[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 92 (Thursday, June 26, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H4661-H4668]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              SUPREME COURT LETS LINE-ITEM VETO LAW STAND

  (Mr. SOLOMON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous 
material.)
  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record the entire text of 
the Supreme Court decision throwing out the challenge to the line-item 
veto by a vote of 7 to 2.

              Supreme Court Lets Line-Item Veto Law Stand


      justices rule senators lacked standing to challenge the law

       Washington (AllPolitcs, June 26).--In a victory for line-
     item veto supporters, the Supreme Court ruled today that a 
     group of senators who challenged the law did not have legal 
     standing to do so. The law will likely face a second 
     constitutional review, but for now it stands.
       The line-item veto, approved by Congress in March 1996, 
     allows the president to strike individual spending items from 
     larger measures.
       A group of congressional lawmakers, led by Sen. Robert Byrd 
     of West Virginia, opposed the law and sued the Clinton 
     Administration on grounds that the law usurped congressional 
     authority to write the nation's laws.
       ``After Congress, made up of 535 individuals, passes a law 
     and sends it to the president, he signs it into law,'' Byrd 
     said. The line-item veto ``would allow him to change that law 
     unilaterally and that's not constitutional, that's not right, 
     that's wrong,'' he said.
       But with today's decision, the Supreme Court decided the 
     lawmakers lacked the standing to file such a suit. The case 
     is Raines vs, Byrd, 96-1671.
       It's usually risky to read too much into the justices' 
     questions during oral argument. But when the case was heard, 
     some of them wondered out loud whether lawmakers on the 
     losing side had standing to sue, or whether someone affected 
     by an actual exercise of the line-item veto would have to 
     claim an injury for the case to move forward. So far, Clinton 
     has yet to exercise the new power, because no spending bills 
     have reached him yet.
       ``Practically, it is a majority of Congress that has caused 
     this injury, not the president,'' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 
     said during oral arguments. ``They are only injured by their 
     own folly.''

[[Page H4662]]

       The high court had agreed to rule on a fast-track basis. 
     But justices did not address the underlying constitutional 
     issue of the transfer of power from the legislative to 
     executive branch, since the justices' decision solely 
     addressed whether the lawmakers could legally challenge the 
     measure.
       In early April, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield 
     Jackson ruled that the line-item veto law violates the 
     Constitution's separation of powers, which gives Congress the 
     power to tax and spend.
       ``Where the president signs a bill but then purports to 
     cancel parts of it, he exceeds his constitutional authority 
     and prevents both houses of Congress from participating in 
     the exercise of lawmaking authority,'' Jackson wrote. ``Never 
     before has Congress attempted to give away the power to shape 
     the content of a statute of the United States, as the Act 
     purports to do . . . Congress has turned the constitutional 
     division of responsibilities for legislating on its head.''
                                  ____


Frederick D. Raines, Director, Office of Management and Budget, Et Al., 
Appellants v. Robert C. Byrd Et Al., No. 96-1671, Supreme Court of the 
  United States, 1997 U.S. Lexis 4040, May 27, 1997, Argued, June 26, 
                             1997, Decided


Prior History: On Appeal from the United States District Court for the 
                         District of Columbia.

       Syllabus: Appellees, Members of the 104th Congress, voted 
     ``nay'' when Congress passed the Line Item Veto Act (Act), 
     which gives the President the authority to cancel certain 
     spending and tax benefit measures after he has signed them 
     into law. The day after the Act went into effect, they filed 
     suit against appellants, Executive Branch officials, 
     challenging the Act's constitutionality. The District Court 
     denied appellants' motion to dismiss, finding that appellees' 
     claim that the Act diluted their Article I voting power was 
     sufficient to confer Article III standing; and that their 
     claim was ripe, even though the President had not yet used 
     the Act's cancellation authority, because they found 
     themselves in a position of [*2] unanticipated and unwelcome 
     subservience to the President before and after their votes on 
     appropriations bills. The court then granted appellees 
     summary judgment, holding that the Act violated the 
     Presentment Clause, Art. I, Sec. 7, cl. 2, and constituted an 
     unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the 
     President.
       Held: Appellees lack standing to bring this suit. Pp. 6-19.
       (a) The federal courts have jurisdiction over this dispute 
     only if it is case or controversy. Art. III, Sec. 2. In order 
     to meet the standing element of the case-of-controversy 
     requirement, appellees must allege a personal injury that is 
     particularized, concrete, and otherwise judicially 
     cognizable. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 
     561; Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751. This Court insists 
     on strict compliance with the jurisdictional standing 
     requirement, see, e.g., id., at 752, and its standing inquiry 
     is especially rigorous when reaching the merits of a dispute 
     would force it to decide the constitutionality of an action 
     taken by one of the other two branches of the Federal 
     Government. Pp. 6-8.
       (b) This Court has never had occasion to rule on [*3] the 
     legislative standing question presented here. Appellees are 
     not helped by Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 496, 512-
     514, in which the Court held that a Congressman's challenge 
     to the constitutionality of his exclusion from the House of 
     Representatives presented an Article III case or controversy. 
     Appellees have not been singled out for specially unfavorable 
     treatment as opposed to other Members of their respective 
     bodies, but claim that the Act causes a type of institutional 
     injury which damages all Members of Congress equally. And 
     their claim is based on a loss of political power, not loss 
     of something to which they are personally entitled, such as 
     their seats as Members of Congress after their constituents 
     elected them. Pp. 8-10.
       (c) Appellees' claim also does not fall within the Court's 
     holding in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, the one case in 
     which standing has been upheld for legislators claiming an 
     institutional injury. There, the Court held that state 
     legislators who had been locked in a tie vote that would have 
     defeated the State's ratification of a proposed federal 
     constitutional amendment, and who alleged that their votes 
