476 U.S. 667 (1986)

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

[668] Edwin S. Kneedler argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Fried, Assistant Attorney General Willard, Deputy Solicitor General Geller, and Anthony J. Steinmeyer.

Alan G. Gilchrist argued the cause and filed a brief for respondents.^[1]

JUSTICE STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question presented in this case is whether Congress, in either § 1395ff or § 1395ii of Title 42 of the United States Code, barred judicial review of regulations promulgated under Part B of the Medicare program.

Respondents, who include an association of family physicians and several individual doctors, filed suit to challenge the validity of 42 CFR § 405.504(b) (1985), which authorizes the payment of benefits in different amounts for similar physicians' services. The District Court held that the regulation contravened several provisions of the statute governing the Medicare program:

"There is no basis to justify the segregation of allopathic family physicians from all other types of physicians. Such segregation is not rationally related to any legitimate purpose of the Medicare statute. To lump MDs who are family physicians, but who have chosen not [669] to become board certified family physicians for whatever motive, with chiropractors, dentists, and podiatrists for the purpose of determining Medicare reimbursement defies all reason." Michigan Academy of Family Physicians v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, 502 F. Supp. 751, 755 (ED Mich. 1980).

Because it ruled in favor of respondents on statutory grounds, the District Court did not reach their constitutional claims. See id., at 756. The Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court that the Secretary's regulation was "obvious[ly] inconsisten[t] with the plain language of the Medicare statute" and held that "this regulation is irrational and is invalid." Michigan Academy of Family Physicians v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, 728 F. 2d 326, 332 (CA6 1984). Like the District Court, it too declined to reach respondents' constitutional claims. See id., at 332, n. 5.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services has not sought review of the decision on the merits invalidating the regulation. Instead, he renews the contention, rejected by both the District Court and the Court of Appeals, that Congress has forbidden judicial review of all questions affecting the amount of benefits payable under Part B of the Medicare program. Because the question is important and has divided the Courts of Appeals,^[2] we granted the petition for a writ of certiorari.^[3] We now affirm.

[670] I

We begin with the strong presumption that Congress intends judicial review of administrative action. From the beginning "our cases [have established] that judicial review of a final agency action by an aggrieved person will not be cut off unless there is persuasive reason to believe that such was the purpose of Congress." Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 140 (1967) (citing cases). See generally L. Jaffe, Judicial Control of Administrative Action 339-353 (1965). In Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 163 (1803), a case itself involving review of executive action, Chief Justice Marshall insisted that "[t]he very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws." Later, in the lesser known but nonetheless important case of United States v. Nourse, 9 Pet. 8, 28-29 (1835), the Chief Justice noted the traditional observance of this right and laid the foundation for the modern presumption of judicial review:

"It would excite some surprise if, in a government of laws and of principle, furnished with a department whose appropriate duty it is to decide questions of right, not only between individuals, but between the government and individuals; a ministerial officer might, at his discretion, issue this powerful process . . . leaving to the debtor no remedy, no appeal to the laws of his country, if he should believe the claim to be unjust. But this anomaly does not exist; this imputation cannot be cast on the legislature of the United States."

Committees of both Houses of Congress have endorsed this view. In undertaking the comprehensive rethinking of the place of administrative agencies in a regime of separate and [671] divided powers that culminated in the passage of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. §§ 551-559, 701-706, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary remarked:

"Very rarely do statutes withhold judicial review. It has never been the policy of Congress to prevent the administration of its own statutes from being judicially confined to the scope of authority granted or to the objectives specified. Its policy could not be otherwise, for in such a case statutes would in effect be blank checks drawn to the credit of some administrative officer or board." S. Rep. No. 752, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., 26 (1945).

Accord, H. R. Rep. No. 1980, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 41 (1946). The Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives agreed that Congress ordinarily intends that there be judicial review, and emphasized the clarity with which a contrary intent must be expressed:

"The statutes of Congress are not merely advisory when they relate to administrative agencies, any more than in other cases. To preclude judicial review under this bill a statute, if not specific in withholding such review, must upon its face give clear and convincing evidence of an intent to withhold it. The mere failure to provide specially by statute for judicial review is certainly no evidence of intent to withhold review." Ibid.

Taking up the language in the House Committee Report, Justice Harlan reaffirmed the Court's holding in Rusk v. Cort, 369 U. S. 367, 379-380 (1962), that "only upon a showing of `clear and convincing evidence' of a contrary legislative intent should the courts restrict access to judicial review." Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S., at 141 (citations omitted). This standard has been invoked time and again when [672] considering whether the Secretary has discharged "the heavy burden of overcoming the strong presumption that Congress did not mean to prohibit all judicial review of his decision," Dunlop v. Bachowski, 421 U. S. 560, 567 (1975).^[4]

Subject to constitutional constraints, Congress can, of course, make exceptions to the historic practice whereby [673] courts review agency action. The presumption of judicial review is, after all, a presumption, and "like all presumptions used in interpreting statutes, may be overcome by," inter alia, "specific language or specific legislative history that is a reliable indicator of congressional intent," or a specific congressional intent to preclude judicial review that is " `fairly discernible' in the detail of the legislative scheme." Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, 467 U. S. 340, 349, 351 (1984).^[5]

In this case, the Government asserts that two statutory provisions remove the Secretary's regulation from review under the grant of general federal-question jurisdiction found in 28 U. S. C. § 1331. First, the Government contends that 42 U. S. C. § 1395ff(b) (1982 ed., Supp. II), which authorizes "Appeal by individuals," impliedly forecloses administrative or judicial review of any action taken under Part B of the Medicare program by failing to authorize such review while simultaneously authorizing administrative and judicial review of "any determination . . . as to . . . the amount of benefits under part A," § 1395ff(b)(1)(C). Second, the Government asserts that 42 U. S. C. § 1395ii (1982 ed., Supp. II), which makes applicable 42 U. S. C. § 405(h) (1982 ed., Supp. II), of the Social Security Act to the Medicare program, expressly precludes all administrative or judicial review not otherwise provided in that statute. We find neither argument persuasive.

[674] II

Section 1395ff on its face is an explicit authorization of judicial review, not a bar.^[6] As a general matter, " `[t]he mere fact that some acts are made reviewable should not suffice to support an implication of exclusion as to others. The right to review is too important to be excluded on such slender and indeterminate evidence of legislative intent.' " Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S., at 141 (quoting L. Jaffe, Judicial Control of Administrative Action 357 (1965)). See Barlow v. Collins, 397 U. S. 159, 166 (1970); Stark v. Wickard, 321 U. S. 288, 309 (1944).

In the Medicare program, however, the situation is somewhat more complex. Under Part B of that program, which is at issue here, the Secretary contracts with private health insurance carriers to provide benefits for which individuals voluntarily remit premiums. This optional coverage, which is federally subsidized, supplements the mandatory institutional [675] health benefits (such as coverage for hospital expenses) provided by Part A. Subject to an amount-in-controversy requirement, individuals aggrieved by delayed or insufficient payment with respect to benefits payable under Part B are afforded an "opportunity for a fair hearing by the carrier," 42 U. S. C. § 1395u(b)(3)(C) (emphasis added); in comparison, and subject to a like amount-in-controversy requirement, a similarly aggrieved individual under Part A is entitled "to a hearing thereon by the Secretary . . . and to judicial review," 42 U. S. C. §§ 1395ff(b)(1)(C), (b)(2) (1982 ed. and Supp. II). "In the context of the statute's precisely drawn provisions," we held in United States v. Erika, Inc., 456 U. S. 201, 208 (1982), that the failure "to authorize further review for determinations of the amount of Part B awards . . . provides persuasive evidence that Congress deliberately intended to foreclose further review of such claims." Not limiting our consideration to the statutory text, we investigated the legislative history which "confirm[ed] this view," ibid., and disclosed a purpose to " `avoid overloading the courts' " with " `trivial matters,' " a consequence which would " `unduly ta[x]' " the federal court system with " `little real value' " to be derived by participants in the program, id., at 210, n. 13 (quoting 118 Cong. Rec. 33992 (1972) (remarks of Sen. Bennett)).

