523 U.S. 83 (1998)

STEEL CO., aka CHICAGO STEEL & PICKLING CO.
v.
CITIZENS FOR A BETTER ENVIRONMENT

No. 96-643.

United States Supreme Court.

Argued October 6, 1997. Decided March 4, 1998. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

*84 *85 Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and O'Connor, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined, and in which Breyer, J., joined as to Parts I and IV. O'Connor, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Kennedy, J., joined, post, p. 110. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. 111. Stevens, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Souter, J., joined as to Parts I, III, and IV, and Ginsburg, J., joined as to Part III, post, p. 112. Ginsburg, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 134.

Sanford M. Stein argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs was Leo P. Dombrowski.

David A. Strauss argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were James D. Brusslan and Stefan A. Noe.

Irving L. Gornstein argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging affirmance. With him on the brief were Acting Solicitor General Dellinger, Assistant Attorney General Schiffer, Deputy Solicitor General Wallace, James A. Feldman, Edward J. Shawaker, and Mark R. Haag.^[*]

*86 Justice Scalia, delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a private enforcement action under the citizen-suit provision of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA), 100 Stat. 1755, 42 U. S. C. § 11046(a)(1). The case presents the merits question, answered in the affirmative by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, whether EPCRA authorizes suits for purely past violations. It also presents the jurisdictional question whether respondent, plaintiff below, has standing to bring this action.

I

Respondent, an association of individuals interested in environmental protection, sued petitioner, a small manufacturing company in Chicago, for past violations of EPCRA. EPCRA establishes a framework of state, regional, and local agencies designed to inform the public about the presence of hazardous and toxic chemicals, and to provide for emergency response in the event of health-threatening release. Central to its operation are reporting requirements compelling users of specified toxic and hazardous chemicals to file annual *87 "emergency and hazardous chemical inventory forms" and "toxic chemical release forms," which contain, inter alia, the name and location of the facility, the name and quantity of the chemical on hand, and, in the case of toxic chemicals, the waste-disposal method employed and the annual quantity released into each environmental medium. 42 U. S. C. §§ 11022 and 11023. The hazardous-chemical inventory forms for any given calendar year are due the following March 1st, and the toxic-chemical release forms the following July 1st. §§ 11022(a)(2) and 11023(a).

Enforcement of EPCRA can take place on many fronts.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the most powerful enforcement arsenal: it may seek criminal, civil, or administrative penalties. § 11045. State and local governments can also seek civil penalties, as well as injunctive relief. §§ 11046(a)(2) and (c). For purposes of this case, however, the crucial enforcement mechanism is the citizen-suit provision, § 11046(a)(1), which likewise authorizes civil penalties and injunctive relief, see § 11046(c). This provides that "any person may commence a civil action on his own behalf against . . . [a]n owner or operator of a facility for failure," among other things, to "[c]omplete and submit an inventory form under section 11022(a) of this title . . . [and] section 11023(a) of this title." § 11046(a)(1). As a prerequisite to bringing such a suit, the plaintiff must, 60 days prior to filing his complaint, give notice to the Administrator of the EPA, the State in which the alleged violation occurs, and the alleged violator. § 11046(d). The citizen suit may not go forward if the Administrator "has commenced and is diligently pursuing an administrative order or civil action to enforce the requirement concerned or to impose a civil penalty." § 11046(e).

In 1995 respondent sent a notice to petitioner, the Administrator, and the relevant Illinois authorities, alleging—accurately, as it turns out—that petitioner had failed since 1988, the first year of EPCRA's filing deadlines, to complete and *88 to submit the requisite hazardous-chemical inventory and toxic-chemical release forms under §§ 11022 and 11023. Upon receiving the notice, petitioner filed all of the overdue forms with the relevant agencies. The EPA chose not to bring an action against petitioner, and when the 60-day waiting period expired, respondent filed suit in Federal District Court. Petitioner promptly filed a motion to dismiss under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and (6), contending that, because its filings were up to date when the complaint was filed, the court had no jurisdiction to entertain a suit for a present violation; and that, because EPCRA does not allow suit for a purely historical violation, respondent's allegation of untimeliness in filing was not a claim upon which relief could be granted.