     were nullified when [*4] the Lieutenant Governor broke the 
     tie by casting his vote for ratification, had ``a plain, 
     direct and adequate interest in maintaining the 
     effectiveness of their votes.'' Id., at 438. In contrast, 
     appellees have not alleged that they voted for a specific 
     bill, that there were sufficient votes to pass the bill, 
     and that the bill was nonetheless deemed defeated. In the 
     vote on the Act, their votes were given full effect; they 
     simply lost that vote. To uphold standing here would 
     require a drastic extension of Coleman, even accepting 
     appellees' argument that the Act has changed the 
     ``meaning'' and ``effectiveness'' of their vote on 
     appropriations bills, for there is a vast difference 
     between the level of vote nullification at issue in 
     Coleman and the abstract dilution of institutional power 
     appellees allege. Pp. 10-14.
       (d) Historical practice cuts against appellees' position as 
     well. Several episodes in our history show that in analogous 
     confrontations between one or both Houses of Congress and the 
     Executive Branch, no suit was brought on the basis of claimed 
     injury to official authority or power. If appellees' claim 
     were sustained, presumably several Presidents would have had 
     [*5] standing to challenge the Tenure of Office Act, which 
     prevented the removal of a presidential appointee without 
     Congress' consent; the Attorney General could have challenged 
     the one-House veto provision because it rendered his 
     authority provisional rather than final; President Ford could 
     have challenged the Federal Election Campaign Act's 
     appointment provisions which were struck down in Buckley v. 
     Valeo, 424 U.S. 1; and a Member of Congress could have 
     challenged the validity of President Collidge's pocket veto 
     that was sustained in The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U.S. 655. 
     While a system granting such standing would not be 
     irrational, our Constitution's regime contemplates a more 
     restrictive role for Article III courts. See United States v. 
     Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 192 (Powell, J., concurring). Pp. 
     14-18.
       (e) Some importance must be attached to the fact that 
     appellees have not been authorized to represent their 
     respective Houses in this action, and indeed both Houses 
     actively oppose their suit. In addition, the conclusion 
     reached here neither deprives Members of Congress of an 
     adequate remedy--since they may repeal the Act or exempt 
     appropriations bills from [*6] its reach--nor forecloses the 
     Act from constitutional challenge by someone who suffers 
     judicially cognizable injury resulting from it P. 18.
       956 F. Supp. 25, vacated and remanded.
       Judges: Rehnquist, C. J., delivered the opinion of the 
     Court, in which O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and 
     Ginsburg, JJ., joined. Souter, J., filed an opinion 
     concurring in the judgment, in which Ginsburg, J., joined. 
     Stevens, J., and Breyer, J., filed dissenting opinions.
       Opinion By: Rehnquist.
       Opinion: Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of 
     the Court.*
       *Justice Ginsburg joins this opinion.
       The District Court for the District of Columbia declared 
     the Line Item Veto Act unconstitutional. On this direct 
     appeal, we hold that appellees lack standing to bring this 
     suit, and therefore direct that the judgment of the District 
     Court be vacated and the complaint dismissed.
       I
       The appellees are six Members of Congress, four of whom 
     served as Senators and two of whom served as Congressmen in 
     the 104th Congress (1995-1996).\1\ On March [*7] 27, 1996, 
     the Senate passed a bill entitled the Line Item Veto Act by a 
     vote of 69-31. All four appellee Senators voted ``nay.'' 142 
     Cong. Rec. S2995. The next day, the House of Representatives 
     passed the identical bill by a vote of 232-177. Both appellee 
     Congressmen voted ``nay.'' Id., at H2986. On April 4, 1996, 
     the President signed the Line Item Veto Act (Act) into law. 
     Pub. L. 104-130, 110 Stat. 1200, codified at 2 U.S.C.A. 
     Sec. 691 et seq. (Supp. 1997). The Act went into effect on 
     January 1, 1997. See Pub. L. 104-130, Sec. 5. The next day, 
     appellees filed a complaint in the District Court for the 
     District of Columbia against the two appellants, the 
     Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Office of 
     Management and Budget, alleging that the Act was 
     unconstitutional. [*8]
       The provisions of the Line Item Veto Act do not use the 
     term ``veto.'' Instead, the President is given the authority 
     to ``cancel'' certain spending and tax benefit measures after 
     he has signed them into law. Specifically, the Act provides:
       ``The President may, with respect to any bill or joint 
     resolution that has been signed into law pursuant to Article 
     I, section 7, of the Constitution of the United States, 
     cancel in whole--(1) any dollar amount of discretionary 
     budget authority; (2) any item of new direct spending; or (3) 
     any limited tax benefit; if the President--
       ``(A) determines that such cancellation will--(i) reduce 
     the Federal budget deficit; (ii) not impair any essential 
     Government functions; and (iii) not harm the national 
     interest; and
       ``(B) notifies the Congress of such cancellation by 
     transmitting a special message . . . within five calendar 
     days (excluding Sundays) after the enactment of the law [to 
     which the cancellation applies].'' Sec. 691(a) (some 
     indentations omitted).
       The President's ``cancellation'' under the Act takes effect 
     when the ``special message'' notifying Congress of the 
     cancellation is received in the House and Senate. With 
     respect to dollar amounts [*9] of ``discretionary budget 
     authority,'' a cancellation means ``to rescind.'' 
     Sec. 691e(4)(A). With respect to ``new direct spending'' 
     items or ``limited tax benefits,'' a cancellation means that 
     the relevant legal provision, legal obligation, or budget 
     authority is ``prevented . . . from having legal force or 
     effect.'' Sec. Sec. 691e(4)(B), (C).
       The Act establishes expedited procedures in both Houses for 
     the consideration of ``disapproval bills,'' Sec. 691d, bills 
     or joint resolutions which, if enacted into law by the 
     familiar procedures set out in Article I, Sec. 7 of the 
     Constitution, would render the President's cancellation 
     ``null and void,'' Sec. 691b(a). ``Disapproval bills'' may 
     only be one sentence long and must read as follows after the 
     enacting clause: ``That Congress disapproves of cancellations 
     ___ as transmitted by the President in a special message on 
     ___ regarding ___'' Sec. 691e(6)(C). (The blank spaces 
     correspond to the cancellation reference numbers as set out 
     in the special message, the date of the President's special 
     message, and the public law number to which the special 
     message relates, respectively. Ibid.)
       The Act provides that ``any Member of Congress or any 
     individual adversely [*10] affected by [this Act] may bring 
     an action, in

