832
Souter, J., concurring in judgment
harm to their interest in having government abide by the Constitution, which would be shared to the same extent by the public at large and thus provide no basis for suit, see, e. g., Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 482- 483 (1982); Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208, 217, 220 (1974); Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U. S. 126, 129-130 (1922). Instead, appellees allege that the Act deprives them of an element of their legislative power; as a factual matter they have a more direct and tangible interest in the preservation of that power than the general citizenry has. Cf. Coleman, supra, at 438 (concluding that state legislators had a "plain" and "direct" interest in the effectiveness of their votes); see also Hendrick v. Walters, 865 P. 2d 1232, 1236-1238 (Okla. 1993) (concluding that a legislator had a personal interest in a suit to determine whether the Governor had lawfully assumed office due to substantial interaction between the Governor and legislature); Colorado General Assembly v. Lamm, 704 P. 2d 1371, 1376-1378 (Colo. 1985) (concluding that the legislature had suffered an injury in fact as a result of the Governor's exercise of his line item veto power). On the other hand, the alleged, continuing deprivation of federal legislative power is not as specific or limited as the nullification of the decisive votes of a group of legislators in connection with a specific item of legislative consideration in Coleman, being instead shared by all the members of the official class who could suffer that injury, the Members of Congress.3
Because it is fairly debatable whether appellees' injury is sufficiently personal and concrete to give them standing, it behooves us to resolve the question under more general
3 As the Court explains, Coleman may well be distinguishable on the further ground that it involved a suit by state legislators that did not implicate either the separation-of-powers concerns raised in this case or corresponding federalism concerns (since the Kansas Supreme Court had exercised jurisdiction to decide a federal issue). See ante, at 824-825, n. 8.
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