Respondents' federal-court challenge to the validity of the Secretary's regulation is not foreclosed by § 1395ff as we construed that provision in Erika. The reticulated statutory scheme, which carefully details the forum and limits of review of "any determination . . . of . . . the amount of benefits under part A," 42 U. S. C. § 1395ff(b)(1)(C) (1982 ed., Supp. II), and of the "amount of . . . payment" of benefits under Part B, 42 U. S. C. § 1395u(b)(3)(C), simply does not speak to challenges mounted against the method by which such amounts are to be determined rather than the determinations themselves. As the Secretary has made clear, "the legality, constitutional or otherwise, of any provision of [676] the Act or regulations relevant to the Medicare Program" is not considered in a "fair hearing" held by a carrier to resolve a grievance related to a determination of the amount of a Part B award.^[7] As a result, an attack on the validity of a regulation is not the kind of administrative action that we described in Erika as an "amount determination" which decides "the amount of the Medicare payment to be made on a particular claim" and with respect to which the Act impliedly denies judicial review. 456 U. S., at 208.

That Congress did not preclude review of the method by which Part B awards are computed (as opposed to the computation) is borne out by the very legislative history we found persuasive in Erika. The Senate Committee Report on the original 1965 legislation reveals an intention to preclude "judicial review of a determination concerning the amount of benefits under part B where claims will probably [677] be for substantially smaller amounts than under part A." S. Rep. No. 404, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 54-55 (1965) (emphasis added). The Report makes plain that "carriers, not the Secretary, would review beneficiary complaints regarding the amount of benefits." Ibid. (emphasis added). Accord, H. R. Rep. No. 213, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 47 (1965) ("Under the supplementary plan [Part B], carriers, not the Secretary, would review beneficiary complaints regarding the amount of benefits" (emphasis added)). The legislative history of the pertinent 1972 amendment likewise reveals that judicial review was precluded only as to controversies regarding determinations of amounts of benefits. The Conference Report on the 1972 amendment explains that "there is no authorization for an appeal to the Secretary or for judicial review on matters solely involving amounts of benefits under Part B." H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 92-1605, p. 61 (1972) (emphasis added). Senator Bennett's introductory explanation to the amendment confirms that preclusion of judicial review of Part B awards — designed "to avoid overloading the courts with quite minor matters" — embraced only "decisions on a claim for payment for a given service." 118 Cong. Rec. 33992 (1972). The Senator feared that "[i]f judicial review is made available where any claim is denied, as some court decisions have held, the resources of the Federal court system would be unduly taxed and little real value would be derived by the enrollees. The proposed amendment would merely clarify the original intent of the law and prevent the overloading of the courts with trivial matters because the intent is considered unclear." Ibid. As we found in Erika, 456 U. S., at 206, Congress has precluded judicial review only "of adverse hearing officer determinations of the amount of Part B payments."^[8]

[678] Careful analysis of the governing statutory provisions and their legislative history thus reveals that Congress intended to bar judicial review only of determinations of the amount of benefits to be awarded under Part B. Congress delegated this task to carriers who would finally determine such matters in conformity with the regulations and instructions of the Secretary. We conclude, therefore, that those matters which Congress did not leave to be determined in a "fair hearing" conducted by the carrier — including challenges to the validity of the Secretary's instructions and regulations — are not impliedly insulated from judicial review by 42 U. S. C. § 1395ff (1982 ed. and Supp. II).

III

In light of Congress' express provision for carrier review of millions of what it characterized as "trivial" claims, it is implausible to think it intended that there be no forum to adjudicate statutory and constitutional challenges to regulations promulgated by the Secretary. The Government nevertheless maintains that this is precisely what Congress intended to accomplish in 42 U. S. C. § 1395ii (1982 ed., Supp. II). That section states that 42 U. S. C. § 405(h) (1982 ed., Supp. II), along with a string citation of 10 other provisions of Title II of the Social Security Act, "shall also apply with respect to this subchapter to the same extent as they are applicable with respect to subchapter II of this chapter." Section 405(h), in turn, reads in full as follows:

"(h) Finality of Secretary's decision

[679] "The findings and decision of the Secretary after a hearing shall be binding upon all individuals who were parties to such hearing. No findings of fact or decision of the Secretary shall be reviewed by any person, tribunal, or governmental agency except as herein provided. No action against the United States, the Secretary, or any officer or employee thereof shall be brought under section 1331 or 1346 of title 28 to recover on any claim arising under this subchapter."

The Government contends that the third sentence of § 405(h) by its terms prevents any resort to the grant of general federal-question jurisdiction contained in 28 U. S. C. § 1331.^[9] It finds support for this construction in Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U. S. 749, 756-762 (1975), and Heckler v. Ringer, 466 U. S. 602, 614-616, 620-626 (1984). Respondents counter that the dispositions in these two cases are consistent with the view that Congress' purpose was to make clear that whatever specific procedures it provided for judicial review of final action by the Secretary were exclusive, and could not be circumvented by resort to the general jurisdiction of the federal courts.^[10] Cf. Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U. S., at 764-765; Heckler v. Ringer, 466 U. S., at 621-622.

[680] Whichever may be the better reading of Salfi and Ringer, we need not pass on the meaning of § 405(h) in the abstract to resolve this case. Section 405(h) does not apply on its own terms to Part B of the Medicare program, but is instead incorporated mutatis mutandis by § 1395ii. The legislative history of both the statute establishing the Medicare program and the 1972 amendments thereto provides specific evidence of Congress' intent to foreclose review only of "amount determinations" — i. e., those "quite minor matters," 118 Cong. Rec. 33992 (1972) (remarks of Sen. Bennett), remitted finally and exclusively to adjudication by private insurance carriers in a "fair hearing."^[11] By the same token, matters which Congress did not delegate to private carriers, such as challenges to the validity of the Secretary's instructions and regulations, are cognizable in courts of law. In the face of this persuasive evidence of legislative intent, we will not indulge the Government's assumption that Congress contemplated review by carriers of "trivial" monetary claims, ibid., but intended no review at all of substantial statutory and constitutional challenges to the Secretary's administration of Part B of the Medicare program.^[12] This is an extreme position, and one [681] we would be most reluctant to adopt without "a showing of `clear and convincing evidence,' " Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S., at 141, to overcome the "strong presumption that Congress did not mean to prohibit all judicial review" of executive action, Dunlop v. Bachowski, 421 U. S., at 567. We ordinarily presume that Congress intends the executive to obey its statutory commands and, accordingly, that it expects the courts to grant relief when an executive agency violates such a command. That presumption has not been surmounted here.^[13]

[682] The judgment of the Court of Appeals is

Affirmed.

JUSTICE REHNQUIST took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

[1] Jack R. Bierig filed a brief for the American Medical Association as amicus curiae urging affirmance.

[2] The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in conflict with the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, has held that regulations promulgated under Part B of the Medicare program are insulated from judicial review. See Starnes v. Schweiker, 748 F. 2d 217, 218 (1984) (per curiam), cert. denied, 471 U. S. 1017 (1985).

[3] In fact, we did so twice. We first granted the petition for a writ of certiorari to allow the Court of Appeals to consider its jurisdictional ruling in the light of Heckler v. Ringer, 466 U. S. 602 (1984). 467 U. S. 1223 (1984). On remand, the Court of Appeals ultimately decided to reinstate its original judgment, see Michigan Academy of Family Physicians v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, 757 F. 2d 91 (1985); Michigan Academy of Family Physicians v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, 751 F. 2d 809 (1984), whereupon we issued the writ on which the judgment is now before us. 474 U. S. 815 (1985).

[4] See, e. g., Lindahl v. Office of Personnel Management, 470 U. S. 768, 778 (1985); Dunlop v. Bachowski, 421 U. S., at 567; Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U. S. 402, 410 (1971); Barlow v. Collins, 397 U. S. 159, 166-167 (1970) ("Indeed, judicial review of such administrative action is the rule, and nonreviewability an exception which must be demonstrated"). See also Wong Wing Hang v. INS, 360 F. 2d 715, 718 (CA2 1966) (Friendly, J.) ("[O]nly in the rare — some say non-existent — case . . . may review for `abuse' be precluded"). Of course, this Court has "never applied the `clear and convincing evidence' standard in the strict evidentiary sense"; nevertheless, the standard serves as "a useful reminder to courts that, where substantial doubt about the congressional intent exists, the general presumption favoring judicial review of administrative action is controlling." Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, 467 U. S. 340, 350-351 (1984).

