Standing Requirements

Although many individuals have grievances, not all of them are capable of judicial resolution. Before individuals can bring suits before courts, they must establish what is called standing, that is, their legal right to bring a case. The idea of standing is largely based on the provision in Article III of the Constitution that grants jurisdiction to courts over “cases and controversies” that arise under the document. The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted this and other language to require individuals to have concrete interests, capable of resolution through an adversary system, before it will agree to hear their cases. Thus, with very limited exceptions, U.S. courts will not accept taxpayer suits based simply on individuals' desires that their money not be spent in a certain way. The Court aims to resolve individual injustices rather than generalized grievances. With limited exceptions, individuals have to bring cases before the courts on their own behalf (or, as in so-called class-action suits, in conjunction with others with whom they share grievances) rather than on behalf of others.

For many years, there was nothing that particularly distinguished standing doctrine in Fourth Amendment cases from standing issues in other areas, which required individuals to show personal injury. Thus, in United States v. Jeffers (1951), the Court allowed an individual to challenge the legality of the police search of a motel room that was being leased by his aunts but in which incriminating evidence [Page 589]against him had been found. Similarly, in Jones v. United States (1960), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an individual who was visiting another's apartment with drugs had standing without having to acknowledge that the drugs were his and thus subjecting himself to self-incrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment. This was sometimes called the automatic standing rule. The Court proclaimed that “anyone legitimately on premises where a search occurs may challenge its legality by way of a motion to suppress, when its fruits are proposed to be used against him.” In Alderman v. United States (1969), the Court emphasized the personal nature of Fourth Amendment rights and the corresponding rights of victims of the denial of such rights to be heard.

The Court sought to change this approach in Rakas v. Illinois (1978) and the companion cases United States v. Salvucci and Rawlings v. Kentucky. In the lead case involving the search of a robbery getaway car, Justice William Rehnquist denied that passengers who did not claim ownership of a sawed-off rifle and shells under the seat had standing. Instead of viewing the establishing of standing as one step and the issue of constitutionality as a second, Rehnquist subsumed both issues under the question of whether individuals had “a legitimate expectation of privacy” that society was willing to recognize. This expectation of privacy standard was the primary test on which the Court had relied in its decision in Katz v. United States (1967), requiring police to obtain warrants for wiretaps. Rehnquist argued that this position was consistent with the Court's emphasis on the personal nature of Fourth Amendment rights in the Alderman case. In Minnesota v. Carter (1988), the Court reiterated that it did not want state courts to utilize standing requirements separate from its legitimate expectation of privacy standard.

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