A Century's Evolution Of Capacity To Sue In American Judicial Review

The American judicial review system, which has become the solid foundation of modern constitutional government, can be dated back to a long time ago. A study on the background, content, experiences and lessons of a century'evolution of capacity to sue in American judicial review, and a research on a century's controversy between judicial activism and judicial restraint will have a direct and positive reference for the status quo and development of capacity to sue in China's administrative litigation.Greatly influenced by judges'opinions on various cases and ongoing development of legal concepts and rules, the capacity to sue in American judicial review has undergone a tortuous and gradual process. During this process, presidents and political interest parties had a direct bearing on the judicial decision.From 1900 to 1969, the basic logic of traditional capacity to sue was still in application."Interest in law"still acted as an important principle when judges decided on capacity to sue. However, due to artificial manipulation, restrictions on capacity to sue had gone far away from original design. For instance, as the construction on legal object and other essential elements became less restraint in 1960s,"legal interest"standard, together with the connotation of"interest", was expanded in a fast way.After 1970, a transition from coexistence of"double harm standard"and"single factual harm standard"to"single factual damage standard"could be observed in the development of capacity to sue. In this process, the early stage of Burg court could be considered as a continuation of Warren court's liberalism. As a result, environmentalists, consumers and interest groups etc. all gained broad litigation interest. Since the middle 1970s, the Burg court tended to be rather conservative by imposing more restrictions on capacity to sue, among which a restriction on the establishment of the causality between action and damage had become a major obstacle in deciding litigant's capacity to sue.It was till the period of Rehnquist court that the Supreme Court lost its enthusiasm in careful argumentation of the exercise of judicial review, mainly because the justices nominated by Presidents Reagan and Bush had greatly changed the Supreme Court's ideology, and a heavy case burden put on the Supreme Court. As for the issue of capacity to sue, it gradually moved toward a restriction on the individual rights. At the same time the scope of cases that could be accepted and heard had witnessed an obvious shrinkage. For example, during the Warren Court era, the Supreme Court heard and discussed about 170 cases in each session compared with less than 100 cases in the mid-1990s.The evolution of capacity to sue in American judicial review at each phase had measured various essential elements which would have a direct influence on the construction of capacity to sue. That is to balance justice and administration, administrative benefit and the public interest, formal justice and administrative efficiency. Based on China's present situation, we should weigh different interests so as to study the inherent rule and demand of China's evolution of capacity to sue. At present, the best choice for us is to expand the interest scope of individual litigation, taking interest balance as the basis, putting individual interest at the core and radiating public interest at the same time. Those law-regulated"individual direct and indirect material interest"and"individual spiritual interest"will become a competent litigation interest, while the claim of public interest is tenable only when individual litigation interest and harm exist.