The District Court agreed with petitioner on both points. App. to Pet. for Cert. A24—A26. The Court of Appeals reversed, concluding that citizens may seek penalties against EPCRA violators who file after the statutory deadline and after receiving notice. 90 F. 3d 1237 (CA7 1996). We granted certiorari, 519 U. S. 1147 (1997).

II

We granted certiorari in this case to resolve a conflict between the interpretation of EPCRA adopted by the Seventh Circuit and the interpretation previously adopted by the Sixth Circuit in Atlantic States Legal Foundation, Inc. v. United Musical Instruments, U. S. A., Inc., 61 F. 3d 473 (1995)—a case relied on by the District Court, and acknowledged by the Seventh Circuit to be "factually indistinguishable," 90 F. 3d, at 1241-1242. Petitioner, however, both in its petition for certiorari and in its briefs on the merits, has raised the issue of respondent's standing to maintain the suit, and hence this Court's jurisdiction to entertain it. Though there is some dispute on this point, see Part III, infra, this would normally be considered a threshold question that must be resolved in respondent's favor before proceeding to the *89 merits. Justice Stevens' opinion concurring in the judgment, however, claims that the question whether § 11046(a) permits this cause of action is also "jurisdictional," and so has equivalent claim to being resolved first. Whether that is so has significant implications for this case and for many others, and so the point warrants extended discussion.

It is firmly established in our cases that the absence of a valid (as opposed to arguable) cause of action does not implicate subject-matter jurisdiction, i. e., the courts' statutory or constitutional power to adjudicate the case. See generally 5A C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1350, p. 196, n. 8 and cases cited (2d ed. 1990). As we stated in Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678, 682 (1946), "[j]urisdiction . . . is not defeated . . . by the possibility that the averments might fail to state a cause of action on which petitioners could actually recover." Rather, the district court has jurisdiction if "the right of the petitioners to recover under their complaint will be sustained if the Constitution and laws of the United States are given one construction and will be defeated if they are given another," id., at 685, unless the claim "clearly appears to be immaterial and made solely for the purpose of obtaining jurisdiction or where such a claim is wholly insubstantial and frivolous." Id., at 682-683; see also Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, 506 U. S. 263, 285 (1993); The Fair v. Kohler Die & Specialty Co., 228 U. S. 22, 25 (1913). Dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction because of the inadequacy of the federal claim is proper only when the claim is "so insubstantial, implausible, foreclosed by prior decisions of this Court, or otherwise completely devoid of merit as not to involve a federal controversy." Oneida Indian Nation of N. Y. v. County of Oneida, 414 U. S. 661, 666 (1974); see also Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., 358 U. S. 354, 359 (1959). Here, respondent wins under one construction of EPCRA and loses under another, and Justice Stevens does not argue that respondent's claim is frivolous or immaterial— *90 in fact, acknowledges that the language of the citizen-suit provision is ambiguous. Post, at 131.

Justice Stevens relies on our treatment of a similar issue as jurisdictional in Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U. S. 49 (1987). Post, at 114. The statute at issue in that case, however, after creating the cause of action, went on to say that "[t]he district courts shall have jurisdiction, without regard to the amount in controversy or the citizenship of the parties, " to provide various forms of relief. 33 U. S. C. § 1365(a) (emphasis added). The italicized phrase strongly suggested (perhaps misleadingly) that the provision was addressing genuine subject-matter jurisdiction. The corresponding provision in the present case, however, reads as follows:

"The district court shall have jurisdiction in actions brought under subsection (a) of this section against an owner or operator of a facility to enforce the requirement concerned and to impose any civil penalty provided for violation of that requirement." 42 U. S. C. § 11046(c). It is unreasonable to read this as making all the elements of the cause of action under subsection (a) jurisdictional, rather than as merely specifying the remedial powers of the court, viz., to enforce the violated requirement and to impose civil penalties. "Jurisdiction," it has been observed, "is a word of many, too many, meanings," United States v. Vanness, 85 F. 3d 661, 663, n. 2 (CADC 1996), and it is commonplace for the term to be used as it evidently was here. See, e. g., 7 U. S. C. § 13a—1(d) ("In any action brought under this section, the Commission may seek and the court shall have jurisdiction to impose . . . a civil penalty in the amount of not more than the higher of $100,000 or triple the monetary gain to the person for each violation"); 15 U. S. C. § 2622(d) ("In actions brought under this subsection, the district courts shall have jurisdiction to grant all appropriate relief, *91 including injunctive relief and compensatory and exemplary damages"); 42 U. S. C. § 7622(d) ("In actions brought under this subsection, the district courts shall have jurisdiction to grant all appropriate relief including, but not limited to, injunctive relief, compensatory, and exemplary damages").

