Suchergebnisse

In its recent Wilderness Society v. Rey decision, the Ninth Circuit addressed the difficult question of when a statute may establish a right to informational standing. The decision interpreted the Supreme Court's decision in Summers v. Earth Island Institute, and concluded that general notice and appeal provisions in a statute that do not establish an explicit public right to information from the government are insufficient to establish informational standing. The Wilderness Society decision indirectly raised the broader question of when Congress may modify common law injury requirements or even Article III constitutional standing requirements. Although the Wilderness Society decision relied on the implications of Summers, the Ninth Circuit would have been better advised to examine Justice Kennedy's concurring opinions in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife and Summers. His opinions suggest that Congress has significant authority to expand citizen suit standing as long as it carefully defines the statutory injuries it seeks to remedy. Wilderness Society is important because it is the first court of appeals decision that attempts to reconcile Summers and FEC v. Akins, the crucial informational standing case. Although the result in Wilderness Society may be correct, the Ninth Circuit failed to grasp the full complexities of the Supreme Court's standing jurisprudence. This Article argues how to best interpret Lujan, Summers, and Akins in determining how much authority Congress has to establish informational standing and other standing rights that have divided lower federal courts.

A discussion of the requirements for obtaining review of governmental action might quickly degenerate into a sterile exercise in classification and distinction of the various situations in which challenges to governmental action were permitted or denied. The situations in which a person's interests, privileges, or rights have been sufficiently involved to confer upon him the standing to obtain review are many and varied. Certainly the Washington cases, which draw distinctions, later to be repudiated or ignored, between state action and municipal action and between expenditure of funds and control of property, as well as the various pertinent statutory provisions, offer tempting materials for one inclined to catalog a field of law. The subject is, however, one which benefits greatly when viewed in the broader perspective of the role of the judiciary in the process of government. The traditional legal language is that of standing and ripeness for review. So viewed, the question becomes one of political science as much as of law, and the evaluation of the soundness of decisions depends upon whether the judiciary has properly discharged its function in the operation of governmental machinery.

This article provides an overview of recent changes in the former Soviet Union and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. State regulation has been reduced through relaxation of statutory prescriptions and through privatization. Trade unions often retain significant nominal representative status, but have little effective regulatory power, and employers' representation is fragmented. Although most countries have introduced tripartite institutions, real decision making takes place at company level where management is in the driving seat.