A strong presumption finds support in a wealth of scholarly literature. See, e. g., 2 K. Davis, Administrative Law § 9:6, p. 240 (1979) (praising "the case law since 1974" for being "strongly on the side of reviewability"); L. Jaffe, Judicial Control of Administrative Action 327 (1965) ("An agency is not an island entire of itself. It is one of the many rooms in the magnificent mansion of the law. The very subordination of the agency to judicial jurisdiction is intended to proclaim the premise that each agency is to be brought into harmony with the totality of the law, the law as it is found in the statute at hand, the statute book at large, the principles and conceptions of the `common law,' and the ultimate guarantees associated with the Constitution"); B. Schwartz, Administrative Law § 8.1, p. 436 (2d ed. 1984) ("The responsibility of enforcing the limits of statutory grants of authority is a judicial function; . . . [w]ithout judicial review, statutory limits would be naught but empty words"); Jaffe, The Right to Judicial Review I, 71 Harv. L. Rev. 401, 432 (1958) ("[J]udicial review is the rule. . . . It is a basic right; it is a traditional power and the intention to exclude it must be made specifically manifest"); Shapiro, Administrative Discretion: The Next Stage, 92 Yale L. J. 1487, 1489, n. 11 (1983) (since passage of the APA, the sustained effort of administrative law has been to "continuously narro[w] the category of actions considered to be so discretionary as to be exempted from review").

[5] "The congressional intent necessary to overcome the presumption may also be inferred from contemporaneous judicial construction barring review and the congressional acquiescence in it, see, e. g., Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U. S. 160 (1948), or from the collective import of legislative and judicial history behind a particular statute, see, e. g., Heikkila v. Barber, 345 U. S. 229 (1953). More important for purposes of this case, the presumption favoring judicial review of administrative action may be overcome by inferences of intent drawn from the statutory scheme as a whole. See, e. g., Morris v. Gressette, 432 U. S. 491 (1977); Switchmen v. National Mediation Board, 320 U. S. 297 (1943)." Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, 467 U. S., at 349.

[6] The pertinent text of § 1395ff reads as follows:

"(a) Entitlement to and amount of benefits

"The determination of whether an individual is entitled to benefits under part A or part B, and the determination of the amount of benefits under part A, shall be made by the Secretary in accordance with regulations prescribed by him.

"(b) Appeal by individuals

"(1) Any individual dissatisfied with any determination under subsection (a) of this section as to —

"(A) whether he meets the conditions of section 426 or section 426a of this title [which set forth eligibility requirements to be satisfied before an individual is permitted to participate in Part A of the Medicare program], or

"(B) whether he is eligible to enroll and has enrolled pursuant to the provisions of part B of [the Medicare program] . . . , or,

"(C) the amount of the benefits under part A (including a determination where such amount is determined to be zero)

shall be entitled to a hearing thereon by the Secretary to the same extent as is provided in section 405(b) of this title and to judicial review of the Secretary's final decision after such hearing as is provided in section 405(g) of this title."

[7] Medicare Carrier's Manual § 12016 (1985). In a "fair hearing" conducted pursuant to § 1395u(b)(3)(C), see 42 CFR § 405.820 (1985), the carrier designates a hearing officer, § 405.823, whose jurisdiction is circumscribed by regulation as follows:

"The hearing officer in exercising the authority to conduct a hearing under section 1842(b)(3)(C) of the Act is to comply with all the provisions of title XVIII of the Act and regulations issued thereunder, as well as with policy statements, instructions, and other guides issued by the Health Care Financing Administration in accordance with the Secretary's agreement with the carriers." § 405.860.

One of those guides is a compilation of instruction prepared by the Secretary and entitled the "Carrier's Manual." Section 12016 of the Manual, part of which is quoted in text, provides as follows:

"Authority — the HO [Hearing Officer] occupies a significant position in the administration appeals process. Authority of the HO is limited to the extent that he must comply with all provisions of title XVIII of the Act and regulations issued thereunder, as well as with HCFA. The HO may not overrule the provisions of the law or interpret them in a way different than HCFA does when he disagrees with their intent; nor may he use hearing decisions as a vehicle for commenting upon the legality, constitutional or otherwise, of any provision of the Act or regulations relevant to the Medicare Program."

[8] The fourth footnote of our opinion in Heckler v. Ringer, 466 U. S., at 608-609, n. 4, on which the Government relies for the proposition that Part B challenges are never cognizable in a judicial forum, merely declined to review "claims for Part B benefits." Id., at 609, n. 4. The single sentence in which we disposed of respondents' claim rested entirely on Erika and its companion case of Schweiker v. McClure, 456 U. S. 188 (1982). (Schweiker upheld the constitutionality of "fair hearing" proceedings conducted by private insurance carriers against a Due Process Clause attack.) We did not, in that single sentence, extend the preclusion of judicial review beyond the Part B "amount determinations" with which both Erika and that part of the Ringer opinion were concerned.

[9] The Government also argues that the challenged regulation is a "decision of the Secretary" which the second sentence of § 405(h) excepts from "revie[w] by any . . . tribunal." The Government's assumption that the regulation is such a decision, however, ignores the contextual definition of "decision" in the first sentence as those determinations made by "the Secretary after a hearing." The purpose of "the first two sentences of § 405(h)," as we made clear in Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U. S. 749, 757 (1975), is to "assure that administrative exhaustion will be required." Respondents' attack on the regulation here is not subject to such a requirement because there is no hearing, and thus no administrative remedy, to exhaust.

[10] See Ellis v. Blum, 643 F. 2d 68, 74 (CA2 1981) (Friendly, J.). Cf. S. Rep. No. 734, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., 52 (1939); H. R. Rep. No. 728, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., 43-44 (1939).

[11] In this connection it bears mention that the legislative history summarized in the preceding section speaks to provisions for appeal generically, and is thus as probative of congressional intent in enacting § 1395ii as it is of § 1395ff. See S. Rep. No. 404, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 54 (1965) ("Appeals"); H. R. Rep. No. 213, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 47 (1965) ("Appeals"); H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 92-1605, p. 61 (1972) ("CLARIFICATION OF MEDICARE APPEAL PROCEDURES"); 118 Cong. Rec. 33991 (1972) ("DETERMINATIONS AND APPEALS") (caption to amendment proposed by Sen. Bennett).

[12] We do not believe that our decision will open the floodgates to millions of Part B Medicare claims. Unlike the determinations of amounts of benefits, the method by which such amounts are determined ordinarily affects vast sums of money and thus differs qualitatively from the "quite minor matters" review of which Congress confined to hearings by carriers. In addition, as one commentator pointed out, "permitting review only [of] . . . a particular statutory or administrative standard . . . would not result in a costly flood of litigation, because the validity of a standard can be readily established, at times even in a single case." Note, 97 Harv. L. Rev. 778, 792 (1984) (footnote omitted). We observed no flood of litigation in the first 20 years of operation of Part B of the Medicare program, and we seriously doubt that we will be inundated in the future.

[13] Our disposition avoids the "serious constitutional question" that would arise if we construed § 1395ii to deny a judicial forum for constitutional claims arising under Part B of the Medicare program. Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U. S., at 762 (citing Johnson v. Robison, 415 U. S. 361, 366-367 (1974). See Yakus v. United States, 321 U. S. 414, 433-444 (1944); St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States, 298 U. S. 38, 84 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring); Gunther, Congressional Power to Curtail Federal Court Jurisdiction: An Opinionated Guide to the Ongoing Debate, 36 Stan. L. Rev. 895, 921, n. 113 (1984) ("[A]ll agree that Congress cannot bar all remedies for enforcing federal constitutional rights"). Cf. Hart, The Power of Congress to Limit the Jurisdiction of Federal Courts: An Exercise in Dialectic, 66 Harv. L. Rev. 1362, 1378-1379 (1953). It also accords with our decision in Schweiker v. McClure, 456 U. S. 188 (1982), in which we resolved a constitutional challenge arising under Part B of the Medicare program. Although the Government notes, quite accurately, that our opinion in McClure makes no mention of the jurisdictional question, we can hardly be charged with overlooking that point. McClure was argued and announced the same day as Erika, a case which did concern the judicial competence to review a challenge arising under Part B; it was written by the same Member of this Court who authored Erika, immediately precedes Erika in the United States Reports, and contains a number of cross-references to that opinion. Finally, we cannot, as the Government would have us, dismiss respondents' constitutional attack as insubstantial — that is to say, "essentially fictitious," "obviously frivolous," and "obviously without merit" — under Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U. S. 528, 537 (1974) (internal quotations omitted), as would be necessary to decline jurisdiction over the case. Both courts below found the classification embodied in the regulation to be "irrational," see supra, at 668-669, and although this finding was made with respect to respondents' statutory claims, it surely casts sufficient doubt on the constitutionality of the classification under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses to merit resolution of the constitutional challenge.

