Cite as: 523 U. S. 83 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
supra, at 560. First and foremost, there must be alleged (and ultimately proved) an "injury in fact"—a harm suffered by the plaintiff that is "concrete" and "actual or imminent, not 'conjectural' or 'hypothetical.' " Whitmore v. Arkansas, supra, at 149, 155 (quoting Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 101-102 (1983)). Second, there must be causation—a fairly traceable connection between the plaintiff's injury and the complained-of conduct of the defendant. Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 41-42 (1976). And third, there must be redressability—a likelihood that the requested relief will redress the alleged injury. Id., at 45-46; see also Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 505 (1975). This triad of injury in fact, causation, and redressability 5 constitutes the core of Article III's case-or-5 Contrary to Justice Stevens' belief that redressability "is a judicial creation of the past 25 years," post, at 124, the concept has been ingrained in our jurisprudence from the beginning. Although we have packaged the requirements of constitutional "case" or "controversy" somewhat differently in the past 25 years—an era rich in three-part tests—the point has always been the same: whether a plaintiff "personally would benefit in a tangible way from the court's intervention." Warth, 422 U. S., at 508. For example, in Marye v. Parsons, 114 U. S. 325, 328-329 (1885), we held that a bill in equity should have been dismissed because it was a clear case of "damnum absque injuriâ." Although the complainant alleged a breach of contract by the State, the complainant "asks no relief as to that, for there is no remedy by suit to compel the State to pay its debts. . . . The bill as framed, therefore, calls for a declaration of an abstract character." Because courts do not "si[t] to determine questions of law in thesi," we remanded with directions to dismiss the bill. Id., at 328-330.
Also contrary to Justice Stevens' unprecedented suggestion, post, at 125, redressability—like the other prongs of the standing inquiry—does not depend on the defendant's status as a governmental entity. There is no conceivable reason why it should. If it is true, as Justice Stevens claims, that all of the cases in which the Court has denied standing because of a lack of redressability happened to involve government action or inaction, that would be unsurprising. Suits that promise no concrete benefit to the plaintiff, and that are brought to have us "determine questions of law in thesi," Marye, supra, at 330, are most often inspired by the psychological smart of perceived official injustice, or by the government-policy
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