In its 2014 decision in Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., the Supreme Court began the process of “bringing discipline” to the various elements of prudential standing and suggested that the doctrine as a whole is inconsistent with the Court’s place in the federal separation of powers. Last year, the litany of opinions delivered by a divided Court in June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo manifested ongoing confusion about the fate of prohibitions on third-party standing and generalized grievances—two of the traditional prongs of prudential standing. This Note documents the heterogeneous approaches to prudential standing taken in the lower federal courts since Lexmark, and argues that this confusion is partly attributable to the Court’s misleading analysis of the role of judge-made gatekeeping doctrines in our federal system. Judge-made gatekeeping rules are ubiquitous in the federal judiciary, and courts have adopted a wide-range of approaches in the wake of Lexmark’s failure to identify a principle that could cabin its disfavor to only prudential standing rules. This Note argues that courts should instead acknowledge that judge-made gatekeeping rules like prudential standing’s third-party standing rule do a better job than alternatives in upholding the separation of powers values that are at the heart of the Supreme Court’s jurisdictional jurisprudence.
LawReview