HECKLER, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES v. CHANEY et al.

No. 83-1878.

Argued December 8, 1984

Decided March 20, 1985

*822Rehnquist, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Burger, C. J., and Brennan, White, Blackmun, Powell, Stevens, and O’Connor, JJ., joined. Brennan, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 838. Marshall, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 840.

Deputy Solicitor General Getter argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Lee, Acting Assistant Attorney General Willard, Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Leonard Schaitman, John M. Rogers, Thomas Scarlett, and Michael P. Peskoe.

Steven M. Kristovich argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were David E. Kendall, Julius LeVonne Chambers, James M. Nabrit III, John Charles Boger, James S. Liebman, and Anthony G. Amsterdam.*

*

A brief of amicus curiae urging reversal was filed for the Washington Legal Foundation by Daniel J. Popeo, Paul D. Kamenar, George C. Smith, and Stephen Weitzman.

Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the American Society of Law and Medicine et al. by James M. Doyle; and for the Public Citizen by Alan B. Morrison and William B. Schultz.

*823Justice Rehnquist

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question of the extent to which a decision of an administrative agency to exercise its “discretion” not to undertake certain enforcement actions is subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. §501 et seq. (APA). Respondents are several prison inmates convicted of capital offenses and sentenced to death by lethal injection of drugs. They petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), alleging that under the circumstances the use of these drugs for capital punishment violated the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 52 Stat. 1040, as amended, 21 U. S. C. §301 et seq. (FDCA), and requesting that the FDA take various enforcement actions to prevent these violations. The FDA refused their request. We review here a decision of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which held the FDA’s refusal to take enforcement actions both reviewable and an abuse of discretion, arid remanded the case with directions that the agency be required “to fulfill its statutory function.” 231 U. S. App. D. C. 136, 153, 718 F. 2d 1174, 1191 (1983).

I — H

Respondents have been sentenced to death by lethal injection of drugs under the laws of the States of Oklahoma and Texas. Those States, and several others, have recently adopted this method for carrying out the capital sentence. Respondents first petitioned the FDA, claiming that the drugs used by the States for this purpose, although approved by the FDA for the medical purposes stated on their labels, were not approved for use in human executions. They alleged that the drugs had not been tested for the purpose for which they were to be used, and that, given that the drugs would likely be administered by untrained personnel, it was also likely that the drugs would not induce the quick and painless death intended. They urged that use of these drugs for human execution was the “unapproved use of an approved drug” and *824constituted a violation of the Act’s prohibitions against “mis-branding.”1 They also suggested that the FDCA’s requirements for approval of “new drugs” applied, since these drugs were now being used for a new purpose. Accordingly, respondents claimed that the FDA was required to approve the drugs as “safe and effective” for human execution before they could be distributed in interstate commerce. See 21 U. S. C. § 355. They therefore requested the FDA to take various investigatory and enforcement actions to prevent these perceived violations; they requested the FDA to affix warnings to the labels of all the drugs stating that they were unapproved and unsafe for human execution, to send statements to the drug manufacturers and prison administrators stating that the drugs should not be so used, and to adopt procedures for seizing the drugs from state prisons and to recommend the prosecution of all those in the chain of distribution who knowingly distribute or purchase the drugs with intent to use them for human execution.

The FDA Commissioner responded, refusing to take the requested actions. The Commissioner first detailed his disagreement with respondents’ understanding of the scope of FDA jurisdiction over the unapproved use of approved drugs for human execution, concluding that FDA jurisdiction in the area was generally unclear but in any event should not be exercised to interfere with this particular aspect of state criminal justice systems. He went on to state:

“Were FDA clearly to have jurisdiction in the area, moreover, we believe we would be authorized to decline to exercise it under our inherent discretion to decline to pursue certain enforcement matters. The unapproved use of approved drugs is an area in which the case law is far from uniform. Generally, enforcement proceedings in this area are initiated only when there is a serious *825danger to the public health or a blatant scheme to defraud. We cannot conclude that those dangers are present under State lethal injection laws, which are duly authorized statutory enactments in furtherance of proper State functions. ...”

Respondents then filed the instant suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming the same violations of the FDCA and asking that the FDA be required to take the same enforcement actions requested in the prior petition.2 Jurisdiction was grounded in the general federal-question jurisdiction statute, 28 U. S. C. § 1331, and review of the agency action was sought under the judicial review provisions of the APA, 5 U. S. C. §§701-706. The District Court granted summary judgment for petitioner. It began with the proposition that “decisions of executive departments and agencies to refrain from instituting investigative and enforcement proceedings are essentially unreviewable by the courts.” Chaney v. Schweiker, Civ. No. 81-2265 (DC, Aug. 30, 1982), App. to Pet. for Cert. 74a (emphasis in original). The court then cited case law stating that nothing in the FDCA indicated an intent to circumscribe the FDA’s enforcement discretion or to make it reviewable.

A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed. The majority began by discussing the FDA’s jurisdiction over the unapproved use of approved drugs for human execution, and concluded that the FDA did have jurisdiction over such a use. The court then addressed the Government’s assertion of unreviewable dis*826cretion to refuse enforcement action. It first discussed this Court’s opinions which have held that there is a general presumption that all agency decisions are reviewable under the APA, at least to assess whether the actions were “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion.” See Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 139-141 (1967); 5 U. S. C. § 706(2)(A). It noted that the APA, 5 U. S. C. § 701, only precludes judicial review of final agency action — including refusals to act, see 6 U. S. C. §551(13) — when review is precluded by statute, or “committed to agency discretion by law.” Citing this Court’s opinions in Dunlop v. Bachowski, 421 U. S. 560 (1975), and Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U. S. 402 (1971), for the view that these exceptions should be narrowly construed, the court held that the “committed to agency discretion by law” exception of § 701(a)(2) should be invoked only where the substantive statute left the courts with “no law to apply.” 231 U. S. App. D. C., at 146, 718 F. 2d, at 1184 (citing Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, supra, at 410). The court cited Dunlop as holding that this presumption “applies with no less force to review of . . . agency decisions to refrain from enforcement action.” 231 U. S. App. D. C., at 146, 718 F. 2d, at 1184.

The court found “law to apply” in the form of a FDA policy statement which indicated that the agency was “obligated” to investigate the unapproved use of an approved drug when such use became “widespread” or “endangered] the public health.” Id., at 148, 718 F. 2d, at 1186 (citing 37 Fed. Reg. 16504 (1972)). The court held that this policy statement constituted a “rule” and was considered binding by the FDA. Given the policy statement indicating that the FDA should take enforcement action in this area, and the strong presumption that all agency action is subject to judicial review, the court concluded that review of the agency’s refusal was not foreclosed. It then proceeded to assess whether the agency’s decision not to act was “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion.” Citing evidence that the FDA assumed *827jurisdiction over drugs used to put animals to sleep3 and the unapproved uses of drugs on prisoners in clinical experiments, the court found that the FDA’s refusal, for the reasons given, was irrational, and that respondents’ evidence that use of the drugs could lead to a cruel and protracted death was entitled to more searching consideration. The court therefore remanded the case to the District Court, to order the FDA “to fulfill its statutory function.”

The dissenting judge expressed the view that an agency’s decision not to institute enforcement action generally is un-reviewable, and that such exercises of “prosecutorial discretion” presumptively fall within the APA’s exception for agency actions “committed to agency discretion by law.” He noted that traditionally courts have been wary of second-guessing agency decisions not to enforce, given the agency’s expertise and better understanding of its enforcement policies and available resources. He likewise concluded that nothing in the FDCA or FDA regulations would provide a basis for a court’s review of this agency decision. A divided Court of Appeals denied the petition for rehearing. 233 U. S. App. D. C. 146, 724 F. 2d 1030 (1984). We granted certiorari to review the implausible result that the FDA is required to exercise its enforcement power to ensure that States only use drugs that are “safe and effective” for human execution. 467 U. S. 1251 (1984). We reverse.

