Cite as: 523 U. S. 83 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
termining that the plaintiff had Article III standing; there was no question of injury in fact or effectiveness of the requested remedy. Rather, National Railroad Passenger Corp. determined whether a statutory cause of action existed before determining whether (if so) the plaintiff came within the "zone of interests" for which the cause of action was available. 414 U. S., at 465, n. 13. The latter question is an issue of statutory standing. It has nothing to do with whether there is case or controversy under Article III. 2
2 Justice Stevens thinks it illogical that a merits question can be given priority over a statutory standing question (National Railroad Passenger Corp.) and a statutory standing question can be given priority over an Article III question (the cases discussed post, at 115-117), but a merits question cannot be given priority over an Article III question. See post, at 120, n. 12. It seems to us no more illogical than many other "broken circles" that appear in life and the law: that Executive agreements may displace state law, for example, see United States v. Belmont, 301 U. S. 324, 330-331 (1937), and that unilateral Presidential action (renunciation) may displace Executive agreements, does not produce the "logical" conclusion that unilateral Presidential action may displace state law. The reasons for allowing merits questions to be decided before statutory standing questions do not support allowing merits questions to be decided before Article III questions. As National Railroad Passenger Corp. points out, the merits inquiry and the statutory standing inquiry often "overlap," 414 U. S., at 456. The question whether this plaintiff has a cause of action under the statute, and the question whether any plaintiff has a cause of action under the statute are closely connected—indeed, depending upon the asserted basis for lack of statutory standing, they are sometimes identical, so that it would be exceedingly artificial to draw a distinction between the two. The same cannot be said of the Article III requirement of remediable injury in fact, which (except with regard to entirely frivolous claims) has nothing to do with the text of the statute relied upon. Moreover, deciding whether any cause of action exists under a particular statute, rather than whether the particular plaintiff can sue, does not take the court into vast, uncharted realms of judicial opinion giving; whereas the proposition that the court can reach a merits question when there is no Article III jurisdiction opens the door to all sorts of "generalized grievances," Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208, 217 (1974), that the Constitution leaves for resolution through the political process.
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