Standing (law) in the context of "Case or controversy"

Jurisdiction (from Latin juris 'law' and dictio 'speech' or 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority held by a legal entity to enact justice. Jurisdiction is rarely claimed to be complete: rather it is limited for example by geography, subject matter, or other factor. It is only within the scope (inside the limits) of such jurisdiction that, for example, the parties to a dispute have standing to bring the matter (a legal question) before a judge, who has power (or 'jurisdiction') to decide it authoritatively.

A "jurisdiction" can also be understood as a category name for any separate polity legally constituted as such — for any government with legislative and other legal power over a particular territory, whether that area is a nation state or some smaller region. Thus, Australia, Arizona, North Yorkshire and New York City are each "a jurisdiction". In federations like the United States, jurisdiction in this polity sense applies at multiple levels (e.g., local, state, and national/federal).

Judicial restraint is a judicial interpretation that recommends favoring the status quo in judicial activities and is the opposite of judicial activism. Aspects of judicial restraint include the principle of stare decisis (that new decisions should be consistent with previous decisions); a conservative approach to standing (locus standi) and a reluctance to grant certiorari; and a tendency to deliver narrowly tailored verdicts, avoiding "unnecessary resolution of broad questions."

Judicial restraint may lead a court to avoid hearing a case in the first place. The court may justify its decision by questioning whether the plaintiff has standing; by refusing to grant certiorari; by determining that the central issue of the case is a political question better decided by the executive or legislative branches of government; or by determining that the court has no jurisdiction in the matter.

Personal jurisdiction is a court's jurisdiction over the parties, as determined by the facts in evidence, which bind the parties to a lawsuit, as opposed to subject-matter jurisdiction, which is jurisdiction over the law involved in the suit. Without personal jurisdiction over a party, a court's rulings or decrees cannot be enforced upon that party, except by comity; i.e., to the extent that the sovereign which has jurisdiction over the party allows the court to enforce them upon that party. A court that has personal jurisdiction has both the authority to rule on the law and facts of a suit and the power to enforce its decision upon a party to the suit. In some cases, territorial jurisdiction may also constrain a court's reach, such as preventing hearing of a case concerning events occurring on foreign territory between two citizens of the home jurisdiction. A similar principle is that of standing or locus standi, which is the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case.

Animal law is a combination of statutory and case law in which the nature – legal, social or biological – of nonhuman animals is an important factor. Animal law encompasses companion animals, wildlife, animals used in entertainment and animals raised for food and research. The emerging field of animal law is often analogized to the environmental law movement because "animal law faces many of the same legal and strategic challenges that environmental law faced in seeking to establish a more secure foothold in the United States and abroad".

Animal law issues encompass a broad spectrum of approaches – from philosophical explorations of the rights of animals to pragmatic discussions about the rights of those who use animals, who has standing to sue when an animal is harmed in a way that violates the law, and what constitutes legal cruelty. Animal law permeates and affects most traditional areas of the law – including tort, contract, criminal and constitutional law. Examples of this intersection include:

Justiciability concerns the limits upon legal issues over which a court can exercise its judicial authority. It includes, but is not limited to, the legal concept of standing, which is used to determine if the party bringing the suit is a party appropriate to establishing whether an actual adversarial issue exists. Essentially, justiciability seeks to address whether a court possesses the ability to provide adequate resolution of the dispute; where a court believes that it cannot offer such a final determination, the matter is not justiciable.