[[Page H4663]]

     the United States District Court for the District of 
     Columbia, for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief on 
     the ground that any provision of this part violates the 
     Constitution.'' Sec. 692(a)(1). Appellees brought suit under 
     this provision, claiming that ``the Act violates Article I'' 
     of the Constitution. Complaint P17. Specifically, they 
     alleged that the Act ``unconstitutionally expands the 
     President's power,'' and ``violates the requirements of 
     bicameral passage and presentiment by granting to the 
     President, acting alone, the authority to `cancel' and thus 
     repeal provisions of federal law.'' Ibid. They alleged that 
     the act injured them ``directly and concretely . . . in their 
     official capacities'' in three ways:
       ``The Act . . . (a) alters the legal and practical effect 
     of all votes they may cast on bills containing such 
     separately vetoable items, (b) divests the [appellees] of 
     their constitutional role in the repeal of legislation, and 
     (c) alters the constitutional balance of powers between the 
     Legislative and Executive Branches, both with respect to 
     measures containing separately vetoable items and with 
     respect to other matters [*11] coming before Congress.'' Id., 
     P14.
       Appellants moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, 
     claiming (among other things) that appellees lacked standing 
     to sue and that their claim was not ripe. Both sides also 
     filed motions for summary judgment on the merits. On April 
     10, 1997, the District Court (i) denied appellants' motion to 
     dismiss, holding that appellees had standing to bring this 
     suit and that their claim was ripe, and (ii) granted 
     appellees' summary judgment motion, holding that the Act is 
     unconstitutional. 956 F. Supp. 25. As to standing, the court 
     noted that the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia 
     ``has repeatedly recognized Members' standing to challenge 
     measures that affect their constitutionally prescribed 
     lawmaking powers.'' Id., at 30 (citing, e.g., Michel v. 
     Anderson, 14 F. 3d 623, 625 (CADC 1994); Moore v. U.S. House 
     of Representatives, 733 F. 2d 946, 950-952 (CADC 1984)). See 
     also 956 F. Supp., at 31 (``The Supreme Court has never 
     endorsed the [Court of Appeals'] analysis of standing in such 
     cases''). The court held that appellees' claim that the Act 
     ``diluted their Article I voting power'' was sufficient to 
     confer Article III standing: [*12] ``[Appellees'] votes mean 
     something different from what they meant before, for good or 
     ill, and [appellees] who perceive it as the latter are thus 
     `injured' in a constitutional sense whenever an 
     appropriations bill comes up for a vote, whatever the 
     President ultimately does with it. . . . Under the Act the 
     dynamic of lawmaking is fundamentally altered. Compromises 
     and trade-offs by individual lawmakers must take into account 
     the President's item-by-item cancellation power looming over 
     the end product.'' Ibid.
       The court held that appellees' claim was ripe even though 
     the President had not yet used the ``cancellation'' authority 
     granted him under the Act: ``Because [appellees] now find 
     themselves in a position of unanticipated and unwelcome 
     subservience to the president before and after they vote on 
     appropriations bills, Article III is satisfied, and this 
     Court may accede to Congress' directive to address the 
     constitutional cloud over the Act as swiftly as 
     possible.'' Id., at 32 (referring to Sec. 692(a)(1), the 
     section of the Act granting Members of Congress the right 
     to challenge the Act's constitutionality in court). On the 
     merits, the court held that the Act violated the 
     Presentment [*13] Clause, Art. I, Sec. 7, cl. 2, and 
     constituted an unconstitutional delegation of legislative 
     power to the President. 956 F. Supp., at 33, 35, 37-38.
       The Act provides for a direct, expedited appeal to this 
     Court. Sec. 692(b) (direct appeal to Supreme Court); 
     Sec. 692(c) (``It shall be the duty of . . . the Supreme 
     Court of the United States to advance on the docket and to 
     expedite to the greatest possible extent the disposition of 
     any [suit challenging the Act's constitutionality] brought 
     under [Sec. 3(a) of the Act]''). On April 18, eight days 
     after the District Court issued its order, appellants filed a 
     jurisdictional statement asking us to note probable 
     jurisdiction, and on April 21, appellees filed a memorandum 
     in response agreeing that we should note probable 
     jurisdiction. On April 23, we did so. 520 U.S. ___ (1977). We 
     established an expedited briefing schedule and heard oral 
     argument on May 27.\2\ We now hold that appellees have no 
     standing to bring this suit, and therefore direct that the 
     judgment of the District Court be vacated and the complaint 
     dismissed. [*14]
       II
       Under Article III, Sec. 2 of the Constitution, the federal 
     courts have jurisdiction over this dispute between appellants 
     and appellees only if it is a ``case'' or ``controversy.'' 
     This is a ``bedrock requirement.'' Valley Forge Christian 
     College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and 
     State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 471 (1982). As we said in Simon v. 
     Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S. 26, 37 
     (1976), ``No principle is more fundamental to the judiciary's 
     proper role in our system of government than the 
     constitutional limitation of federal-court jurisdiction to 
     actual cases or controversies.''
       One element of the case-or-controversy requirement is that 
     appellees, based on their complaint, must establish that they 
     have standing to sue. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 
     U.S. 555, 561 (1992) (plaintiff bears burden of establishing 
     standing). The standing inquiry focuses on whether the 
     plaintiff is the proper party to bring this suit, Simon, 
     supra, at 38, although that inquiry ``often turns on the 
     nature and source of the claim asserted,'' Warth v. Seldin, 
     422 U.S. 490, 500 (1975). To meet the standing requirements 
     of Article III, ``[a] [*15] plaintiff must allege personal 
     injury fairly traceable to the defendant's allegedly unlawful 
     conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief.'' 
     Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751 (1984) (emphasis added). 
     For our purposes, the italicized words in this quotation from 
     Allen are the key ones. We have consistently stressed that a 
     plaintiff's complaint must establish that he has a ``personal 
     stake'' in the alleged dispute, and that the alleged injury 
     suffered is particularized as to him. See, e.g., Lujan, 504 
     U.S., at 560-561 and n. 1 (to have standing, the plaintiff 
     must have suffered a ``particularized'' injury, which means 
     that ``the injury must affect the plaintiff in a personal and 
     individual way''); Bender v. Williamsport Area School Dist., 
     475 U.S. 534, 543-544 (1986) (school board member who ``has 
     no personal stake in the outcome of the litigation'' has no 
     standing); Simon, supra, at 39 (``The necessity that the 
     plaintiff who seeks to invoke judicial power stand to profit 
     in some personal interest remains an Art. III requirement'').
       We have also stressed that the alleged injury must be 
     legally and judicially cognizable. This requires, among other 
     [*16] things, that the plaintiff have suffered ``an invasion 
     of a legally protected interest which is . . . concrete and 
     particularized,'' Lujan, 504 U.S., at 560, and that the 
     dispute is ``traditionally thought to be capable of 
     resolution through the judicial process,'' Flast v. Cohen, 
     392 U.S. 83, 97 (1968). See also Allen, 468 U.S., at 752 
     (``Is the injury too abstract, or otherwise not appropriate, 
     to be considered judicially cognizable?'').
       We have always insisted on strict compliance with this 
     jurisdictional standing requirement. See, e.g. ibid. (under 
     Article III, ``federal courts may exercise power only `in the 
     last resort, and as a necessity' '') (quoting Chicago & Grand 
     Trunk R. Co. v. Wellman, 143 U.S. 339, 345 (1892)); Muskrat 
     v. United States, 219 U.S. 346, 356 (1911) (*From its 
     earliest history this Court has consistently declined to 
     exercise any powers other than those which are strictly 
     judicial in their nature''). And our standing inquiry has 
     been especially rigorous when reaching the merits of the 
     dispute would force us to decide whether an action taken by 
     one of the other two branches of the Federal Government was 
     unconstitutional. See, [*17] e.g., Bender, supra, at 542; 
     Valley Forge, supra, at 473-474. As we said in Allen, 
     supra, at 752, ``the law of Art. III standing is built on 
     a single basic idea--the idea of separation of powers.'' 
     In the light of this overriding and time-honored concern 
     about keeping the Judiciary's power within its proper 
     constitutional sphere,\3\ we must put aside the natural 
     urge to proceed directly to the merits of this important 
     dispute and to ``settle'' it for the sake of convenience 
     and efficiency. Instead, we must carefully inquire as to 
     whether appellees have met their burden of establishing 
     that their claimed injury is personal, particularized, 
     concrete, and otherwise judicially cognizable. [*18]
       III
       We have never had occasion to rule on the question of 
     legislative standing, presented here.\4\ In Powell v. 
     McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 496, 512-514 (1969), we held that a 
     Member of Congress' constitutional challenge to his exclusion 
     from the House of Representatives (and his consequent loss of 
     salary) presented an Article III case or controversy. But 
     Powell does not help appellees. First, appellees have not 
     been singled out for specially unfavorable treatment as 
     opposed to other Members of their respective bodies. Their 
     claim is that the Act causes a type of institutional injury 
     (the diminution of legislative power), which necessarily 
     damages all Members of Congress and both Houses of Congress 
     equally. See n. 7, infra. Second, appellees do not claim that 
     they have been deprived of something to which they personally 
     are entitled--such as their seats as Members of Congress 
     after their constituents had elected them. Rather, appellees' 
     claim of standing is based on a loss of political power, not 
     loss of any private right, which would make the injury more 
     concrete. Unlike the injury claimed by Congressman Adam 
     Clayton Powell, the injury claimed by the Members [*19] of 
     Congress here is not claimed in any private capacity but 
     solely because they are members of Congress. See Complaint 
     P14 (purporting to sue ``in their official capacities''). If 
     one of the Members were to retire tomorrow, he would no 
     longer have a claim; the claim would be possessed by his 
     successor instead. The claimed injury thus runs (in a sense) 
     with the Member's seat, a seat which the Member holds (it may 
     quite arguably be said) as trustee for his constituents, not 
     as a prerogative of personal power. See the Federalist No. 
     62, p. 378 (J. Madison) (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (``It is a 
     misfortune incident to republican government, though in a 
     less degree than to other governments, that those who 
     administer it may forget their obligations to their 
     constituents and prove unfaithful to their important 
     trust''). [*20]
       The one case in which we have upheld standing for 
     legislators (albeit state legislators) claiming an 
     institutional injury is Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 
     (1939). Appellees, relying heavily on this case, claim that 
     they, like the state legislators in Coleman, ``have a plain, 
     direct and adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness 
     of their votes,'' id., at 438, sufficient to establish 
     standing. In Coleman, 20 of Kansas' 40 State Senators voted 
     not to ratify the proposed ``Child Labor Amendment'' to the 
     Federal Constitution. With the vote deadlocked 20-

[[Page H4664]]

