I told you that standing is an obsession of far too many federal judges these days, and John Roberts, whatever his other useful qualities, is one of the worst offenders.  He kicked off the Long Family opinion today with a section on whether a bank had standing to sue in federal court because it believed an Indian court didn't have jurisdiction over it.  The Indian court had disagreed and, indeed, had imposed a $750,000 judgment against the bank.

The standing the bank had to dispute this award in federal court, which has jurisdiction over questions of tribal jurisdiction, was, of course, obvious (was it injured by the adverse Indian court judgement?  Check.  Was the injury caused by the action sued over - i.e., the decision of the tribal court?  Check.  Would a judgment finding the tribal court didn't have jurisdiction to make the award redress that injury?  Check.)  It was so obvious that the anti-standing crowd didn't even raise the bank's standing to sue until the case got to the Supreme Court.

But nonetheless, the chief justice wasted his time, my time, and now your time (you are, after all, reading this post) encouraging other litigants to make as many standing arguments as possible in the future.  Here's how he justified it: "Though the Longs raised their standing argument for the first time before this Court, we bear an independent obligation to assure ourselves that jurisdiction is proper before proceeding to the merits."  True, I suppose ... but nonetheless a waste of time, unless the chief genuinely wants part I of every opinion the Supreme Court does to be an independent assessment of standing and jurisdiction (and he just might want that - it would certainly reduce the time the Court would have to do other things).

I think that maybe other justices ought to spend a little less time patronizing standing opinions like this one ... but no dice yet.  Everybody signed on to this mysterious early bit of Roberts' opinion.

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