Article Three of the United States Constitution establishes the judicial branch of the U.S. federal government. Under Article Three, the judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as lower courts created by Congress. Article Three empowers the courts to handle cases or controversies arising under federal law, as well as other enumerated areas. Article Three also defines treason.
In law, standing or locus standi is a condition that a party seeking a legal remedy must show they have, by demonstrating to the court, sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case. A party has standing in the following situations:
In United States law, ripeness refers to the readiness of a case for litigation; "a claim is not ripe for adjudication if it rests upon contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all." For example, if a law of ambiguous quality has been enacted but never applied, a case challenging that law lacks the ripeness necessary for a decision.
In U.S. constitutional law, when a law infringes upon a fundamental constitutional right, the court may apply the strict scrutiny standard. Strict scrutiny holds the challenged law as presumptively invalid unless the government can demonstrate that the law or regulation is necessary to achieve a "compelling state interest". The government must also demonstrate that the law is "narrowly tailored" to achieve that compelling purpose, and that it uses the "least restrictive means" to achieve that purpose. Failure to meet this standard will result in striking the law as unconstitutional.
Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that set forth the legal test for when U.S. federal courts must defer to a government agency's interpretation of a law or statute. The decision articulated a doctrine known as "Chevron deference". Chevron deference consists of a two-part test that is deferential to government agencies: first, whether Congress has spoken directly to the precise issue at question, and second, "whether the agency's answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute."
Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748 (1976), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a state could not limit pharmacists’ right to provide information about prescription drug prices. This was an important case in determining the application of the First Amendment to commercial speech.
Judicial immunity is a form of sovereign immunity, which protects judges and others employed by the judiciary from liability resulting from their judicial actions. It is intended to ensure that judges can make decisions free from improper influence exercised on them, contributing to the impartiality of the judiciary and the rule of law. In modern times, the main purpose of "judicial immunity [is to shield] judges from the suits of ordinary people", primarily litigants who may be dissatisfied with the outcome of a case decided by the judge.
In the United States, judicial review is the legal power of a court to determine if a statute, treaty, or administrative regulation contradicts or violates the provisions of existing law, a State Constitution, or ultimately the United States Constitution. While the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly define the power of judicial review, the authority for judicial review in the United States has been inferred from the structure, provisions, and history of the Constitution.
Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589 (1977), was a case brought before the Supreme Court of the United States. The case involved a New York state prescription monitoring law requiring reporting and storing of information concerning all Schedule II drug prescriptions. Physicians were required to report the name of the prescribing physician; the dispensing pharmacy; the drug and dosage; and the patient's name, address, and age. This information was then stored by the New York Department of State.
Toilet Goods Association, Inc. v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 158 (1967), was a case heard before the United States Supreme Court. It held that judicial review of a regulation's validity was inappropriate because the controversy was not ripe for adjudication. Since it was not clear whether or not an inspection would be ordered and the reasons had not been given by the Commissioner to justify his order, no primary conduct was affected and so no irremediable adverse consequences flowed from requiring a later challenge to the regulation by a manufacturer, who refused to allow inspection.
Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821 (1985), is a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which held that a federal agency's decision to not take an enforcement action is presumptively unreviewable by the courts under section 701(a)(2) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The case arose out of a petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by a group of death row inmates, who sought to have the agency act against states' plans to execute them by lethal injection. The FDA declined to interfere, a decision the inmates appealed unsuccessfully to the District Court for the District of Columbia. On further review, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the FDA's action was reviewable and that its denial was "arbitrary and capricious". The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the appeals court and declared in an 8–1 decision that agency nonenforcement decisions were presumptively unreviewable.
Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414 (1944), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court which upheld congressional power to fetter judicial review and to delegate broad and flexible law-making power to an administrative agency in this constitutional challenge to the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942. The wartime anti-inflation measure, intended to expedite price control enforcement, conferred on the federal district courts jurisdiction over violations of Office of Price Administration (OPA) regulations made under the act. But judicial power to consider the constitutionality of such regulations was excepted. Congress specified that challenges to their validity be initially reviewed under stringent time limitations by the OPA and on appeal exclusively by a special Article III tribunal in the District of Columbia—the Emergency Court of Appeals—and thereafter by the Supreme Court.
Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories, 26 Cal. 3d 588 (1980), was a landmark products liability decision of the Supreme Court of California which pioneered the doctrine of market share liability.
Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172 (1985), is a U.S. Supreme Court case that limited access to federal court for plaintiffs alleging uncompensated takings of private property under the Fifth Amendment. In June 2019, this case was overruled in part by the Court's decision in Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania.
Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555 (2009), is a United States Supreme Court case holding that Federal regulatory approval of a medication does not shield the manufacturer from liability under state law.
Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288 (1936), was a United States Supreme Court case that provided the first elaboration of the doctrine of "Constitutional avoidance".
Constitutional avoidance is a legal doctrine of judicial review in United States constitutional law that dictates that United States federal courts should refuse to rule on a constitutional issue if the case can be resolved without involving constitutionality. In Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority (1936), the Supreme Court of the United States established a seven-rule test for the justiciability of controversies presenting constitutional questions:
- Collusive lawsuit rule: The Court will not [rule] upon the constitutionality of legislation in a friendly, nonadversary, proceeding, declining because to decide such questions "is legitimate only in the last resort, and as a necessity in the determination of real, earnest and vital controversy between individuals. It never was the thought that, by means of a friendly suit, a party beaten in the legislature could transfer to the courts an inquiry as to the constitutionality of the legislative act."
- Ripeness: The Court will not "anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it."
- Minimalism: The Court will not "formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied."
- Last resort rule: The Court will not [rule] upon a constitutional question, although properly presented by the record, if there is also present some other ground upon which the case may be disposed of. ... [I]f a case can be decided on either of two grounds, one involving a constitutional question, the other a question of statutory construction or general law, the Court will decide only the latter.
- Standing; Mootness: The Court will not [rule] upon the validity of a statute upon complaint of one who fails to show that he is injured by its operation.
- Constitutional estoppel: The Court will not [rule] upon the constitutionality of a statute at the instance of one who has availed himself of its benefits.
- Constitutional avoidance canon: "When the validity of an act of the Congress is drawn in question, and even if a serious doubt of constitutionality is raised, it is a cardinal principle that this Court will first ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the question may be avoided."
Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U.S. 552 (2011), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a Vermont statute that restricted the sale, disclosure, and use of records that revealed the prescribing practices of individual doctors violated the First Amendment.
The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States establishes that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority, constitute the "supreme Law of the Land", and thus take priority over any conflicting state laws. It provides that state courts are bound by, and state constitutions subordinate to, the supreme law. However, federal statutes and treaties must be within the parameters of the Constitution; that is, they must be pursuant to the federal government's enumerated powers, and not violate other constitutional limits on federal power, such as the Bill of Rights—of particular interest is the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that the federal government has only those powers that are delegated to it by the Constitution. It is the responsibility of the United States Supreme Court in that case to exercise the power of judicial review: the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution.
Lambert v. Yellowley, 272 U.S. 581 (1926), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that reaffirmed the National Prohibition Act's limitation on the dispensation of alcoholic medicines. The five-to-four decision, written by Justice Louis D. Brandeis, affirmed the dismissal of a suit in which New York City physician Samuel Lambert sought to prevent Edward Yellowley, the acting federal prohibition director, from enforcing the Prohibition Act so as to preclude him from prescribing alcoholic medicines. The decision affirmed the police powers of the individual states, as well as the power of the Necessary and Proper Clause of the United States Constitution, which was cited in upholding the Prohibition Act's limitations as a necessary and proper implementation of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