It is also the case that the Gwaltney opinion does not display the slightest awareness that anything turned upon whether the existence of a cause of action for past violations was technically jurisdictional—as indeed nothing of substance did. The District Court had statutory jurisdiction over the suit in any event, since continuing violations were also alleged. See 484 U. S., at 64. It is true, as Justice Stevens points out, that the issue of Article III standing which is addressed at the end of the opinion should technically have been addressed at the outset if the statutory question was not jurisdictional. But that also did not really matter, since Article III standing was in any event found. The short of the matter is that the jurisdictional character of the elements of the cause of action in Gwaltney made no substantive difference (nor even any procedural difference that the Court seemed aware of), had been assumed by the parties, and was assumed without discussion by the Court. We have often said that drive-by jurisdictional rulings of this sort (if Gwaltney can even be called a ruling on the point rather than a dictum) have no precedential effect. See Lewis v. Casey, 518 U. S. 343, 352, n. 2 (1996); Federal Election Comm'n v. NRA Political Victory Fund, 513 U. S. 88, 97 (1994); United States v. L. A. Tucker Truck Lines, Inc., 344 U. S. 33, 38 (1952). But even if it is authoritative on the point as to the distinctive statute there at issue, it is fanciful to think that Gwaltney revised our established jurisprudence that the failure of a cause of action does not automatically produce a failure of jurisdiction, or adopted the expansive principle that a statute saying "the district court shall have jurisdiction to remedy violations [in specified ways]" *92 renders the existence of a violation necessary for subjectmatter jurisdiction.

Justice Stevens' concurrence devotes a large portion of its discussion to cases in which a statutory standing question was decided before a question of constitutional standing. See post, at 115-117. They also are irrelevant here, because it is not a statutory standing question that Justice Stevens would have us decide first. He wishes to resolve, not whether EPCRA authorizes this plaintiff to sue (it assuredly does), but whether the scope of the EPCRA right of action includes past violations. Such a question, we have held, goes to the merits and not to statutory standing. See Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. County of Kent, 510 U. S. 355, 365 (1994) ("The question whether a federal statute creates a claim for relief is not jurisdictional"); Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., supra, at 359; Montana-Dakota Util. Co. v. Northwestern Public Service Co., 341 U. S. 246, 249 (1951).

Though it is replete with extensive case discussions, case citations, rationalizations, and syllogoids, see post, at 120, n. 12, and n. 2, infra , Justice Stevens' opinion conspicuously lacks one central feature: a single case in which this Court has done what he proposes, to wit, call the existence of a cause of action "jurisdictional," and decide that question before resolving a dispute concerning the existence of an Article III case or controversy. Of course, even if there were not solid precedent contradicting Justice Stevens' position, the consequences are alone enough to condemn it. It would turn every statutory question in an EPCRA citizen suit into a question of jurisdiction. Under Justice Stevens' analysis, § 11046(c)'s grant of "jurisdiction in actions brought under [§ 11046(a)]" withholds jurisdiction over claims involving purely past violations if past violations are not in fact covered by § 11046(a). By parity of reasoning, if there is a dispute as to whether the omission of a particular item constituted a failure to "complete" the form; or as to *93 whether a particular manner of delivery complied in time with the requirement to "submit" the form; and if the court agreed with the defendant on the point; the action would not be "brought under [§ 11046(a)]," and would be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction rather than decided on the merits. Moreover, those statutory arguments, since they are "jurisdictional," would have to be considered by this Court even though not raised earlier in the litigation—indeed, this Court would have to raise them sua sponte. See Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U. S. 274, 278-279 (1977); Great Southern Fire Proof Hotel Co. v. Jones, 177 U. S. 449, 453 (1900). Congress of course did not create such a strange scheme. In referring to actions "brought under" § 11046(a), § 11046(c) means suits contending that § 11046(a) contains a certain requirement. If Justice Stevens is correct that all cause-of-action questions may be regarded as jurisdictional questions, and thus capable of being decided where there is no genuine case or controversy, it is hard to see what is left of that limitation in Article III.

