Raines v. Byrd

Justice Souter, joined by Justice Ginsburg, concurred in the judgment. He took issue merely with the Court's ruling that the injury claimed was not appropriately "personal" and "concrete" to fulfill Article III requirements. First of all, there were problems with the requirement than an injury was to be deemed "personal" and not official in nature, and Justice Souter held that "the official nature of the harm here does not preclude standing." Second, he did not hold that the injuries claimed were so general that they could be deemed as lacking the sufficient degree of concreteness. Nonetheless, "a suit challenging the constitutionality of this Act brought by a party from outside the Federal government . . . would expose the Judicial Branch to a lesser risk" than would the present one, which required it to judge between two other branches of the federal government. "The virtue of waiting for a private suit," Justice Souter wrote, "is only confirmed by the certainty that another suit can come to us." Again, a member of the Court helped pave the way for a challenge.

Justice Stevens, in a dissenting opinion, held that the Line Item Veto was indeed unconstitutional because it forced members of the legislative branch to vote on "truncated" or abbreviated bills. Furthermore, senators and representatives would have no power to vote against the abbreviated bill "that survives the President's cancellation authority." Under Article I, section 7 of the Constitution, members of the legislative branch are granted the power to vote on "Every bill . . . before it become a law," whereas under the Line Item Veto Act, they would be deprived of such a right. "In my judgment," Justice Stevens wrote, "the deprivation of this right--essential to the legislator's office--constitutes a sufficient injury to provide every Member of Congress with standing to challenge the constitutionality of the statute."

Justice Breyer also dissented, holding that the issue at hand was "a case or controversy." Justice Felix Frankfurter in Coleman had held that the courts traditionally "leave intra-parliamentary controversies to parliaments and outside the scrutiny of law courts," but the present case presented different circumstances. (And, Justice Breyer noted, Justice Frankfurter's opinion was a dissenting one.) The present case, Justice Breyer held, was at least as strong as Coleman, and he noted that the Constitution "does not draw an absolute line between disputes involving a `personal' harm and those involving an `official' harm." Taking further issue with the Court's reading of Coleman, Justice Breyer observed that like the legislators in the earlier case, the members of Congress in the present one "will likely vote in the majority for at least some appropriations bills that are then subject to presidential cancellation . . . " Therefore their votes "are threatened with nullification too," and on the basis of Coleman, Justice Breyer ruled that the appellees did indeed have standing.