I — H I — I

The Court of Appeals’ decision addressed three questions: (1) whether the FDA had jurisdiction to undertake the enforcement actions requested, (2) whether if it did have juris*828diction its refusal to take those actions was subject to judicial review, and (3) whether if reviewable its refusal was arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion. In reaching our conclusion that the Court of Appeals was wrong, however, we need not and do not address the thorny question of the FDA’s jurisdiction. For us, this case turns on the important question of the extent to which determinations by the FDA not to exercise its enforcement authority over the use of drugs in interstate commerce may be judicially reviewed. That decision in turn involves the construction of two separate but necessarily interrelated statutes, the APA and the FDCA.

The APA’s comprehensive provisions for judicial review of “agency actions” are contained in 5 U. S. C. §§701-706. Any person “adversely affected or aggrieved” by agency action, see § 702, including a “failure to act,” is entitled to “judicial review thereof,” as long as the action is a “final agency action for which there is no other adequate remedy in a court,” see § 704. The standards to be applied on review are governed by the provisions of § 706. But before any review at all may be had, a party must first clear the hurdle of § 701(a). That section provides that the chapter on judicial review “applies, according to the provisions thereof, except to the extent that — (1) statutes preclude judicial review; or (2) agency action is committed to agency discretion by law.” Petitioner urges that the decision of the FDA to refuse enforcement is an action “committed to agency discretion by law” under § 701(a)(2).

This Court has not had occasion to interpret this second exception in § 701(a) in any great detail. On its face, the section does not obviously lend itself to any particular construction; indeed, one might wonder what difference exists between § (a)(1) and § (a)(2). The former section seems easy in application; it requires construction of the substantive statute involved to determine whether Congress intended to preclude judicial review of certain decisions. That is the approach taken with respect to § (a)(1) in cases such as South*829ern R. Co. v. Seaboard Allied Milling Corp, 442 U. S. 444 (1979), and Dunlop v. Bachowski, 421 U. S., at 567. But one could read the language “committed to agency discretion by law” in § (a)(2) to require a similar inquiry. In addition, commentators have pointed out that construction of § (a)(2) is further complicated by the tension between a literal reading of § (a)(2), which exempts from judicial review those decisions committed to agency “discretion,” and the primary scope of review prescribed by § 706(2)(A) — whether the agency’s action was “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion.” How is it, they ask, that an action committed to agency discretion can be unreviewable and yet courts still can review agency actions for abuse of that discretion? See 5 K. Davis, Administrative Law § 28:6 (1984) (hereafter Davis); Berger, Administrative Arbitrariness and Judicial Review, 65 Colum. L. Rev. 55, 58 (1965). The APA’s legislative history provides little help on this score. Mindful, however, of the common-sense principle of statutory construction that sections of a statute generally should be read “to give effect, if possible, to every clause . . . ,” see United States v. Menasche, 348 U. S. 528, 538-539 (1955), we think there is a proper construction of § (a)(2) which satisfies each of these concerns.

This Court first discussed § (a)(2) in Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U. S. 402 (1971). That case dealt with the Secretary of Transportation’s approval of the building of an interstate highway through a park in Memphis, Tennessee. The relevant federal statute provided that the Secretary “shall not approve” any program or project using public parkland unless the Secretary first determined that no feasible alternatives were available. Id., at 411. Interested citizens challenged the Secretary’s approval under the APA, arguing that he had not satisfied the substantive statute’s requirements. This Court first addressed the “threshold question” of whether the agency’s action was at all reviewable. After setting out the language of § 701(a), the Court stated:

*830“In this case, there is no indication that Congress sought to prohibit judicial review and there is most certainly no ‘showing of “clear and convincing evidence” of a . . . legislative intent’ to restrict access to judicial review. Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 141 (1967). . . .

“Similarly, the Secretary’s decision here does not fall within the exception for action ‘committed to agency discretion.’ This is a very narrow exception. . . . The legislative history of the Administrative Procedure Act indicates that it is applicable in those rare instances where ‘statutes are drawn in such broad terms that in a given case there is no law to apply.’ S. Rep. No. 752, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., 26 (1945).” Overton Park, supra, at 410 (footnote omitted).

The above quote answers several of the questions raised by the language of § 701(a), although it raises others. First, it clearly separates the exception provided by § (a)(1) from the § (a)(2) exception. The former applies when Congress has expressed an intent to preclude judicial review. The latter applies in different circumstances; even where Congress has not affirmatively precluded review, review is not to be had if the statute is drawn so that a court would have no meaningful standard against which to judge the agency’s exercise of discretion. In such a case, the statute (“law”) can be taken to have “committed” the decisionmaking to the agency’s judgment absolutely. This construction avoids conflict with the “abuse of discretion” standard of review in § 706 — if no judicially manageable standards are available for judging how and when an agency should exercise its discretion, then it is impossible to evaluate agency action for “abuse of discretion.” In addition, this construction satisfies the principle of statutory construction mentioned earlier, by identifying a separate class of cases to which § 701(a)(2) applies.

To this point our analysis does not differ significantly from that of the Court of Appeals. That court purported to apply *831the “no law to apply” standard of Overton Park. We disagree, however, with that court’s insistence that the “narrow construction” of § (a)(2) required application of a presumption of reviewability even to an agency’s decision not to undertake certain enforcement actions. Here we think the Court of Appeals broke with tradition, case law, and sound reasoning.

Overton Park did not involve an agency’s refusal to take requested enforcement action. It involved an affirmative act of approval under a statute that set clear guidelines for determining when such approval should be given. Refusals to take enforcement steps generally involve precisely the opposite situation, and in that situation we think the presumption is that judicial review is not available. This Court has recognized on several occasions over many years that an agency’s decision not to prosecute or enforce, whether through civil or criminal process, is a decision generally committed to an agency’s absolute discretion. See United States v. Batchelder, 442 U. S. 114, 123-124 (1979); United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683, 693 (1974); Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171, 182 (1967); Confiscation Cases, 7 Wall. 454 (1869). This recognition of the existence of discretion is attributable in no small part to the general unsuitability for judicial review of agency decisions to refuse enforcement.

The reasons for this general unsuitability are many. First, an agency decision not to enforce often involves a complicated balancing of a number of factors which are peculiarly within its expertise. Thus, the agency must not only assess whether a violation has occurred, but whether agency resources are best spent on this violation or another, whether the agency is likely to succeed if it acts, whether the particular enforcement action requested best fits the agency’s overall policies, and, indeed, whether the agency has enough resources to undertake the action at all. An agency generally cannot act against each technical violation of the statute it is charged with enforcing. The agency is far better equipped than the courts to deal with the many variables in*832volved in the proper ordering of its priorities. Similar concerns animate the principles of administrative law that courts generally will defer to an agency’s construction of the statute it is charged with implementing, and to the procedures it adopts for implementing that statute. See Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U. S. 519, 543 (1978); Train v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 421 U. S. 60, 87 (1975).

In addition to these administrative concerns, we note that when an agency refuses to act it generally does not exercise its coercive power over an individual’s liberty or property rights, and thus does not infringe upon areas that courts often are called upon to protect. Similarly, when an agency does act to enforce, that action itself provides a focus for judicial review, inasmuch as the agency must have exercised its power in some manner. The action at least can be reviewed to determine whether the agency exceeded its statutory powers. See, e. g., FTC v. Klesner, 280 U. S. 19 (1929). Finally, we recognize that an agency’s refusal to institute proceedings shares to some extent the characteristics of the decision of a prosecutor in the Executive Branch not to indict — a decision which has long been regarded as the special province of the Executive Branch, inasmuch as it is the Executive who is charged by the Constitution to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” U. S. Const., Art. II, §3.

We of course only list the above concerns to facilitate understanding of our conclusion that an agency’s decision not to take enforcement action should be presumed immune from judicial review under § 701(a)(2). For good reasons, such a decision has traditionally been “committed to agency discretion,” and we believe that the Congress enacting the APA did not intend to alter that tradition. Cf. 5 Davis §28:5 (APA did not significantly alter the “common law” of judicial review of agency action). In so stating, we emphasize that the decision is only presumptively unreviewable; the pre*833sumption may be rebutted where the substantive statute has provided guidelines for the agency to follow in exercising its enforcement powers.4 Thus, in establishing this presumption in the APA, Congress did not set agencies free to disregard legislative direction in the statutory scheme that the agency administers. Congress may limit an agency’s exercise of enforcement power if it wishes, either by setting substantive priorities, or by otherwise circumscribing an agency’s power to discriminate among issues or cases it will pursue. How to determine when Congress has done so is the question left open by Overton Park.