III

In addition to its attempt to convert the merits issue in this case into a jurisdictional one, Justice Stevens' concurrence proceeds, post, at 117-124, to argue the bolder point that jurisdiction need not be addressed first anyway. Even if the statutory question is not "fram[ed] . . . interms of `jurisdiction,' " but is simply "characterize[d] . . . as whether respondent's complaint states a `cause of action,' " "it is also clear that we have the power to decide the statutory question first." Post, at 117-118. This is essentially the position embraced by several Courts of Appeals, which find it proper to proceed immediately to the merits question, despite jurisdictional objections, at least where (1) the merits question is more readily resolved, and (2) the prevailing party on the merits would be the same as the prevailing party were jurisdiction denied. See, e. g., SEC v. American *94 Capital Investments, Inc., 98 F. 3d 1133, 1139-1142 (CA9 1996), cert. denied sub nom. Shelton v. Barnes, 520 U. S. 1185 (1997); Smith v. Avino, 91 F. 3d 105, 108 (CA11 1996); Clow v. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 948 F. 2d 614, 616, n. 2 (CA9 1991); Cross-Sound Ferry Services, Inc. v. ICC, 934 F. 2d 327, 333 (CADC 1991); United States v. Parcel of Land, 928 F. 2d 1, 4 (CA1 1991); Browning-Ferris Industries v. Muszynski, 899 F. 2d 151, 154-159 (CA2 1990). The Ninth Circuit has denominated this practice—which it characterizes as "assuming" jurisdiction for the purpose of deciding the merits—the "doctrine of hypothetical jurisdiction." See, e. g., United States v. Troescher, 99 F. 3d 933, 934, n. 1 (1996).^[1]

We decline to endorse such an approach because it carries the courts beyond the bounds of authorized judicial action and thus offends fundamental principles of separation of powers. This conclusion should come as no surprise, since it is reflected in a long and venerable line of our cases. "Without jurisdiction the court cannot proceed at all in any cause. Jurisdiction is power to declare the law, and when it ceases to exist, the only function remaining to the court is that of announcing the fact and dismissing the cause." Ex parte McCardle, 7 Wall. 506, 514 (1869). "On every writ of error or appeal, the first and fundamental question is that of jurisdiction, first, of this court, and then of the court from which the record comes. This question the court is bound to ask and answer for itself, even when not otherwise suggested, and without respect to the relation of the parties to it." Great Southern Fire Proof Hotel Co. v. Jones, supra, at 453. The requirement that jurisdiction be established as a threshold matter "spring[s] from the nature and limits of *95 the judicial power of the United States" and is "inflexible and without exception." Mansfield, C. & L. M. R. Co. v. Swan, 111 U. S. 379, 382 (1884).

This Court's insistence that proper jurisdiction appear begins at least as early as 1804, when we set aside a judgment for the defendant at the instance of the losing plaintiff who had himself failed to allege the basis for federal jurisdiction. Capron v. Van Noorden, 2 Cranch 126 (1804). Just last Term, we restated this principle in the clearest fashion, unanimously setting aside the Ninth Circuit's merits decision in a case that had lost the elements of a justiciable controversy:

