Standing to Bring a Lawsuit Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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S tanding is “s tanding to sue” someone in a court of law in order to redress an alleged wrong. The legal expression, “where there’s a wrong, there’s a remedy,” assumes that someone has been wronged and that they will be able to gain justice. Standing is the interest or right that a “person” (whether a human being or a corporate personality) has in a controversy that entitles them to bring a suit or complaint into a court for adjudication.

The doctrine of standing has never been precisely defined in law. This is a benefit to judges because it allows them to accept or reject the cases they hear. To bring a case into a court of law for consideration, it is presumed that there is a real conflict between two or more parties over some real thing or some controversial matter. The controversy must not force the court into giving a moot decision over a question of curiosity. The American system of justice is adversarial and uses real conflicts to sharpen the matter to be decided in court.

Another feature needed for a case to gain standing is that the value in a controversy does not have to be great, just real and the cause of real harm. Cases have been brought into court involving only a dollar or two. To gain standing to bring a case into court it is not enough to have a general interest in a disagreement. Rather, a specific and personal or business interest must be at stake. To have standing in the case of an injury the injury must be real, personal, and not simply hypothetical or general. “Pocketbook” damages involving loss of money in a case make it easier for judges to determine the issue(s) in a case. In addition the plaintiff who brings the case must be able to show who is at fault for the alleged injury.

A test to determine standing is that all remedies have been exhausted. In the case of a court exercising original jurisdiction the parties to the case have been unable to reach a settlement. In the case of a court exercising appellate jurisdiction the remedies available in the lower courts have been exhausted. In the case of the U.S. Supreme Court a case will not be accepted or given standing before it unless all lower court remedies have been exhausted.

American courts in recent decades have broadened the kinds of cases to which they grant standing. In some cases individuals who have not been personally harmed, but who act on behalf of those who cannot act, can bring a case into a court. This approach has allowed an enormous number of class-action suits to be filed on environmental issues permitting the common law to develop rights for the treatment of the environment.

A central challenge for environmental law is that the environment itself cannot have standing in a legal case under common law. In this way an “aggrieved” ecosystem (ocean, stream, fish, animal, or tree) can only be represented in court if a human party with interest in the problem is affected and so has standing. Legal philosophers have challenged this point in recent years, however, and suggested that non-humans may in the future be accepted as having standing in court, changing their status as many historic parties have–including children, ships, and corporations, whose standing was only established by law and precedent. Christopher Stone has suggested that the evolution of liberal jurisprudence will eventually allow such environmental actors to hold rights.

Bibliography:

Harold Grillot and Frank Schubert, Introduction to Law and the Legal System (Houghton Mifflin, 1992);
Christopher Stone, Should Trees Have Standing?: Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects (W. Kaufmann, 1974);
Steve M. Wise, Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals (Basic Books, 1999).