Dunlop v. Bachowski, 421 U. S. 560 (1975), relied upon heavily by respondents and the majority in the Court of Appeals, presents an example of statutory language which supplied sufficient standards to rebut the presumption of un-reviewability. Dunlop involved a suit by a union employee, under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, 29 U. S. C. § 481 et seq. (LMRDA), asking the Secretary of Labor to investigate and file suit to set aside a union election. Section 482 provided that, upon filing of a complaint by a union member, “[t]he Secretary shall investigate such complaint and, if he finds probable cause to believe that a violation . . . has occurred ... he shall . . . bring a civil action . . . .” After investigating the plaintiff’s claims the Secretary of Labor declined to file suit, and the plaintiff sought judicial review under the APA. This Court held that *834review was available. It rejected the Secretary’s argument that the statute precluded judicial review, and in a footnote it stated its agreement with the conclusion of the Court of Appeals that the decision was not “an unreviewable exercise of prosecutorial discretion.” 421 U. S., at 567, n. 7. Our textual references to the “strong presumption” of review-ability in Dunlop were addressed only to the § (a)(1) exception; we were content to rely on the Court of Appeals’ opinion to hold that the § (a)(2) exception did not apply. The Court of Appeals, in turn, had found the “principle of absolute pros-ecutorial discretion” inapplicable, because the language of the LMRDA indicated that the Secretary was required to file suit if certain “clearly defined” factors were present. The decision therefore was not “ ‘beyond the judicial capacity to supervise.’” Bachowski v. Brennan, 502 F. 2d 79, 87-88 (CA3 1974) (quoting Davis §28.16, p. 984 (1970 Supp.)).

Dunlop is thus consistent with a general presumption of unreviewability of decisions not to enforce. The statute being administered quite clearly withdrew discretion from the agency and provided guidelines for exercise of its enforcement power. Our decision that review was available was not based on “pragmatic considerations,” such as those cited by the Court of Appeals, see 231 U. S. App. D. C., at 147, 718 F. 2d, at 1185, that amount to an assessment of whether the interests at stake are important enough to justify intervention in the agencies’ decisionmaking. The danger that agencies may not carry out their delegated powers with sufficient vigor does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that courts are the most appropriate body to police this aspect of their performance. That decision is in the first instance for Congress, and we therefore turn to the FDCA to determine whether in this case Congress has provided us with “law to apply.” If it has indicated an intent to circumscribe agency enforcement discretion, and has provided meaningful standards for defining the limits of that discretion, there is “law to apply” under § 701(a)(2), and courts *835may require that the agency follow that law; if it has not, then an agency refusal to institute proceedings is a decision “committed to agency discretion by law” within the meaning of that section.

Ill

To enforce the various substantive prohibitions contained in the FDCA, the Act provides for injunctions, 21 U. S. C. §332, criminal sanctions, §§333 and 335, and seizure of any offending food, drug, or cosmetic article, § 334. The Act’s general provision for enforcement, § 372, provides only that “[t]he Secretary is authorized to conduct examinations and investigations ...” (emphasis added). Unlike the statute at issue in Dunlop, § 332 gives no indication of when an injunction should be sought, and § 334, providing for seizures, is framed in the permissive — the offending food, drug, or cosmetic “shall be liable to be proceeded against.” The section on criminal sanctions states baldly that any person who violates the Act’s substantive prohibitions “shall be imprisoned ... or fined.” Respondents argue that this statement mandates criminal prosecution of every violator of the Act but they adduce no indication in case law or legislative history that such was Congress’ intention in using this language, which is commonly found in the criminal provisions of Title 18 of the United States Code. See, e. g., 18 U. S. C. §471 (counterfeiting); 18 U. S. C. § 1001 (false statements to Government officials); 18 U. S. C. § 1341 (mail fraud). We are unwilling to attribute such a sweeping meaning to this language, particularly since the Act charges the Secretary only with recommending prosecution; any criminal prosecutions must be instituted by the Attorney General. The Act’s enforcement provisions thus commit complete discretion to the Secretary to decide how and when they should be exercised.

Respondents nevertheless present three separate authorities that they claim provide the courts with sufficient indicia of an intent to circumscribe enforcement discretion. Two of these may be dealt with summarily. First, we reject *836respondents’ argument that the Act’s substantive prohibitions of “misbranding” and the introduction of “new drugs” absent agency approval, see 21 U. S. C. §§ 352(f)(1), 855, supply us with “law to apply.” These provisions are simply irrelevant to the agency’s discretion to refuse to initiate proceedings.

We also find singularly unhelpful the agency “policy statement” on which the Court of Appeals placed great reliance. We would have difficulty with this statement’s vague language even if it were a properly adopted agency rule. Although the statement indicates that the agency considered itself “obligated” to take certain investigative actions, that language did not arise in the course of discussing the agency’s discretion to exercise its enforcement power, but rather in the context of describing agency policy with respect to unapproved uses of approved drugs by physicians. In addition, if read to circumscribe agency enforcement discretion, the statement conflicts with the agency rule on judicial review, 21 CFR § 10.45(d)(2) (1984), which states that “[t]he Commissioner shall object to judicial review ... if (i) [t]he matter is committed by law to the discretion of the Commissioner, e. g., a decision to recommend or not to recommend civil or criminal enforcement action . . . .” But in any event the policy statement was attached to a rule that was never adopted. Whatever force such a statement might have, and leaving to one side the problem of whether an agency’s rules might under certain circumstances provide courts with adequate guidelines for informed judicial review of decisions not to enforce, we do not think the language of the agency’s “policy statement” can plausibly be read to override the agency’s express assertion of unreviewable discretion contained in the above rule.5

*837Respondents’ third argument, based upon §306 of the FDCA, merits only slightly more consideration. That section provides:

“Nothing in this chapter shall be construed as requiring the Secretary to report for prosecution, or for the institution of libel or injunction proceedings, minor violations of this chapter whenever he believes that the public interest will be adequately served by a suitable written notice or ruling.” 21 U. S. C. §336.

Respondents seek to draw from this section the negative implication that the Secretary is required to report for prosecution all “major” violations of the Act, however those might be defined, and that it therefore supplies the needed indication of an intent to limit agency enforcement discretion. We think that this section simply does not give rise to the negative implication which respondents seek to draw from it. The section is not addressed to agency proceedings designed to discover the existence of violations, but applies only to a situation where a violation has already been established to the satisfaction of the agency. We do not believe the section speaks to the criteria which shall be used by the agency for investigating possible violations of the Act.

IV

We therefore conclude that the presumption that agency decisions not to institute proceedings are unreviewable under 5 U. S. C. § 701(a)(2) is not overcome by the enforcement provisions of the FDCA. The FDA’s decision not to take the *838enforcement actions requested by respondents is therefore not subject to judicial review under the APA. The general exception to reviewability provided by § 701(a)(2) for action “committed to agency discretion” remains a narrow one, see Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U. S. 402 (1971), but within that exception are included agency refusals to institute investigative or enforcement proceedings, unless Congress has indicated otherwise. In so holding, we essentially leave to Congress, and not to the courts, the decision as to whether an agency’s refusal to institute proceedings should be judicially reviewable. No colorable claim is made in this case that the agency’s refusal to institute proceedings violated any constitutional rights of respondents, and we do not address the issue that would be raised in such a case. Cf. Johnson v. Robison, 415 U. S. 361, 366 (1974); Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 372-374 (1886). The fact that the drugs involved in this case are ultimately to be used in imposing the death penalty must not lead this Court or other courts to import profound differences of opinion over the meaning of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution into the domain of administrative law.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is

Reversed.

1

See 21 U. S. C. §352(f): “A drug or device shall be deemed to be misbranded . . . [u]nless its labeling bears (1) adequate directions for use . . .

2

Although respondents also requested an evidentiary hearing, the District Court regarded this hearing as having “no purpose apart from serving as a prelude to the pursuit of the very enforcement steps that plaintiffs demanded in their administrative petition.” Chaney v. Schweiker, Civ. No. 81-2265 (DC, Aug. 30, 1982), App. to Pet. for Cert. 77a, n. 15. Respondents have not challenged the statement that all they sought were certain enforcement actions, and this case therefore does not involve the question of agency discretion not to invoke rulemaking proceedings.