"`[E]very federal appellate court has a special obligation to `satisfy itself not only of its own jurisdiction, but also that of the lower courts in a cause under review,' even though the parties are prepared to concede it. Mitchell v. Maurer, 293 U. S. 237, 244 (1934). See Juidice v. Vail, 430 U. S. 327, 331-332 (1977) (standing). `And if the record discloses that the lower court was without jurisdiction this court will notice the defect, although the parties make no contention concerning it. [When the lower federal court] lack[s] jurisdiction, we have jurisdiction on appeal, not of the merits but merely for the purpose of correcting the error of the lower court in entertaining the suit.' United States v. Corrick, 298 U. S. 435, 440 (1936) (footnotes omitted).' " Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U. S. 43, 73 (1997), quoting Bender v. Williamsport Area School Dist., 475 U. S. 534, 541 (1986) (brackets in original). Justice Stevens' arguments contradicting all this jurisprudence—and asserting that a court may decide the cause of action before resolving Article III jurisdiction—are readily refuted. First, his concurrence seeks to convert Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678 (1946), into a case in which the causeof-action question was decided before an Article III standing *96 question. Post, at 118-119, n. 8. "Bell, " Justice Stevens asserts, "held that we have jurisdiction to decide [whether the plaintiff has stated a cause of action] even when it is unclear whether the plaintiff's injuries can be redressed." Post, at 118. The italicized phrase (the italics are his own) invites the reader to believe that Article III redressability was at issue. Not only is this not true, but the whole point of Bell was that it is not true. In Bell, which was decided before Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971), the District Court had dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds because it believed that (what we would now call) a Bivens action would not lie. This Court held that the nonexistence of a cause of action was no proper basis for a jurisdictional dismissal. Thus, the uncertainty about "whether the plaintiff's injuries can be redressed" to which Justice Stevens refers is simply the uncertainty about whether a cause of action existed—which is precisely what Bell holds not to be an Article III "redressability" question. It would have been a different matter if the relief requested by the plaintiffs in Bell (money damages) would not have remedied their injury in fact; but it of course would. Justice Stevens used to understand the fundamental distinction between arguing no cause of action and arguing no Article III redressability, having written for the Court that the former argument is "not squarely directed at jurisdiction itself, but rather at the existence of a remedy for the alleged violation of . . . federal rights," which issue is "`not of the jurisdictional sort which the Court raises on its own motion.' " Lake Country Estates, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 440 U. S. 391, 398 (1979) (Stevens, J.), (quoting Mt. Healthy Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U. S., at 279).

Justice Stevens also relies on National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. National Assn. of Railroad Passengers, 414 U. S. 453 (1974). Post, at 119-120. But in that case, we did not determine whether a cause of action existed before determining *97 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]

*98 Much more extensive defenses of the practice of deciding the cause of action before resolving Article III jurisdiction have been offered by the Courts of Appeals. They rely principally upon two cases of ours, Norton v. Mathews, 427 U. S. 524 (1976), and Secretary of Navy v. Avrech, 418 U. S. 676 (1974) (per curiam). Both are readily explained, we think, by their extraordinary procedural postures. In Norton, the case came to us on direct appeal from a three-judge District Court, and the jurisdictional question was whether the action was properly brought in that forum rather than in an ordinary district court. We declined to decide that jurisdictional question, because the merits question was decided in a companion case, Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U. S. 495 (1976), with the consequence that the jurisdictional question could have no effect on the outcome: If the three-judge court had been properly convened, we would have affirmed, and if not, we would have vacated and remanded for a fresh decree from which an appeal could be taken to the Court of Appeals, the outcome of which was foreordained by Lucas. Norton v. Mathews, supra, at 531. Thus, Norton did not use the pretermission of the jurisdictional question as a device for reaching a question of law that otherwise would have gone unaddressed. Moreover, the Court seems to have regarded the merits judgment that it entered on the basis of Lucas as equivalent to a jurisdictional dismissal for failure to present a substantial federal question. The Court said: "This disposition [Lucas] renders the merits in the present case a decided issue and thus one no longer substantial in the jurisdictional sense." 427 U. S., at 530-531. We think it clear that this peculiar case, involving a merits issue dispositively resolved in a companion case, was not meant to overrule, sub silentio, two centuries of jurisprudence affirming the necessity of determining jurisdiction before proceeding to the merits. See Clow, 948 F. 2d, at 627 (O'Scannlain, J., dissenting).

Avrech also involved an instance in which an intervening Supreme Court decision definitively answered the merits *99 question. The jurisdictional question in the case had been raised by the Court sua sponte after oral argument, and supplemental briefing had been ordered. Secretary of Navy v. Avrech, supra, at 677. Before the Court came to a decision, however, the merits issue in the case had been conclusively resolved in Parker v. Levy, 417 U. S. 733 (1974), a case argued the same day as Avrech. The Court was unwilling to decide the jurisdictional question without oral argument, 418 U. S., at 677, but acknowledged (with some understatement) that "even the most diligent and zealous advocate could find his ardor somewhat dampened in arguing a jurisdictional issue where the decision on the merits is . . . foreordained," id., at 678. Accordingly, the Court disposed of the case on the basis of the intervening decision in Parker, in a minimalist two-page per curiam opinion. The first thing to be observed about Avrech is that the supposed jurisdictional issue was technically not that. The issue was whether a courtmartial judgment could be attacked collaterally by a suit for backpay. Although Avrech, like the earlier case of United States v. Augenblick, 393 U. S. 348 (1969), characterized this question as jurisdictional, we later held squarely that it was not. See Schlesinger v. Councilman, 420 U. S. 738, 753 (1975). In any event, the peculiar circumstances of Avrech hardly permit it to be cited for the precedent-shattering general proposition that an "easy" merits question may be decided on the assumption of jurisdiction. To the contrary, the fact that the Court ordered briefing on the jurisdictional question sua sponte demonstrates its adherence to traditional and constitutionally dictated requirements. See Cross-Sound Ferry Services, Inc. v. ICC, 934 F. 2d, at 344— 345, and n. 10 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in denial of petition for review).

