Document Type
Response or Comment
Publication Date
2026
Publication
Boston University Law Review
Volume
106
Abbreviation
B.U. L. Rev.
First Page
977
Abstract
This response argues that the Supreme Court’s familiar three-part test for Article III standing fails to capture an important principle underlying the Court’s actual decisions: that the cause of a plaintiff’s injury matters, not merely the existence, traceability, and redressability of that injury. Responding to Ernest A. Young’s proposal, in Uncertain Enforcement and Standing to Sue, 106 B.U. L. Rev. 915 (2026), to broaden standing for pre-enforcement challenges by treating behavioral changes caused by an allegedly unconstitutional law as cognizable injuries, this response agrees that Young’s approach satisfies standing doctrine as formally articulated but doubts that the Supreme Court would accept it. Drawing on cases involving stigmatic and emotional injuries, the response contends that seemingly identical injuries may support standing or fail to do so depending on their source, particularly where recognizing standing would give federal courts expansive oversight of the political branches. The response therefore proposes a “fourth prong” of standing doctrine focused on the wrongdoing that causes the injury and concludes that expanding pre-enforcement standing will likely require a more fundamental reworking of standing principles rather than creative application of the existing three-part test.