3

In response to respondents’ petition, the Commissioner had explained that the FDA had assumed jurisdiction in these cases because, unlike the drugs used for human execution, these drugs were “new drugs” intended by the manufacturer to be used for this purpose, and thus fell squarely within the FDA’s approval jurisdiction. The Court of Appeals did not explain why this distinction was not “rational.”

4

We do not have in this case a refusal by the agency to institute proceedings based solely on the belief that it lacks jurisdiction. Nor do we have a situation where it could justifiably be found that the agency has “consciously and expressly adopted a general policy” that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities. See, e. g., Adams v. Richardson, 156 U. S. App. D. C. 267, 480 F. 2d 1159 (1973) (en bane). Although we express no opinion on whether such decisions would be unreviewable under § 701(a)(2), we note that in those situations the statute conferring authority on the agency might indicate that such decisions were not “committed to agency discretion.”

5

Respondents also urge, as did the Court of Appeals, that a statement by the FDA’s lawyers in a footnote to to their “memorandum in support of dismissal” in the District Court indicates that the agency considers the “policy statement” “binding.” The footnote said that the “Federal Regis*837ter notice . . . sets forth the agency’s current position o[n] the legal status of approved labeling for prescription drugs.” The statement from the memorandum cites no authority, is taken out of context, and on its face does not indicate that the agency considered this position “binding” in any sense of the word. Moreover, we find it difficult to believe that statements of agency counsel in litigation against private individuals can be taken to establish “rules” that bind an entire agency prospectively. Such would turn orderly process on its head.

Justice Brennan,

concurring.

Today the Court holds that individual decisions of the Food and Drug Administration not to take enforcement action in response to citizen requests are presumptively not reviewable under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. §§701-706. I concur in this decision. This general presumption is based on the view that, in the normal course of events, Congress intends to allow broad discretion for its administrative agencies to make particular enforcement decisions, and there often may not exist readily discernible “law to apply” for courts to conduct judicial review of non-enforcement decisions. See Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U. S. 402, 410 (1971).

*839I also agree that, despite this general presumption, “Congress did not set agencies free to disregard legislative direction in the' statutory scheme that the agency administers.” Ante, at 833. Thus the Court properly does not decide today that nonenforcement decisions are unreviewable in cases where (1) an agency flatly claims that it has no statutory jurisdiction to reach certain conduct, ante, at 833, n. 4; (2) an agency engages in a pattern of nonenforcement of clear statutory language, as in Adams v. Richardson, 156 U. S. App. D. C. 267, 480 F. 2d 1159 (1973) (en banc), ante, at 833, n. 4; (3) an agency has refused to enforce a regulation lawfully promulgated and still in effect, ante, at 836;1 or (4) a nonenforcement decision violates constitutional rights, ante, at 838. It is possible to imagine other nonenforcement decisions made for entirely illegitimate reasons, for example, nonenforcement in return for a bribe, judicial review of which would not be foreclosed by the nonreviewability presumption. It may be presumed that Congress does not intend administrative agencies, agents of Congress’ own creation, to ignore clear jurisdictional, regulatory, statutory, or constitutional commands, and in some circumstances including those listed above the statutes or regulations at issue may well provide “law to apply” under 5 U. S. C. § 701(a)(2). Individual, isolated nonenforcement decisions, however, must be made by hundreds of agencies each day. It is entirely permissible to presume that Congress has not intended courts to review such mundane matters, absent either some indication of congressional intent to the contrary or proof of circumstances such as those set out above.

On this understanding of the scope of today’s decision, I join the Court’s opinion.2

1

Cf. Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Assn. v. State Farm Mutual Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29, 40-44 (1983) (failure to revoke lawfully a previously promulgated rule is reviewable under the APA).

2

I adhere to my view that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amend-*840merits, see Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 158, 227 (1976) (Brennan, J., dissenting). My concurrence here should not be misread as an expression of approval for the use of lethal injections to effect capital punishment as an independent matter. The Court is correct, however, that “profound differences of opinion over the meaning of the Eighth Amendment” should not influence our consideration of a question purely of statutory administrative law. Ante, at 838.

*840Justice Marshall,

concurring in the judgment.

Easy cases at times produce bad law, for in the rush to reach a clearly ordained result, courts may offer up principles, doctrines, and statements that calmer reflection, and a fuller understanding of their implications in concrete settings, would eschew. In my view, the “presumption of unreviewability” announced today is a product of that lack of discipline that easy cases make all too easy. The majority, eager to reverse what it goes out of its way to label as an “implausible result,” ante, at 827, not only does reverse, as I agree it should, but along the way creates out of whole cloth the notion that agency decisions not to take “enforcement action” are unreviewable unless Congress has rather specifically indicated otherwise. Because this “presumption of unreviewability” is fundamentally at odds with rule-of-law principles firmly embedded in our jurisprudence, because it seeks to truncate an emerging line of judicial authority subjecting enforcement discretion to rational and principled constraint, and because, in the end, the presumption may well be indecipherable, one can only hope that it will come to be understood as a relic of a particular factual setting in which the full implications of such a presumption were neither confronted nor understood.

I write separately to argue for a different basis of decision: that refusals to enforce, like other agency actions, are reviewable in the absence of a “clear and convincing” congressional intent to the contrary, but that such refusals warrant deference when, as in this case, there is nothing to suggest *841that an agency with enforcement discretion has abused that discretion.

I

In response to respondents’ petition, the FDA Commissioner stated that the FDA would not pursue the complaint

“under our inherent discretion to decline to pursue certain enforcement matters. The unapproved use of approved drugs is an area in which the case law is far from uniform. Generally, enforcement proceedings in this area are initiated only when there is a serious danger to the public health or a blatant scheme to defraud. We cannot conclude that those dangers are present under State lethal injection laws .... [W]e decline, as a matter of enforcement discretion, to pursue supplies of drugs under State control that will be used for execution by lethal injection.”

The FDA may well have been legally required to provide this statement of basis and purpose for its decision not to take the action requested. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, such a statement is required when an agency denies a “written application, petition, or other request of an interested person made in connection with any agency proceedings.”1 5 U. S. C. § 555(e). Whether this written explanation was legally required or not, however, it does provide a sufficient *842basis for holding, on the merits, that the FDA’s refusal to grant the relief requested was within its discretion.

First, respondents on summary judgment neither offered nor attempted to offer any evidence that the reasons for the FDA’s refusal to act were other than the reasons stated by the agency. Second, as the Court correctly concludes, the FDCA is not a mandatory statute that requires the FDA to prosecute all violations of the Act. Thus, the FDA clearly has significant discretion to choose which alleged violations of the Act to prosecute. Third, the basis on which the agency chose to exercise this discretion — that other problems were viewed as more pressing — generally will be enough to pass muster. Certainly it is enough to do so here, where the number of people currently affected by the alleged misbrand-ing is around 200, and where the drugs are integral elements in a regulatory scheme over which the States exercise pervasive and direct control.

When a statute does not mandate full enforcement, I agree with the Court that an agency is generally “far better equipped than the courts to deal with the many variables involved in the proper ordering of its priorities.” Ante, at 831-832. As long as the agency is choosing how to allocate finite enforcement resources, the agency’s choice will be entitled to substantial deference, for the choice among valid alternative enforcement policies is precisely the sort of choice over which agencies generally have been left substantial discretion by their enabling statutes. On the merits, then, a decision not to enforce that is based on valid resource-allocation decisions will generally not be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,” 5 U. S. C. § 706(2)(A). The decision in this case is no exception to this principle.

The Court, however, is not content to rest on this ground. Instead, the Court transforms the arguments for deferential review on the merits into the wholly different notion that “enforcement” decisions are presumptively unreviewable *843altogether — unreviewable whether the resource-allocation rationale is a sham, unreviewable whether enforcement is declined out of vindictive or personal motives, and unreviewable whether the agency has simply ignored the request for enforcement. But cf. Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U. S. 422 (1982) (due process and equal protection may prevent agency from ignoring complaint). But surely it is a far cry from asserting that agencies must be given substantial leeway in allocating enforcement resources among valid alternatives to suggesting that agency enforcement decisions are presumptively unreviewable no matter what factor caused the agency to stay its hand.

