to do with anything.
Violation by the President, perhaps. Violation by others there have been examples and remedies including withholding of pay/pension to recover the amount determined to be an emolument.
