Cite as: 518 U. S. 343 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
program would remain in place at least until some inmate could demonstrate that a nonfrivolous 3 legal claim had been frustrated or was being impeded.4
3 Justice Souter believes that Bounds v. Smith, 430 U. S. 817 (1977), guarantees prison inmates the right to present frivolous claims—the determination of which suffices to confer standing, he says, because it assumes that the dispute " 'will be presented in an adversary context and in a form historically viewed as capable of judicial resolution,' " post, at 398- 399, quoting Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 101 (1968). This would perhaps have seemed like good law at the time of Flast, but our later opinions have made it explicitly clear that Flast erred in assuming that assurance of "serious and adversarial treatment" was the only value protected by standing. See, e. g., United States v. Richardson, 418 U. S. 166, 176-180 (1974); Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208, 220-223 (1974). Flast failed to recognize that this doctrine has a separation-of-powers component, which keeps courts within certain traditional bounds vis-à-vis the other branches, concrete adverseness or not. That is where the "actual injury" requirement comes from. Not everyone who can point to some "concrete" act and is "adverse" can call in the courts to examine the propriety of executive action, but only someone who has been actually injured. Depriving someone of an arguable (though not yet established) claim inflicts actual injury because it deprives him of something of value—arguable claims are settled, bought, and sold. Depriving someone of a frivolous claim, on the other hand, deprives him of nothing at all, except perhaps the punishment of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 sanctions.
4 Justice Souter suggests that he would waive this actual-injury requirement in cases "involving substantial, systemic deprivation of access to court"—that is, in cases involving " 'a direct, substantial and continuous . . . limit on legal materials,' " "total denial of access to a library," or " '[a]n absolute deprivation of access to all legal materials,' " post, at 401, and 400, n. 2. That view rests upon the expansive understanding of Bounds that we have repudiated. Unless prisoners have a freestanding right to libraries, a showing of the sort Justice Souter describes would establish no relevant injury in fact, i. e., injury-in-fact caused by the violation of legal right. See Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 751 (1984). Denial of access to the courts could not possibly cause the harm of inadequate libraries, but only the harm of lost, rejected, or impeded legal claims.
Of course, Justice Souter's proposed exception is unlikely to be of much real-world significance in any event. Where the situation is so extreme as to constitute "an absolute deprivation of access to all legal
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