     20, the amendment ordinarily would not have been ratified. 
     However, the State's Lieutenant Governor, the presiding 
     officer of the State Senate, cast a deciding vote in favor of 
     the amendment, and it was deemed ratified (after the State 
     House of Representatives voted to ratify it). The 20 State 
     Senators who have voted against the amendment, joined by a 
     21st State Senator and three State House Members, filed an 
     action in the Kansas Supreme Court seeking a writ of mandamus 
     that would compel the appropriate state officials to 
     recognize that the legislature had not in fact ratified the 
     amendment. That court held [*21] that the members of the 
     legislature had standing to bring their mandamus action, 
     but ruled against them on the merits. See id., at 436-437.
       This Court affirmed. By a vote of 5-4, we held that the 
     members of the legislature had standing.\5\ In explaining our 
     holding, we repeatedly emphasized that if these legislators 
     (who were suing as a bloc) were correct on the merits, then 
     their votes not to ratify the amendment were deprived of all 
     validity: [*22]
       ``Here, the plaintiffs include twenty senators, whose votes 
     against ratification have been overridden and virtually held 
     for naught although if they are right in their contentions 
     their votes would have been sufficient to defeat 
     ratification. We think that these senators have a plain, 
     direct, and adequate interest in maintaining the 
     effectiveness of their votes.'' Id., at 438 (emphasis added).
       ``The twenty senators were not only qualified to vote on 
     the question of ratification but their votes, if the 
     Lieutenant governor were excluded as not being a part of the 
     legislature for that purpose, would have been decisive in 
     defeating the ratifying resolution.'' Id., at 441 (emphasis 
     added).
       ``We find no departure from principle in recognizing in the 
     instant case that at least the twenty senators whose votes, 
     if their contention were sustained, would have been 
     sufficient to defeat the resolution ratifying the proposed 
     constitutional amendment, have an interest in the controversy 
     which, treated by the state court as a basis for entertaining 
     and deciding the federal questions, is sufficient to give the 
     Court jurisdiction to review that decision.'' [*23] Id., at 
     446 (emphasis added).
       It is obvious, then, that our holding in Coleman stands (at 
     most, see n. 8, infra) for the proposition that legislators 
     whose votes would have been sufficient to defeat (or enact) a 
     specific legislative act have standing to sue if that 
     legislative action goes into effect (or does not go into 
     effect), on the ground that their votes have been completely 
     nullified.\6\
       It should be equally [*24] obvious that appellees' claim 
     does not fall within our holding in Coleman, as thus 
     understood. They have not alleged that they voted for a 
     specific bill, that there were sufficient votes to pass the 
     bill, and that the bill was nonetheless deemed defeated. In 
     the vote on the Line Item Veto Act, their votes were given 
     full effect. They simply lost that vote.\7\ Nor can they 
     allege that the Act will nullify their votes in the future in 
     the same way that the votes of the Coleman legislators had 
     been nullified. In the future, a majority of Senators and 
     Congressmen can pass or reject appropriations bills; the Act 
     has no effect on this process. In addition, a majority of 
     Senators and Congressmen can vote to repeal the Act, or to 
     exempt a given appropriations bill (or a given provision in 
     an appropriations bill) from the Act; again, the Act has no 
     effect on this process. Coleman thus provides little 
     meaningful precedent for appellees' argument.\8\ [*25]
       Nevertheless, appellees rely heavily on our statement in 
     Coleman that the Kansas senators had ``a plan, direct, and 
     adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness of their 
     votes.'' Appellees claim that this statement applies to them 
     because their votes on future appropriations [*26] bills 
     (assuming a majority of Congress does not decide to exempt 
     those bills from the Act) will be less ``effective'' than 
     before, and that the ``meaning'' and ``integrity'' of their 
     vote has changed. Brief for Appellees 24, 28. The argument 
     goes as follows. Before the Act, Members of Congress could be 
     sure that then they voted for, and Congress passed, an 
     appropriations bill that included funds for project X, one of 
     two things would happen: (1) the bill would become law and 
     all of the projects listed in the bill would go into effect, 
     or (ii) the bill would not become law and none of the 
     projects listed in the bill would go into effect. Either way, 
     a vote for the appropriations bill meant a vote for a package 
     of projects that were inextricably linked. After the Act, 
     however, a vote for an appropriations bill that includes 
     Project X means something different. Now, in addition to the 
     two possibilities listed above, there is a third option: the 
     bill will become law and then the President will ``cancel'' 
     project X.\9\ [*27]
       Even taking appellees at their word about the change in the 
     ``meaning'' and ``effectiveness'' of their vote for 
     appropriations bills which are subject to the Act, we think 
     their argument pulls Coleman too far from its moorings. 
     Appellees' use of the word ``effectiveness'' to link their 
     argument to Coleman stretches the word far beyond the sense 
     in which the Coleman opinion used it. There is a vast 
     difference between the level of vote nullification at issue 
     in Coleman and the abstract dilution of institutional 
     legislative power that is alleged here. To uphold standing 
     here would require a drastic extension of Coleman. We are 
     unwilling to take that step.
       Not only do appellees lack support from precedent, but 
     historical practice appears to cut against them as well. It 
     is evident from several episodes in our history that in 
     analogous confrontations between one or both Houses of 
     Congress and the Executive Branch, no suit was brought on the 
     basis of claimed injury to official authority or power. The 
     Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress and the Executive 
     Branch, no suit was brought on the basis of claimed injury to 
     official authority or power. The Tenure of Office Act, passed 
     by Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson in 
     1867, was a thorn in the side of succeeding Presidents until 
     it was finally repealed at the [*28] behest of President 
     Grover Cleveland in 1887. See generally W. Rehnquist, Grand 
     Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase 
     and President Andrew Johnson 210-235, 260-268 (1992). It 
     provided that an official whose appointment to an Executive 
     Branch office required confirmation by the Senate could not 
     be removed without the consent of the Senate. 14 Stat. 430, 
     ch. 154. In 1868, Johnson removed his Secretary of War, Edwin 
     M. Stanton. Within a week, the House of Representatives 
     impeached Johnson. 1 Trial of Andrew Johnson, President of 
     the United States, Before the Senate of the United States on 
     Impeachment by the House of Representatives for High Crimes 
     and Misdemeanors 4 (1868). One of the principal charges 
     against him was that his removal of Stanton violated the 
     Tenure of Office Act. Id., at 6-8. At the conclusion of his 
     trial before the Senate, Johnson was acquitted by one vote. 2 
     id., at 487, 496-498. Surely Johnson had a stronger claim of 
     diminution of his official power as a result of the Tenure of 
     Office Act than do the appellees in the present case. Indeed, 
     if their claim were sustained, it would appear that 
     President Johnson would have had standing to [*29] 
     challenge the Tenure of Office Act before he ever thought 
     about firing a cabinet member, simply on the grounds that 
     it altered the calculus by which he would nominate someone 
     to his cabinet. Yet if the federal courts had entertained 
     an action to adjudicate the constitutionality of the 
     Tenure of Office Act immediately after its passage in 
     1867, they would have been improperly and unnecessarily 
     plunged into the bitter political battle being waged 
     between the President and Congress.
       Succeeding Presidents--Ulysses S. Grant and Grover 
     Cleveland--urged Congress to repeal the Tenure of Office Act, 
     and Cleveland's plea was finally heeded in 1887. 24 Stat. 
     500, ch. 353. It occurred to neither of these Presidents that 
     they might challenge the Act in an Article III court. 
     Eventually, in a suite brought by a plaintiff with 
     traditional Article III standing, this Court did have the 
     opportunity to pass on the constitutionality of the provision 
     contained in the Tenure of Office Act. A sort of mini-Tenure 
     of Office Act covering only the Post Office Department had 
     been enacted in 1872, 17 Stat. 284, ch. 335, Sec. 2, and it 
     remained on the books after the Tenure of Office Act's repeal 
     in 1887. In the last [*30] days of the Woodrow Wilson 
     administration, Albert Burleson, Wilson's Postmaster General, 
     came to believe that Frank Myers, the Postmaster in Portland, 
     Oregon, had committed fraud in the course of his official 
     duties. When Myers refused to resign, Burleson, acting at the 
     direction of the President, removed him. Myers sued in the 
     Court of Claims to recover lost salary. In Myers v. United 
     States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), more than half a century after 
     Johnson's impeachment, this Court held that Congress could 
     not require senatorial consent to the removal of a Postmaster 
     who had been appointed by the President with the consent of 
     the Senate. Id., at 106-107, 173, 176. In the course of its 
     opinion, the Court expressed the view that the original 
     Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional. Id., at 176. See 
     also id., at 173 (``This Court has, since the Tenure of 
     Office Act, manifested an earnest desire to avoid a final 
     settlement of the question until it should be inevitably 
     presented, as it is here'').
       If the appellees in the present case have standing, 
     presumably President Wilson, or Presidents Grant and 
     Cleveland before him, would likewise have had standing, and 
     could have [*31] challenged the law preventing the removal of 
     a presidential appointee without the consent of Congress. 
     Similarly, in INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983), the 
     Attorney General would have had standing to challenge the 
     one-House veto provision because it rendered his authority 
     provisional rather than final. By parity of reasoning, 
     President Gerald Ford could have sued to challenge the 
     appointment provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act 
     which were struck down in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 
     (1976), and a Member of Congress could have challenged the 
     validity of President Coolidge's pocket veto that was 
     sustained in The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U.S. 655 (1929).
       There would be nothing irrational about a system which 
     granted standing in these cases; some European constitutional 
     courts operate under one or another variant of such a regime. 
     See, e.g., Favoreu, Constitutional Review in Europe, in 
     Constitutionalism and Rights 38, 41 (L. Henkin & A. Rosenthal 
     eds. 1990); Wright Sheive, Central and Eastern European 
     Constitutional Courts and the Antimajoritarian Objection to 
     Judicial Review, 26 Law & Pol'y Int'l Bus. 1201, 1209 (1995); 
     A. Stone, The Birth of Judicial [*32] Politics in France 232 
     (1992); D. Kommers, Judicial Politics in West Germany: A 
     Study of the Federal Constitutional Court 106 (1976). But it 
     is obviously not the regime