Other cases sometimes cited by the lower courts to support "hypothetical jurisdiction" are similarly distinguishable. United States v. Augenblick, as we have discussed, did not involve a jurisdictional issue. In Philbrook v. Glodgett, 421 U. S. 707, 721 (1975), the jurisdictional question was whether, *100 in a suit under 28 U. S. C. § 1343(3) against the Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Social Welfare for deprivation of federal rights under color of state law by denying payments under a federally funded welfare program, the plaintiff could join a similar claim against the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. The merits issue of statutory construction involved in the claim against the Secretary was precisely the same as that involved in the claim against the Commissioner, and the Secretary (while challenging jurisdiction) assured the Court that he would comply with any judgment entered against the Commissioner. The Court's disposition of the case was to dismiss the Secretary's appeal under what was then this Court's Rule 40(g), for failure to brief the jurisdictional question adequately. Normally, the Court acknowledged, its obligation to inquire into the jurisdiction of the District Court might prevent this disposition. But here, the Court concluded, "the substantive issue decided by the District Court would have been decided by that court even if it had concluded that the Secretary was not properly a party," and "the only practical difference that resulted . . . was that its injunction was directed against him as well as against [the Commissioner]," which the Secretary "has [not] properly contended to be wrongful before this Court." 421 U. S., at 721-722. And finally, in Chandler v. Judicial Council of Tenth Circuit, 398 U. S. 74 (1970), we reserved the question whether we had jurisdiction to issue a writ of prohibition or mandamus because the petitioner had not exhausted all available avenues before seeking relief under the All Writs Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1651, and because there was no record to review. 398 U. S., at 86-88. The exhaustion question itself was at least arguably jurisdictional, and was clearly treated as such. Id., at 86.^[3]

*101 While some of the above cases must be acknowledged to have diluted the absolute purity of the rule that Article III jurisdiction is always an antecedent question, none of them even approaches approval of a doctrine of "hypothetical jurisdiction" that enables a court to resolve contested questions of law when its jurisdiction is in doubt. Hypothetical jurisdiction produces nothing more than a hypothetical judgment—which comes to the same thing as an advisory opinion, disapproved by this Court from the beginning. Muskrat v. United States, 219 U. S. 346, 362 (1911); Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 409 (1792). Much more than legal niceties are at stake here. The statutory and (especially) constitutional elements of jurisdiction are an essential ingredient of separation and equilibration of powers, restraining the courts from acting at certain times, and even restraining them from acting permanently regarding certain subjects. See United States v. Richardson, 418 U. S. 166, 179 (1974); Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208, 227 (1974). For a court to pronounce upon the meaning or the constitutionality of a state or federal law when it has no jurisdiction *102 to do so is, by very definition, for a court to act ultra vires.

IV

Having reached the end of what seems like a long front walk, we finally arrive at the threshold jurisdictional question: whether respondent, the plaintiff below, has standing to sue. Article III, § 2, of the Constitution extends the "judicial Power" of the United States only to "Cases" and "Controversies." We have always taken this to mean cases and controversies of the sort traditionally amenable to, and resolved by, the judicial process. Muskrat v. United States, supra, at 356-357. Such a meaning is fairly implied by the text, since otherwise the purported restriction upon the judicial power would scarcely be a restriction at all. Every criminal investigation conducted by the Executive is a "case," and every policy issue resolved by congressional legislation involves a "controversy." These are not, however, the sort of cases and controversies that Article III, § 2, refers to, since "the Constitution's central mechanism of separation of powers depends largely upon common understanding of what activities are appropriate to legislatures, to executives, and to courts." Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 559-560 (1992). Standing to sue is part of the common understanding of what it takes to make a justiciable case. Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149, 155 (1990).^[4]

The "irreducible constitutional minimum of standing" contains three requirements. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, *103 supra, at 560. Fi