400
Opinion of Souter, J.
Second, Bounds recognized a right of access for those who seek adjudication, not just for sure winners or likely winners or possible winners. See Bounds, 430 U. S., at 824, 825, 828 (describing the constitutional right of access without limiting the right to prisoners with meritorious claims); see also ante, at 354 (describing the right of access even before Bounds as covering "a grievance that the inmate wished to present . . ." (citations omitted)). Finally, insistence on a "nonfrivolous claim" rather than a "concrete grievance" as a standing requirement will do no more than guarantee a lot of preliminary litigation over nothing. There is no prison system so blessed as to lack prisoners with nonfrivolous complaints. They will always turn up, or be turned up, and one way or the other the Bounds litigation will occur.
That last point may be, as the Court says, the answer to any suggestion that there need be no underlying claim requirement for a Bounds claim of complete and systemic denial of all means of court access. But in view of the Courts of Appeals that have seen the issue otherwise,2 I would cer-2 See, e. g., Jenkins v. Lane, 977 F. 2d 266, 268-269 (CA7 1992) (waiving the requirement that a prisoner prove prejudice "where the prisoner alleges a direct, substantial and continuous, rather than a 'minor and indirect,' limit on legal materials" on the ground that "a prisoner without any access to materials cannot determine the pleading requirements of his case, including the necessity of pleading prejudice"); cf. Strickler v. Waters, 989 F. 2d 1375, 1385, n. 16 (CA4 1993) (acknowledging the possibility that injury may be presumed in some situations, e. g., total denial of access to a library), cert. denied, 510 U. S. 949 (1993); Sowell v. Vose, 941 F. 2d 32, 35 (CA1 1991) (acknowledging that a prisoner may not need to prove prejudice when he alleges "[a]n absolute deprivation of access to all legal materials" (emphases in original)). Dispensing with any underlying claim requirement in such instances would be consistent with the rule of equity dealing with threatened injury. See, e. g., Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U. S. 825, 845 (1994) (holding that a prisoner need not suffer physical injury before obtaining relief because " '[o]ne does not have to await the consummation of threatened injury to obtain preventive relief' " (quoting Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U. S. 553, 593 (1923))); Helling v. McKinney, 509 U. S. 25, 33 (1993) (observing that prisoners may obtain relief
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