[[Page H4665]]

     that has obtained under our Constitution to date. Our regime 
     contemplates a more restricted role for Article III courts, 
     well expressed by Justice Powell in his concurring opinion in 
     United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166 (1974):
       ``The irreplaceable value of the power articulated by Mr. 
     Chief Justice Marshall [in Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 
     (1803)] lies in the protection it has afforded the 
     constitutional rights and liberties of individual citizens 
     and minority groups against oppressive or discriminatory 
     government action. It is this role, not some amorphous 
     general supervision of the operations of government, that has 
     maintained public esteem for the federal courts and has 
     permitted the peaceful coexistence of the countermajoritarian 
     implications of judicial review and the democratic principles 
     upon which our Federal Government in the final analysis 
     rests.'' Id. at 192.
       IV
       In sum, appellees have alleged no injury to themselves as 
     individuals (contra Powell), the institutional [*33] injury 
     they allege is wholly abstract and widely dispersed (contra 
     Coleman), and their attempt to litigate this dispute at this 
     time and in this form is contrary to historical experience. 
     We attach some importance to the fact that appellees have not 
     been authorized to represent their respective Houses of 
     Congress in this action, and indeed both Houses actively 
     oppose their suit.\10\ See note 2, supra. We also note that 
     our conclusion neither deprives Members of Congress of an 
     adequate remedy (since they may repeal the Act or exempt 
     appropriations bills from its reach), nor forecloses the 
     Act from constitutional challenge (by someone who suffers 
     judicially cognizable injury as a result of the Act). 
     Whether the case would be different if any of these 
     circumstances were different we need not now decide. [*34]
       We therefore hold that these individual members of Congress 
     do not have a sufficient ``personal stake'' in this dispute 
     and have not alleged a sufficiently concrete injury to have 
     established Article III standing.\11\ The judgment of the 
     District Court is vacated, and the case is remanded with 
     instructions to dismiss the complaint for lack of 
     jurisdiction.
       It is so ordered.
       Concur by: Souter
       Concur: [*35]
       Justice Souter, concurring in the judgment, with whom 
     Justice Ginsburg joins, concurring.
       Appellees claim that the Line Item Veto Act, Pub. L. 104-
     130, 110 Stat. 1200, codified at 2 U.S.C. A. Sec. 691 et seq. 
     (Supp. 1997), is unconstitutional because it grants the 
     President power, which Article I vests in Congress, to repeal 
     a provision of federal law. As Justice Stevens points out, 
     appellees essentially claim that, by granting the President 
     power to repeal statutes, the Act injures them by depriving 
     them of their official role in voting on the provisions that 
     become law. See post, at 2-3. Under our precedents, it is 
     fairly debatable whether this injury is sufficiently 
     ``personal'' and ``concrete'' to satisfy the requirements of 
     Article III.\12\
       There is, first, difficulty in applying the rule that an 
     injury [*36] on which standing is predicated be personal, not 
     official. If our standing doctrine recognized this as a 
     distinction with a dispositive effect, the injury claimed 
     would not qualify: the Court is certainly right in concluding 
     that appellees sue not in personal capacities, but as holders 
     of seats in the Congress. See ante, at 9. And yet the 
     significance of this distinction is not so straightforward. 
     In Braxton County Court v. West Virginia ex rel. State Tax 
     Comm'rs, 208 U.S. (1908), it is true, we dismissed a 
     challenge by a county court to a state tax law for lack of 
     jurisdiction, broadly stating that `` `the interest of a 
     [party seeking relief] in this court should be a personal and 
     not an official interest,' '' id., at 198 (quoting Smith v. 
     Indiana, 191 U.S. 138, 149 (1903); accord, Joint Anti-Fascist 
     Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 151 (1951) 
     (Frankfurter, J., concurring). But the Court found Braxton 
     County ``inapplicable'' to a challenge by a group of state 
     legislators in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 438, and n. 3 
     (1939), and found the legislators had standing even though 
     they claimed no injury but a deprivation of official [*37] 
     voting power, id., at 437-446.\13\ Thus, it is at least 
     arguable that the official nature of the harm here does not 
     preclude standing. [*38]
       Nor is appellees' injury so general that, under our case 
     law, they clearly cannot satisfy the requirement of 
     concreteness. On the one hand, appellees are not simply 
     claiming harm to their interest in having government abide by 
     the Constitution, which would be shard to the same extent by 
     the public at large and thus provide no basis for suit, see, 
     e.g., Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for 
     Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 482-483 
     (1982); Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 
     U.S. 208, 217, 220 (1974); Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U.S. 126, 
     129-130 (1922). Instead, appellees allege that the Act 
     deprives them of an element of their legislative power; as a 
     factual matter they have a more direct and tangible interest 
     in the preservation of that power than the general citizenry 
     has. Cf. Coleman, supra, at 438 (concluding that state 
     legislators had a ``plain'' and ``direct'' interest in the 
     effectiveness of their votes); see also Hendrick v. Walters, 
     865 P. 2d 1232, 1236-1238 (Okla. 1993) Concluding that a 
     legislator had a personal interest in a suit to determine 
     whether the Governor had lawfully assumed [*39] office due to 
     substantial interaction between the Governor and 
     legislature); Colorado General Assembly v. Lamm, 704 P. 2d 
     1371, 1376-1378 (Colo. 1985) (concluding that the legislature 
     had suffered an injury in fact as a result of the Governor's 
     exercise of his line item veto power). On the other hand, the 
     alleged, continuing deprivation of federal legislative power 
     is not as specific or limited as the nullification of the 
     decisive votes of a group of legislators in connection with a 
     specific item of legislative consideration in Coleman, being 
     instead shared by all the members of the official class who 
     could suffer that injury, the Members of Congress.\14\ [*40]
       Because it is fairly debatable whether appellees' injury is 
     sufficiently personal and concrete to give them standing, it 
     behooves us to resolve the question under more general 
     separation-of-powers principles underlying our standing 
     requirements. See Allen v.Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 752 (1984); 
     United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 188-197 (1974) 
     (Powell, J., concurring). While ``our constitutional 
     structure [does not] require . . . that the Judicial Branch 
     shrink from a confrontation with the other two coequal 
     branches, ``Valley Forge Christian College, supra, at 474, we 
     have cautioned that respect for the separation of powers 
     requires the Judicial Branch to exercise restraint in 
     deciding constitutional issues by resolving those implicating 
     the powers of the three branches of Government as a ``last 
     resort,'' see ibid. The counsel of restraint in this case 
     begins with the fact that a dispute involving only officials, 
     and the official interests of those, who serve in the 
     branches of the National Government lies far from the model 
     of the traditional common-law cause of action at the 
     conceptual core of the case-or-controversy requirement, see 
     Joint Anti-Fascist [*41] Refugee Comm., supra, at 150, 152 
     (Frankfurter, J., concurring). although the contest here is 
     not formally between the political branches (since Congress 
     passed the bill augmenting Presidential power and the 
     President signed it), it is in substance an inter-branch 
     controversy about calibrating the legislative and executive 
     powers, as well as an intrabranch dispute between segments of 
     Congress itself. Intervention in such a controversy would 
     risk damaging the public confidence that is vital to the 
     functioning of the Judicial Branch, cf. Valleg Forge 
     Christian College, supra, at 474 (quoting Richardson, supra, 
     at 188 (Powell, J., concurring)), by embroiling the federal 
     courts in a power contest nearly at the height of its 
     political tension.
       While it is true that a suit challenging the 
     constitutionality of this Act brought by a party from outside 
     the Federal Government would also involve the Court in 
     resolving the dispute over the allocation of power between 
     the political branches, it would expose the Judicial Branch 
     to a lesser risk. Deciding a suit to vindicate an interest 
     outside the Government raises no specter of judicial 
     readiness to enlist on one side of a political tug-of-war, 
     [*42] since ``the propriety of such action by a federal court 
     has been recognized since Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 
     (1803).'' Valley Forge Christian College, supra, at 473-474. 
     And just as the presence of a party beyond the Government 
     places the Judiciary at some remove form the political 
     forces, the need to await injury to such a plaintiff allows 
     the courts some greater separation in the time between the 
     political resolution and the judicial review.
       ``By connecting the censureship of the laws with the 
     private interests of members of the community, . . . the 
     legislation is protected from wanton assailants, and from the 
     daily aggressions of party-spirit.'' 1 A. de Tocqueville, 
     Democracy in America 105 (Schoken ed. 1961).
       The virtue of waiting for a private suit is only confirmed 
     by the certainty that another suit can come to us. The 
     parties agree, and I see no reason to question, that if the 
     President ``cancels'' a conventional spending or tax 
     provision pursuant to the Act, the putative beneficiaries of 
     that provision will likely suffer a cognizable injury and 
     thereby have standing under Article III. See Brief for United 
     States 19-20, and n. 10; Brief for Appellees 32-33. [*43] By 
     depriving beneficiaries of the money to which they would 
     otherwise be entitled, a cancellation would produce an injury 
     that is ``actual,'' ``personal and individual,'' and involve 
     harm to a ``legally protected interest,'' Lujan v. Defenders 
     of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, and n. 1 (1992) (internal 
     quotation marks omitted); assuming the canceled provision 
     would not apply equally to the entire public, the injury 
     would be ``concrete,'' id., at 560, 573-574; and it would be 
     ``fairly traceable to the challenged action of the'' 
     executive officials involved in the cancellation, id., at 560 
     (internal quotation marks omitted), as well as probably 
     ``redressable by a favorable decision,'' id., at 561 
     (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). See, e.g., 
     Train v. City of New York, 420 U.S. 35, 40 (1975) (suit by 
     City of New York seeking proper allotment of federal funds). 
     While the Court has declined to lower standing requirements 
     simply because no one would otherwise be able to litigate a 
     claim, see Valley Forge Christian College, 454 U.S. at 489; 
     Schlesinger, 418 U.S., at 227; United States v. Richardson, 
     supra, at 179, the certainty of a plaintiff [*44] who 
     obviously would have standing to bring a suit to court after 
     the politics had at least subsided from a full boil is a good 
     reason to resolve doubts about standing against the plaintiff 
     invoking an official interest, cf. Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee 
     Comm., 341 U.S., at 153-154 (Frankfurter, Jr., concurring) 
     (explaining that the availability of another person to bring 
     suit may affect the standing calculus).

