In Spokeo v Robins, the Supreme Court confronted one of the harder questions of its intricate law of standing to sue. The question is whether Article III of the Constitution limits Congress's ability to create legal rights that can be vindicated in federal court -- and, if so, what those limits are. The Court's cases had provided two contradictory approaches to answering it. Boxed in by these conflicting precedents, Spokeo failed to resolve the problem. The violation of a legal right can support standing, said the Court, only if it represents an injury that is “concrete” -- a term that simultaneously includes some “intangible” injuries, but requires that they be “real.” These terms, and the Court's explanation of them, do little work to answer the core question. And to the extent that they do point to a general approach, that approach is a wrong turn. But Spokeo also produced a glimmer of hope for approaching standing in the future: a concurring opinion by Justice Thomas, building off of an important line of scholarship on the long-standing difference between public rights and private rights. While Justice Thomas's proposal is not yet fully developed, it may provide a theoretically satisfying way to make sense of the Court's approach to statutory standing. Even if his answers are not perfect, they are answers to the right questions, which will reframe the problem of standing in a helpful way. Justice Thomas's concurrence may be one of the most fruitful things to happen to standing at the Supreme Court in many years. The rest of this article explains the problem of standing in the face of Congress's creation of statutory rights. Part I describes the basic problem and the prior cases that address it. Part II describes the Court's attempted answer in Spokeo. Part III argues that Spokeo's answer is unhelpful and even problematic, and could have ominous implications for the law of privacy and other areas of substantive law. Part IV shows why Justice Thomas may have provided a better way forward.

中文翻译：

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站在国会的阴影下

在 Spokeo v Robins 一案中，最高法院面临着其复杂的起诉资格法的难题之一。问题是宪法第三条是否限制了国会创造可以在联邦法院得到证实的合法权利的能力——如果是的话，这些限制是什么。法院的案件提供了两种相互矛盾的回答方法。受到这些相互矛盾的先例的限制，Spokeo 未能解决问题。法院表示，侵犯合法权利可以支持地位，法院表示，只有当它代表“具体”的伤害时——这个术语同时包括一些“无形”的伤害，但要求它们是“真实的”。这些术语，以及法院对它们的解释，对回答核心问题几乎没有作用。在某种程度上，他们确实指出了一个通用的方法，这种做法是错误的。但 Spokeo 也为未来接近站立带来了一线希望：托马斯大法官的同意意见，建立在关于公共权利和私人权利之间长期差异的重要学术界线之上。虽然托马斯大法官的提议尚未完全发展，但它可能提供一种理论上令人满意的方式来理解法院对法定地位的方法。即使他的回答并不完美，但它们是对正确问题的回答，这将以有益的方式重构站立问题。托马斯大法官的同意可能是多年来在最高法院任职的最有成效的事情之一。本文的其余部分解释了面对国会制定的法定权利的问题。第一部分描述了基本问题和解决它的先前案例。第二部分描述了法院在 Spokeo 中的尝试回答。第三部分认为 Spokeo 的回答没有帮助，甚至有问题，并且可能对隐私法和实体法的其他领域产生不祥的影响。第四部分说明了为什么托马斯大法官可能提供了更好的前进方式。