102
Opinion of the Court
risdiction to do so is, by very definition, for a court to act ultra vires.
IV
Having reached the end of what seems like a long front walk, we finally arrive at the threshold jurisdictional question: whether respondent, the plaintiff below, has standing to sue. Article III, § 2, of the Constitution extends the "judicial Power" of the United States only to "Cases" and "Controversies." We have always taken this to mean cases and controversies of the sort traditionally amenable to, and resolved by, the judicial process. Muskrat v. United States, supra, at 356-357. Such a meaning is fairly implied by the text, since otherwise the purported restriction upon the judicial power would scarcely be a restriction at all. Every criminal investigation conducted by the Executive is a "case," and every policy issue resolved by congressional legislation involves a "controversy." These are not, however, the sort of cases and controversies that Article III, § 2, refers to, since "the Constitution's central mechanism of separation of powers depends largely upon common understanding of what activities are appropriate to legislatures, to executives, and to courts." Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 559-560 (1992). Standing to sue is part of the common understanding of what it takes to make a justiciable case. Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149, 155 (1990).4
The "irreducible constitutional minimum of standing" contains three requirements. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife,
4 Our opinion is not motivated, as Justice Stevens suggests, by the more specific separation-of-powers concern that this citizen's suit "somehow interferes with the Executive's power to 'take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,' Art. II, § 3," post, at 129. The courts must stay within their constitutionally prescribed sphere of action, whether or not exceeding that sphere will harm one of the other two branches. This case calls for nothing more than a straightforward application of our standing jurisprudence, which, though it may sometimes have an impact on Presidential powers, derives from Article III and not Article II.
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