[[Page H4666]]

       I therefore conclude that appellees' alleged injuries are 
     insufficiently personal and concrete to satisfy Article III 
     standing requirements of personal and concrete harm. Since 
     this would be so in any suit under the conditions here, I 
     accordingly find no cognizable injury to appellees.
       Dissent by: Stevens; Breyer
       Dissent: Justice Stevens, dissenting.
       The Line Item Veto Act purports to establish a procedure 
     for the creation of laws that are truncated versions of bills 
     that have been passed by the Congress and presented to the 
     President for signature. If the procedure were valid, it 
     would deny every Senator and every Representative any 
     opportunity to vote for or against the truncated measure that 
     survives the exercise of the President's cancellation 
     authority. Because the opportunity to [*45] cast such votes 
     is a right guaranteed by the text of the Constitution, I 
     think it clear that the persons who are deprived of that 
     right by the Act have standing to challenge its 
     constitutionality. Moreover, because the impairment of that 
     constitutional right has an immediate impact on their 
     official powers, in my judgment they need not wait until 
     after the President has exercised his cancellation authority 
     to bring suit. Finally, the same reason that the respondents 
     have standing provides a sufficient basis for concluding that 
     the statute is unconstitutional.
       Article I, Sec. 7, of the Constitution provides that every 
     Senator and every Representative has the power to vote on 
     ``Every Bill . . . before it become a law'' either as a 
     result of its having been signed by the president or as a 
     result of its ``Reconsideration'' in the light of the 
     President's ``Objections.'' \15\ In contrast, the Line Item 
     Veto Act establishes a mechanism by which bills passed by 
     both Houses of Congress will eventually produce laws that 
     have not passed either House of Congress and that have not 
     been voted on by any Senator or Representative.
       ``Every Bill which shall have passed the House of 
     Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a 
     law, be presented to the President of the United States: If 
     he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, 
     with his Objections to that House in which it shall have 
     originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their 
     Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such 
     Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass 
     the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to 
     the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, 
     and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become 
     a Law. But in all such cases the Votes of both Houses shall 
     be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons 
     voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the 
     Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be 
     returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) 
     after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be 
     a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the 
     Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which 
     Case it shall not be a Law.'' U.S. Const., Art. I, Sec. 7. 
     [*46]
       Assuming for the moment that this procedure is 
     constitutionally permissible, and that the President will 
     from time to time exercise the power to cancel portions of a 
     just-enacted law, it follows that the statute deprives every 
     Senator and every Representative of the right to vote for or 
     against measures that may become law. The appellees cast 
     their challenge to the constitutionality of the Act in a 
     slightly different way. Their complaint asserted that the Act 
     ``alters the legal and practical effect of all votes they may 
     cast on bills containing such separately vetoable items'' and 
     ``divest them of their constitutional role in the repeal of 
     legislation.'' Complaint P 14. These two claimed injuries are 
     at base the same as the injury on which I rest my analysis. 
     The reason the complaint frames the issues in the way that it 
     does is related to the Act's technical operation. Under the 
     Act, the President would receive and sign a bill exactly as 
     it passed both Houses, and would exercise his partial veto 
     power only after the law had been enacted. See 2 U.S.C.A. 
     Sec. 691(a) (Supp. 1997). The appellees thus articulated 
     their claim as a combination of the diminished effect of 
     their initial [*47] vote and the circumvention of their right 
     to participate in the subsequent repeal. Whether one looks at 
     the claim from this perspective, or as a simple denial of 
     their right to vote on the precise text that will ultimately 
     become law, the basic nature of the injury caused by the Act 
     is the same.
       In my judgment, the deprivation of this right--essential to 
     the legislator's office--constitutes a sufficient injury to 
     provide every Member of Congress with standing to challenge 
     the constitutionality of the statue. If the dilution of any 
     individual voter's power to elect representatives provides 
     that voter with standing--as it surely does, see, e.g., Baker 
     v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204-208 (1962)--the deprivation of the 
     right possessed by each Senator and Representative to vote 
     for or against the precise text of any bill before it becomes 
     law must also be a sufficient injury to create Article III 
     standing for them.\16\ Although, as Justice Breyer 
     demonstrates, see ante at 2-5 (dissenting opinion), the 
     majority's attempt to distinguish Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 
     433, 438 (1939), is not persuasive, I need not rely on that 
     case to support my view that the Members of Congress [*48] 
     have standing to sue in this instance. In Coleman, the 
     legislators complained that their votes were denied full 
     effectiveness. See Ibid.; see also Dyer v. Blair, 390 F. 
     Supp. 1291, 1297, n.12 (ND Ill. 1975). But the law at issue 
     here does not simply alter the effect of the legislators 
     votes; it denies them any opportunity at all to cast votes 
     for or against the truncated versions of the bills presented 
     to the President.\17\ [*49]
       Moreover, the appellees convincingly explain how the 
     immediate, constant threat of the partial veto power has a 
     palpable effect on their current legislative choices. See 
     Brief for Appellees 23-25, 29-31. Because the Act has this 
     immediate and important impact on the powers of Members of 
     Congress, and on the manner in which they undertake their 
     legislative responsibilities, they need not await an exercise 
     of the President's cancellation authority to institute the 
     litigation that the statute itself authorizes. See 2 U.S. 
     C.A. Sec. 692(a)(1) (Supp. 1997).
       Given the fact that the authority at stake is granted by 
     the plain and unambiguous text of Article I, it is equally 
     clear to me that the statutory attempt to eliminate it is 
     invalid.
       Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of the District 
     Court.
       Justice Breyer, dissenting.
       As the majority points out, Congress has enacted a specific 
     statute (signed by the President) granting the plaintiffs 
     authority to bring this case. Ante, at 3, citing 2 U.S.C. 
     Sec. 692(a)(1). That statutory authorization ``eliminates any 
     prudential standing limitations and significantly lessens the 
     risk of unwanted conflict with the Legislative Branch.'' 
     [*50] Ante, at 8, n. 3. Congress, however, cannot grant the 
     federal courts more power than the Constitution itself 
     authorizes us to exercise. Cf. Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 409 
     (1792). Thus, we can proceed to the merits only if the 
     ``judicial Power'' of the United States--``extending to . 
     . . Cases, in Law and Equity'' and to ``Controversies''--
     covers the dispute before us. U.S. Const., Art. III, 
     Sec. 2.
       I concede that there would be no case or controversy here 
     were the dispute before us not truly adversary, or were it 
     not concrete and focused. But the interests that the parties 
     assert are genuine and opposing, and the parties are 
     therefore truly adverse. Compare Chicago & Grand Trunk R. Co. 
     v. Wellman, 143 U.S. 339 (1892). Moreover, as Justice Stevens 
     points out, the harm that the plaintiffs suffer (on their 
     view of the law) consists in part of the systematic 
     abandonment of laws for which a majority voted, in part of 
     the creation of other laws in violation of procedural rights 
     which (they say) the Constitution provides them, and in part 
     of the consequent and immediate impediment to their ability 
     to do the job that the Constitution requires them to do. See 
     ante, at 1-2, 4 (Stevens, [*51] J., dissenting); Complaint 
     P14; App. 34-36, 39-40, 42-46, 54-55, 57-59, 62-64. Since 
     federal courts might well adjudicate cases involving 
     comparable harms in other contexts (such as purely private 
     contexts), the harm at issue is sufficiently concrete, Cf., 
     e.g., Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. __, __ (1997) (slip op. at 
     11-19); Northeastern Fla. Chapter, Associated Gen. 
     Contractors of America v. Jacksonville, 508 U.S. 656 (1993). 
     See also ante, at 2-3, (Souter, J., concurring in judgment). 
     The harm is focused and the accompanying legal issues are 
     both focused and of the sort that this Court is used to 
     deciding. See, e.g., United States v. Munoz-Flores, 495 U.S. 
     385, 392-396 (1990). The plaintiffs therefore do not ask the 
     Court ``to pass upon'' an ``abstract, intellectual problem,'' 
     but to determine ``a concrete, living contest between'' 
     genuine ``adversaries.'' Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 460 
     (1939) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).
       Nonetheless, there remains a serious constitutional 
     difficulty due to the fact that this dispute about lawmaking 
     procedures arises between government officials and is brought 
     by legislators. The critical question is [*52] whether or not 
     this dispute, for that reason, is so different in form from 
     those ``matters that were the traditional concern of the 
     courts at Westminster'' that it falls outside the scope of 
     Article III's judicial power. Ibid. Justice Frankfurter 
     explained this argument in his dissent in Coleman, saying 
     that courts traditionally ``leave intra-parliamentary 
     controversies to parliaments and outside the scrutiny of law 
     courts. The procedures for voting in legislative assemblies--
     who are members, how and when they should vote, what is the 
     requisite number of votes for different phases of legislative 
     activity, what votes were cast and how they were counted--
     surely are matters that not merely concern political action, 
     but are of the very essence of political action, if 
     `political' has any connotation at all. . . . In no sense are 
     they matters of `private damage.' They pertain to legislators 
     not as individuals but as political representatives executing 
     the legislative process. To open the law courts to such 
     controversies is to have courts sit in judgment on the 
     manifold disputes engendered by procedures for voting in 
     legislative assemblies.'' Id., at 469-470.
       Justice Frankfurter [*53] dissented because, in his view, 
     the ``political'' nature of the case, which involved 
     legislators, placed the dispute outside the scope of Article 
     III's ``case'' or ``controversy'' requirement. Nonetheless, 
     the Coleman court rejected his argument.
       Although the majority today attempts to distinguish 
     Coleman, ante, at 9-14, I do not believe that Justice 
     Frankfurter's argument or variations on its theme can carry 
     the day here. First, as previously mentioned, the 
     jurisdictional statute before us eliminates all but 
     constitutional considerations, and the circumstances 
     mentioned above remove all but the ``political'' or 
     intragovernmental'' aspect of the constitutional issue. 
     Supra, at 1-2.
       Second, the Constitution does not draw an absolute line 
     between disputes involving a

