The Case of the Fictitious Taxpayer: The Federal Taxpayer’s Suit Twenty Years After Flast v. Cohen

Abstract

In the Flast case, the Supreme Court held that a federal statute authorizing expenditures that allegedly violated the establishment clause of the first amendment could be attacked by plaintiffs whose standing to sue rested solely on the fact that they paid federal income taxes. In the two decades since this "cornerstone of the law of standing" was laid down, the courts have erected upon it an imposing, if not always harmonious or universally-acclaimed, structure. Although predictions are perilous, the case before me may turn out to be the capstone of this architectural endeavor.