Cite as: 513 U. S. 527 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
containers after they had been shipped from Puerto Rico to a warehouse in Denver. 373 U. S., at 210. See also Victory Carriers, supra, at 210-211.
The city responds by saying that, as a practical matter, the use of proximate cause as a limiting jurisdictional principle would undesirably force an admiralty court to investigate the merits of the dispute at the outset of a case when it determined jurisdiction.3 The argument, of course, assumes that the truth of jurisdictional allegations must always be determined with finality at the threshold of litigation, but that assumption is erroneous. Normal practice permits a party to establish jurisdiction at the outset of a case by means of a nonfrivolous assertion of jurisdictional elements, see, e. g., Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, 506 U. S. 263, 285 (1993); Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678, 682-683 (1946), and any litigation of a contested subject-matter jurisdictional fact issue occurs in comparatively summary proce-3 The city in part bases its assertion about the practical effects of a proximate cause rule on a reading of Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 54-56 (1932), which, according to the city, held that the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act could not constitutionally apply to an employee absent a finding that he was actually injured on navigable waters. Thus, the city argues, a construction of the Extension Act that would permit the assertion of federal jurisdiction over land-based injuries absent a finding, on the merits, of actual causation "would raise serious constitutional questions." See City Brief 41-42.
Even if the city's interpretation of Crowell is correct, it is not dispositive here. Constitutional difficulties need not arise when a court defers final determination of facts upon which jurisdiction depends until after the first jurisdictional skirmish. In the standing context, for example, we have held that "the Constitution does not require that the plaintiff offer . . . proof [of the facts showing that the plaintiff sustained actual injury] as a threshold matter in order to invoke the District Court's jurisdiction." Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U. S. 49, 66 (1987). We see no reason why a different rule should apply here, and find ourselves in the company of the city's own amici. See Brief for National Conference of State Legislatures et al. as Amici Curiae 18- 19, n. 9 (suggesting that "a court need not decide the merits of causation issues to resolve a jurisdictional challenge").
537
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