[[Page H4667]]

     ``personal'' harm and those involving an ``official'' harm. 
     Cf. ante, at 6, 9. See ante, at 2, n. 2 (Souter, J., 
     concurring in judgment). Justice Frankfurter himself said 
     that this Court had heard cases involving injuries suffered 
     by state officials in their official capacities. Coleman, 
     supra, at 466 (citing Blodgett v. Silberman, 277 U.S. 1 
     (1928). and Boynton v. Hutchinson, 291 U.S. [*54] 656, cert. 
     dism'd on other grounds, 292 U.S. 601 (1934)). See also, 
     e.g., Will v. Calvert Fire Ins. Co., 437 U.S. 655, 661 (1978) 
     (federal district judge appealing mandamus issued against him 
     in respect to a docket-keeping matter); Board of Ed. of 
     Central School Dist. No. 1 v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 241, n. 5 
     (1968) (indicating that school board has standing where 
     members must either violate oath or risk loss of school funds 
     and expulsion from office). Coleman itself involved injuries 
     in the plaintiff legislators' official capacity. And the 
     majority in this case, suggesting that legislators might have 
     standing to complain of rules that ``denied'' them ``their 
     vote . . . in a discriminatory manner,'' concedes at least 
     the possibility that any constitutional rule distinguishing 
     ``official'' from ``personal'' injury is not absolute. Ante, 
     at 12, n. 7. See also ante, at 9.
       Third, Justice Frankfurter's views were dissenting views, 
     and the dispute before us, when compared to Coleman, 
     presents a much stronger claim, not a weaker claim, for 
     constitutional justiciability. The lawmakers in Coleman 
     complained of a lawmaking procedure that, at worst, 
     improperly [*55] counted Kansas as having ratified one 
     proposed constitutional amendment, which had been ratified 
     by only 5 other States, and rejected by 26, making it 
     unlikely that it would ever become law. Coleman, supra, at 
     436. The lawmakers in this case complain of a lawmaking 
     procedure that threatens the validity of many laws (for 
     example, all appropriations laws) that Congress regularly 
     and frequently enacts. The systematic nature of the harm 
     immediately affects the legislators, ability to do their 
     jobs. The harms here are more serious, more pervasive, and 
     more immediate than the harm at issue in Coleman. Cf. 
     Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United For 
     Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 471 
     (1982), quoting Chicago & Grand Trunk R. Co. v. Wellman, 
     143 U.S., at 345 (judicial power `` `is legitimate only in 
     the last resort, and as a necessity in the determination 
     of a real, earnest and vital controversy' '').
       The majority finds a difference in the fact that the 
     validity of the legislators' votes was directly at issue in 
     Coleman.
       ``Our holding in Coleman stands . . . for the proposition 
     that legislators whose votes would have been sufficient [*56] 
     to defeat (or enact) a specific legislative act have standing 
     to sue if that legislative action goes into effect (or does 
     not go into effect), on the ground that their votes have been 
     completely nullified.'' Ante, at 11.
       But since many of the present plaintiffs will likely vote 
     in the majority for at least some appropriations bills that 
     are then subject to presidential cancellation, I think that--
     on their view of the law--their votes are threatened with 
     nullification too. Cf. ante, at 11-12, n. 6, 13-14.
       The majority also suggests various distinctions arising out 
     of the fact that Coleman involved a state legislature, rather 
     than the federal Congress. Ante, at 13, n. 8. See also ante, 
     at 3, n. 3 (Souter, J., concurring in judgment). But Justice 
     Frankfurter treated comparable arguments as irrelevant, and 
     the Coleman majority did not disagree. Coleman, 307 U.S., at 
     462, 465-466 and n. 6 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting); id., at 
     446. While I recognize the existence of potential differences 
     between state and federal legislators, I do not believe that 
     those differences would be determinative here, where 
     constitutional, not prudential, considerations are [*57] at 
     issue, particularly given the Constitution's somewhat 
     comparable concerns for state authority and the presence here 
     of a federal statute (signed by the President) specifically 
     authorizing this lawsuit. Compare ante, at 4-5 (Souter, J., 
     concurring in judgment). And in light of the immediacy of the 
     harm, I do not think that the possibility of a later 
     challenge by a private plaintiff, see ante, at 5-6 (Souter, 
     J., concurring in judgment), could be constitutionally 
     determinative. Finally, I do not believe that the majority's 
     historical examples primarily involving the Executive Branch 
     and involving lawsuits that were not brought, ante, at 14-17, 
     are legally determinative. See ante, at 4, n. 3 (Stevens, J., 
     dissenting).
       In sum, I do not believe that the Court can find this case 
     nonjusticiable without overruling Coleman. Since it does not 
     do so, I need not decide whether the systematic nature, 
     seriousness, and immediacy of the harm would make this 
     dispute constitutionally justiciable even in Coleman's 
     absence. Rather, I can and would find this case justiciable 
     on Coleman's authority. I add that because the majority has 
     decided that this dispute is not [*58] now justiciable and 
     has expressed no view on the merits of the appeal, I shall 
     not discuss the merits either, but reserve them for future 
     argument.


