408
Stevens, J., dissenting
which should be sufficient to satisfy any constitutional concerns.4 Yet the Court spends 10 pages disagreeing.
Even if we had reason to delve into standing requirements in this case, the Court's view of those requirements is excessively strict. I think it perfectly clear that the prisoners had standing, even absent the specific examples of failed complaints. There is a constitutional right to effective access, and if a prisoner alleges that he personally has been denied that right, he has standing to sue.5 One of our first cases to address directly the right of access to the courts illustrates this principle particularly well. In Ex parte Hull, we reviewed the constitutionality of a state prison's rule that impeded an inmate's access to the courts. The rule authorized corrections officers to intercept mail addressed to a court and refer it to the legal investigator for the parole board to determine whether there was sufficient merit in the claim to justify its submission to a court. Meritless claims were simply not delivered. Petitioner Hull succeeded in smuggling papers to his father, who in turn delivered them to this Court. Although we held that the smuggled petition had insufficient merit even to require an answer from the
4 If named class plaintiffs have standing, the standing of the class members is satisfied by the requirements for class certification. 1 H. Newberg & A. Conte, Newberg on Class Actions § 2.01, p. 2-3 (3d ed. 1992); ante, at 395-396 (Souter, J., concurring in part, dissenting in part, and concurring in judgment). Because the State did not challenge that certification, it is rather late in the game to now give it the advantage of a conclusion that the class was improper (even if it is—although illiterate inmates, it seems to me, are not positioned much differently with respect to English language legal materials than are non-English speaking prisoners).
5 Although a prisoner would lose on the merits if he alleged that the deprivation of that right occurred because the State, for example, did not provide him with access to on-line computer databases, he would also certainly have "standing" to make his claim. The Court's argument to the contrary with respect to most of the prisoners in this case, it seems to me, is not as much an explication of the principles of standing, but the creation of a new rule requiring prisoners making Bounds claims to demonstrate prejudice flowing from the lack of access.
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