An Inquiry Into The Doctrine Of Justiciability In U.S. Federal Court

In Chinese scholars literature, juticiability is often considered as a contribute of law, quoted by court when decided case. However, this understanding is a kind of tautology, no content. Because the court is called the court of law, the important or the only reason is that the court is based on the law rather than other basis when court determin whether or not accept and hear cases. In practice, furthmore, not all law brings into case. That is to say, some laws may never cause litigation bringed by litigants, and we can also imagine that no one is willing to submit all dispute to the court to and hear.Precisely, juticiability means that something is suitable for the court rather than other political institutions to adjudicate. In law, juticiability can be related to the jurisdiction of the court, the nature and the scope of judicial power. Here, the U.S. Federal Court case law practice can help us to understand juticiability contains rich theoretical meaning and practical significance. As a matter of fact, The Fedeal Court developed, for its own governance in the cases confessedly within its jurisdiction, a series of rules in terms of juticiability. The juticiability doctrine determine which matters federal court can hear and decide and which must be dismissed.Generally, the juticiability doctrine is not fixed concept, which consists of ban on advisory opinion, standing, ripeness, mootness and political question doctrine. First of all, with regard to advisory opinion, the poor definitions of advisory opinion, however, indicts that we must return to the origin of the ban of advisory opinion in order to understand constitutional implications for judicial power. In the origin, the function of ban of advisory opinion is not limited to judicial power, rather than render supportive reason for the exercise of judicial power, i.e. judicial power is exercised only in a case. Furthermore, for a case to be justiciable and not an advisory opinion, two criteria must be met. First, there must be an actual controversy between adverse litigants. Second, there must be a substantial likelihood that a federal court decision in favor of a claimant will bring about some change or have some effect.Second, standing is difficult to grasp, as a part of justiciability is complexed and a game played by words. In public domain the issue of standing could exist, in particular distinguished form the issue of cause of action and merits. On the other hand, the issue of standing become the primary problem of modern litigation in that how to find proper party is partly constitutive of the justifiction to judicial law-making. As a normative problem, the choice and construction of standing dcotrine must reflect some considerations of goal or value-orientation, which constitutes the basis of a reflection and reconstruction of tranditional standing doctrine. Compared to alternative solutions to tranditional standing doctrine, due to the issue of standing related to the conditions of the use of judicial power, rather than judicial power per se, how to expand and fashion standing doctrine judges must be bounded by the principle of necessity.As compared to standing, ripeness assumes that an asserted injury is sufficient to support standing, but asks whether the injury is too contingent or remote to support present adjudication. The present inquiry, however, is limited to judicial review of governmental action in which a separate ripeness area is found, i.e. when a party may seek pre-enforcement review of a statue or regulation. The question of ripeness turns on "the fitness of the issues for judicial decision" and the "hardship to the parties of withholding court consideration. The ripeness standard, designed to be discretionary in nature, operates as an additional hurdle to the exercise of judicial power. The test of discretion in this regard is whether court within its jurisdiction.As regard to mootness, the tension between the jurisdictional stature of mootness and its judicially created exceptions has caused commentators to criticize the doctrine as lacking a coherent theoretical foundation. However, three exceptions to mootness doctrine are limited in cases of judicial review, which indicate a separate operation domain. There are two distinct kinds of mootness, which merit different judicial treatment. A finding that the issue is moot means that the case no longer presents a case or controversy and thus must be dismissed. If the court finds the issue raised by plaintiff’s claim is not itself moot, the next question is whether the plaintiff’s personal stake in that issue is moot. If so, then the claim is subject to dismissal at the court’s discretion, prudential factors include the importance of adjudicating the issue or issues promptly; the effect on judicial authority of hearing and deciding the claim; and the effect on the efficient use of judicial resources of hearing and deciding the claim.The last and most misunderstanding justiciability is political question doctrine. In a sense, certain governmental tasks, whether undertaken by the political branches or the judiciary, simply cannot be performed effectively without a substantial amount of discretion with the merger of law and politics. Since discretion in political issue is inevitably political in nature, it must be regarded as presumptively illegitimate. The practical inevitability of discretion in performing those tasks defines the legitimate role of the federal courts. However, polycentric nature of the political issues makes judicial interference of political issues limited, i.e. it can not be in teams of the strong sense of judicial review, rather than provide a principled framework to solve political issue. The presumption of illegitimacy, on the other hand, may be overcome when the political bodies that should ordinarily exercise such discretion are seriously and chronically in default.Only in this way can it provides a kind of legitimacy for judicial interference of political issue.