                                 notes

     \1\ Three of the Senators--Robert Byrd, Carl Levin, and 
     Daniel Patrick Moynihan--are still Senators. The fourth--Mark 
     Hatfield--retired at the end of the 104th Congress. The two 
     Congressmen--David Skaggs and Henry Waxman--remain 
     Congressmen.
     \2\ The House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (made up of the 
     Speaker, the Majority Leader, the Minority Leader, and the 
     two Whips) and the Senate filed a joint brief as amici curiae 
     urging that the District Court be reversed on the merits. 
     Their brief states that they express no position as to 
     appellees' standing.
     \3\ It is settled that Congress cannot erase Article III's 
     standing requirements by statutorily granting the right to 
     sue to a plaintiff who would not otherwise have standing. 
     Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 100 
     (1979). We acknowledge, though, that Congress' decision to 
     grant a particular plaintiff the right to challenge an act's 
     constitutionality (as here, see Sec. 692(a)(1), supra, at 3) 
     eliminates any prudential standing limitations and 
     significantly lessens the risk of unwanted conflict with the 
     Legislative Branch when that plaintiff brings suit. See, 
     e.g., Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. __ (1997) (slip op., at 9-
     10).
     \4\ Over strong dissent, the Court of Appeals for the 
     District of Columbia Circuit has held that Members of 
     Congress may have standing when (as here) they assert injury 
     to their institutional power as legislators. See, e.g., 
     Kennedy v. Sampson, 511 F. 2d 430, 435-436 (CADC 1974); Moore 
     v. United States House of Representatives, 733 F. 2d 946, 951 
     (CADC 1984); id., at 956 (Scalia, J., concurring in result); 
     Barnes v. Kline, 759 F. 2d 2l, 28-29 (CADC 1985); id., at 41 
     (Bork, J., dissenting). But see Holtzman v. Schlesinger, 484 
     F. 2d 1307, 1315 (CA2 1973) (Member of Congress has no 
     standing to challenge constitutionality of American military 
     operations in Vietnam war); Harrington v. Schlesinger, 528 F. 
     2d 455, 459 (CA4 1975) (same).
     \5\ Chief Justice Hughes wrote an opinion styled ``the 
     opinion of the Court.'' Coleman, 307 U.S., at 435. Four 
     Justices concurred in the judgment, partially on the ground 
     that the legislators lacked standing. See id., at 456-457 
     (opinion of Black, J., joined by Roberts, Frankfurter, and 
     Douglas, JJ.); id., at 460 (opinion of Frankfurter, J., 
     joined by Roberts, Black, and Douglas, JJ.). Two justices 
     dissented on the merits. See id., at 470 (opinion of Butler, 
     J., joined by McReynolds, J.). Thus, even though there were 
     only two justices who joined Chief Justice Hughes's opinion 
     on the merits, it is apparent that the two dissenting 
     Justices joined his opinion as to the standing discussion. 
     Otherwise, Justice Frankfurter's opinion denying standing 
     would have been the controlling opinion.
     \6\ See also Bender v. Williamsport Area School Dist., 475 
     U.S. 534, 544-545, n. 7 (1986) (in dicta, suggesting 
     hypothetically that if state law authorized a school board to 
     take action only by unanimous consent, if a school board 
     member voted against a particular action, and if the board 
     nonetheless took the action, the board member ``might claim 
     that he was legally entitled to protect `the effectiveness of 
     [his] vote,' Coleman[, 307 U.S., at 438,] . . .but in that 
     event [he] would have to allege that his vote was diluted or 
     rendered nugatory under state law'').
     \7\ Just as appellees cannot show that their vote was denied 
     or nullified as in Coleman (in the sense that a bill they 
     voted for would have become law if their vote had not been 
     stripped of its validity), so are they unable to show that 
     their vote was denied or nullified in a discriminatory manner 
     (in the sense that their vote was denied its full validity in 
     relation to the votes of their colleagues). Thus, the various 
     hypotheticals offered by appellees in their briefs and 
     discussed during oral argument have no applicability to this 
     case. See Reply Brief for Appellees 6 (positing hypothetical 
     law in which ``first-term Members were not allowed to vote on 
     appropriations bills,'' or in which ``every Member was 
     disqualified on grounds of partiality from voting on major 
     federal projects in his or her own district''); Tr. of Oral 
     Arg. 17 (``Question: But [Congress] might have passed a 
     statute that said the Senator from Iowa on hog-farming 
     matters should have only half-a-vote. Would they have 
     standing to challenge that?'').
     \8\ Since we hold that Coleman may be distinguished from the 
     instant case on this ground, we need not decide whether 
     Coleman may also be distinguished in other ways. For 
     instance, appellants have argued that Coleman has no 
     applicability to a similar suit brought in federal court, 
     since that decision depended on the fact that the Kansas 
     Supreme Court ``treated'' the senators' interest in their 
     votes ``as a basis for entertaining and deciding the federal 
     questions.'' 307 U.S., at 446. They have also argued that 
     Coleman has no applicability to a similar suit brought by 
     federal legislators, since the separation-of-powers concerns 
     present in such a suit were not present in Coleman, and since 
     any federalism concerns were eliminated by the Kansas Supreme 
     Court's decision to take jurisdiction over the case.
     \9\ Although Congress could reinstate Project X through a 
     ``disapproval bill,'' it would assumedly take two-thirds of 
     both Houses to do so, since the President could be expected 
     to veto the Project X ``disapproval bill.'' But see Robinson, 
     Public Choice Speculations on the Item Veto, 74 Va. L. Rev. 
     403, 411-412 (1988) (political costs that President would 
     suffer in important congressional districts might limit use 
     of line-item veto).
     \10\ Cf. Bender, 475 U.S., at 544 (``Generally speaking, 
     members of collegial bodies do not have standing to perfect 
     an appeal the body itself has declined to take''); United 
     States v. Ballin, 144 U.S. 1, 7 (1892) (``The two houses of 
     Congress are legislative bodies representing larger 
     constituencies. Power is not vested in any one individual, 
     but in the aggregate of the members who compose the body, and 
     its action is not the action of any separate member or number 
     of members, but the action of the body as a whole'').
     \11\ In addition, it is far from clear that this injury is 
     ``fairly traceable'' to appellants, as our precedents 
     require, since the alleged cause of appellees's injury is not 
     appellants' exercise of legislative power but the actions of 
     their own colleagues in Congress in passing the Act. Cf. 
     Holtzman v. Schlesinger, 484 F. 2d 1307, 1315 (CA2 1973) 
     (``Representative Holtzman . . . has not been denied any 
     right to vote on [the war in Cambodia] by any action of the 
     defendants [Executive Branch officials]. . . . The fact that 
     her vote was ineffective was due to the contrary votes of her 
     colleagues and not the defendants herein'').
     \12\ While Congress may, by authorizing suit for particular 
     parties, remove any prudential standing barriers, as it has 
     in this case, see, ante, at 8, n. 3, it may not reduce the 
     Article III minimums.
     \13\ As appellants note, it is also possible that the 
     impairment of certain official powers may support standing 
     for Congress, or one House thereof, to seek the aid of the 
     Federal Judiciary. See Brief for United States 26, n. 14 
     (citing McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135, 174 (1927)). And, 
     as appellants concede, see Brief for United States 20-21, 25-
     28, an injury to official authority may support standing for 
     a government itself or its duly authorized agents, see, e.g., 
     Diamond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, 62 (1986) (noting that ``a 
     State has standing to defend the constitutionality of its 
     statute'' in federal court); ICC V. Oregon-Washington R. & 
     Nav. Co., 288 U.S. 14, 25-27 (1933) (explaining that a 
     federal agency had standing to appeal, because an official or 
     an agency could be designated to defend the interests of the 
     Federal Government in federal court); Coleman v. Miller, 307 
     U.S. 433, 441-445 (1939) (discussing cases).
     \14\ As the Court explains, Coleman may well be 
     distinguishable on the further ground that it involved a suit 
     by state legislators that did not implicate either the 
     separation-of-powers concerns raised in this case or 
     corresponding federalism concerns (since the Kansas Supreme 
     Court had exercised jurisdiction to decide a federal issue). 
     See ante, at 13, n. 8.

[[Page H4668]]

     \15\ The full text of the relevant paragraph of Sec. 7 
     provides:
     ``Every Bill which shall have passed the House of 
     Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a 
     law, be presented to the President of the United States: If 
     he approves he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, 
     with his Objections to that House in which it shall have 
     originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their 
     Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such 
     Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass 
     the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to 
     the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, 
     and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become 
     a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall 
     be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons 
     voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the 
     Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be 
     returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) 
     after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be 
     a Law, in Like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the 
     Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which 
     Case it shall not be a Law.'' U.S. Const., Art. I, Sec. 7.
     \16\ The respondents' assertion of their right to vote on 
     legislation is not simply generalized interest in the proper 
     administration of government, cf. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 
     737, 754 (1984), and the legislators' personal interest in 
     the ability to exercise their constitutionally ensured power 
     to vote on laws is certainly distinct from the interest that 
     an individual citizen challenging the Act might assert.
     \17\ The majority's reference to the absence of any similar 
     suit in earlier disputes between Congress and the President, 
     see ante, at 14-17, does not strike me as particularly 
     relevant. First, the fact that others did not choose to bring 
     suit does not necessarily mean the Constitution would have 
     precluded them from doing so. Second, because Congress did 
     not authorize declaratory judgment actions until the Federal 
     Declaratory Judgment Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 955, the fact that 
     President Johnson did not bring such an action in 1868 is not 
     entirely surprising.

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