Cite as: 504 U. S. 555 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
"It is an established principle," we said, "that to entitle a private individual to invoke the judicial power to determine the validity of executive or legislative action he must show that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining a direct injury as the result of that action and it is not sufficient that he has merely a general interest common to all members of the public." 302 U. S., at 634. See also Doremus v. Board of Ed. of Hawthorne, 342 U. S. 429, 433- 434 (1952) (dismissing taxpayer action on the basis of Mellon).
More recent cases are to the same effect. In United States v. Richardson, 418 U. S. 166 (1974), we dismissed for lack of standing a taxpayer suit challenging the Government's failure to disclose the expenditures of the Central Intelligence Agency, in alleged violation of the constitutional requirement, Art. I, § 9, cl. 7, that "a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." We held that such a suit rested upon an impermissible "generalized grievance," and was inconsistent with "the framework of Article III" because "the impact on [plaintiff] is plainly undifferentiated and 'common to all members of the public.' " Richardson, supra, at 171, 176-177. And in Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208 (1974), we dismissed for the same reasons a citizen-taxpayer suit contending that it was a violation of the Incompatibility Clause, Art. I, § 6, cl. 2, for Members of Congress to hold commissions in the military Reserves. We said that the challenged action, "standing alone, would adversely affect only the generalized interest of all citizens in constitutional governance . . . . We reaffirm Lévitt in holding that standing to sue may not be predicated upon an interest of th[is] kind . . . ." Schlesinger, supra, at 217, 220. Since Schlesinger we have on two occasions held that an injury amounting only to the alleged violation of a right to have the Government act in accordance with law was not judicially cognizable because
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