This “presumption of unreviewability” is also a far cry from prior understandings of the Administrative Procedure Act. As the Court acknowledges, the APA presumptively entitles any person “adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action,” 5 U. S. C. §702 — which is defined to include the “failure to act,” 5 U. S. C. §551 (13) — to judicial review of that action. That presumption can be defeated if the substantive statute precludes review, § 701(a)(1), or if the action is committed to agency discretion by law, § 701(a)(2), but as Justice Harlan’s opinion in Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136 (1967), made clear in interpreting the APA’s judicial review provisions:

“The legislative material elucidating [the APA] manifests a congressional intention that it cover a broad spectrum of administrative actions, and this Court has echoed that theme by noting that the Administrative Procedure Act’s ‘generous review provisions’ must be given a ‘hospitable’ interpretation. . . . [0]nly upon a showing of ‘clear and convincing evidence’ of a contrary legislative intent should the courts restrict access to judicial review.” Id., at 140-141 (citations omitted; footnote omitted).

See generally H. R. Rep. No. 1980, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 41 (1946) (to preclude APA review, a statute “must upon its face *844give clear and convincing evidence of an intent to withhold it”); cf. Moog Industries, Inc. v. FTC, 355 U. S. 411, 414 (1958) (Federal Trade Commission decisions to prosecute are reviewable and can be overturned when “patent abuse of discretion” demonstrated).2 Rather than confront Abbott Laboratories, perhaps the seminal case on judicial review under the APA, the Court chooses simply to ignore it.3 Instead, to support its new-found “presumption of unreviewability,” the Court resorts to completely undefined and unsubstantiated references to “tradition,” see ante, at 831, and to citation of four cases. See United States v. Batchelder, 442 U. S. 114 (1979); United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683 (1974); Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171 (1967); Confiscation Cases, 7 Wall. 454 (1869).4 Because the Court’s “tradition” rationale, which flies in the face of Abbott Laboratories, stands as a flat, unsupported ipse dixit, these four cases form the only doctrinal foundation for the majority’s presumption of unreviewability.

*845Yet these cases hardly support such a broad presumption with respect to agency refusal to take enforcement action. The only one of these cases to involve administrative action, Vaca v. Sipes, suggests, in dictum, that the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board has unreviewable discretion to refuse to initiate an unfair labor practice complaint. To the extent this dictum is sound, later cases indicate that unreviewability results from the particular structure of the National Labor Relations Act and the explicit statutory intent to withdraw review found in 29 U. S. C. § 153(d), rather than from some general “presumption of unreviewability” of enforcement decisions. See NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U. S. 132, 138 (1975).5 Neither Vaca nor Sears, Roebuck discusses the APA. The other three cases — Batch-elder, Nixon, and the Confiscation Cases — all involve pros-ecutorial discretion to enforce the criminal law. Batchelder does not maintain that such discretion is unreviewable, but only that the mere existence of prosecutorial discretion does not violate the Constitution. The Confiscation Cases, involving suits to confiscate property used in aid of rebellion, hold that, where the United States brings a criminal action that is “wholly for the benefit of the United States,” 7 Wall., at 455, a person who provides information leading to the action has no “vested” or absolute right to demand, “so far as the interests of the United States are concerned,” id., at 458, that the action be maintained. The half-sentence cited from Nixon, which states that the Executive has “absolute discretion to decide whether to prosecute a case,” 418 U. S., at 693, is the only apparent support the Court actually offers for even the limited notion that prosecutorial discretion in the criminal area is unreviewable. But that half-sentence is of course misleading, for Nixon held it an abuse of that discre*846tion to attempt to exercise it contrary to validly promulgated regulations. Thus, Nixon actually stands for a very different proposition than the one for which the Court cites it: faced with a specific claim of abuse of prosecutorial discretion, Nixon makes clear that courts are not powerless to intervene. And none of the other prosecutorial discretion cases upon which the Court rests involved a claim that discretion had been abused in some specific way.

Moreover, for at least two reasons it is inappropriate to rely on notions of prosecutorial discretion to hold agency inaction unreviewable. First, since the dictum in Nixon, the Court has made clear that prosecutorial discretion is not as unfettered or unreviewable as the half-sentence in Nixon suggests. As one of the leading commentators in this area has noted, “the case law since 1974 is strongly on the side of reviewability.” 2 K. Davis, Administrative Law §9:6, p. 240 (1979). In Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U. S. 21, 28 (1974), instead of invoking notions of “absolute” prosecutorial discretion, we held that certain potentially vindictive exercises of prosecutorial discretion were both reviewable and impermissible. The “retaliatory use” of prosecutorial power is no longer tolerated. Thigpen v. Roberts, 468 U. S. 27, 30 (1984). Nor do prosecutors have the discretion to induce guilty pleas through promises that are not kept. Blackledge v. Allison, 431 U. S. 63 (1977); Santobello v. New York, 404 U. S. 257, 262 (1971). And in rejecting on the merits a claim of improper prosecutorial conduct in Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U. S. 357 (1978), we clearly laid to rest any notion that prosecutorial discretion is unreviewable no matter what the basis is upon which it is exercised:

“There is no doubt that the breadth of discretion that our country’s legal system vests in prosecuting attorneys carries with it the potential for both individual and institutional abuse. And broad though that discretion may *847be, there are undoubtedly constitutional limits upon its exercise.” Id., at 365.

See also Wayte v. United States, ante, at 608. Thus, even in the area of criminal prosecutions, prosecutorial discretion is not subject to a “presumption of unreviewability.” See generally Vorenberg, Decent Restraint of Prosecutorial Power, 94 Harv. L. Rev. 1521, 1537-1543 (1981). If a plaintiff makes a sufficient threshold showing that a prosecutor’s discretion has been exercised for impermissible reasons, judicial review is available.

Second, arguments about prosecutorial discretion do not necessarily translate into the context of agency refusals to act. “In appropriate circumstances the Court has made clear that traditions of prosecutorial discretion do not immunize from judicial scrutiny cases in which the enforcement decisions of an administrator were motivated by improper factors or were otherwise contrary to law.” Marshall v. Jerrico, Inc., 446 U. S. 238, 249 (1980) (citations omitted). Criminal prosecutorial decisions vindicate only intangible interests, common to society as a whole, in the enforcement of the criminal law. The conduct at issue has already occurred; all that remains is society’s general interest in assuring that the guilty are punished. See Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614, 619 (1973) (“[A] private citizen lacks a judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution or nonprosecution of another”). In contrast, requests for administrative enforcement typically seek to prevent concrete and future injuries that Congress has made cognizable — injuries that result, for example, from misbranded drugs, such as alleged in this case, or unsafe nuclear powerplants, see, e. g., Florida Power & Light Co. v. Lorion, ante, p. 729 — or to obtain palpable benefits that Congress has intended to bestow — such as labor union elections free of corruption, see Dunlap v. Bachowski, 421 U. S. 560 (1975). Entitlements to receive these benefits or to be free of these injuries often run to specific classes of individuals *848whom Congress has singled out as statutory beneficiaries. The interests at stake in review of administrative enforcement decisions are thus more focused and in many circumstances more pressing than those at stake in criminal prosecutorial decisions. A request that a nuclear plant be operated safely or that protection be provided against unsafe drugs is quite different from a request that an individual be put in jail or his property confiscated as punishment for past violations of the criminal law. Unlike traditional exercises of prosecutorial discretion, “the decision to enforce — or not to enforce — may itself result in significant burdens on a . . . statutory beneficiary.” Marshall v. Jerrico, Inc., supra, at 249.

Perhaps most important, the sine qua non of the APA was to alter inherited judicial reluctance to constrain the exercise of discretionary administrative power — to rationalize and make fairer the exercise of such discretion. Since passage of the APA, the sustained effort of administrative law has been to “continuously narro[w] the category of actions considered to be so discretionary as to be exempted from review.” Shapiro, Administrative Discretion: The Next Stage, 92 Yale L. J. 1487,1489, n. 11 (1983). Discretion may well be necessary to carry out a variety of important administrative functions, but discretion can be a veil for laziness, corruption, incompetency, lack of will, or other motives, and for that reason “the presence of discretion should not bar a court from considering a claim of illegal or arbitrary use of discretion. ” L. Jaffe, Judicial Control of Administrative Action 375 (1965). Judicial review is available under the APA in the absence of a clear and convincing demonstration that Congress intended to preclude it precisely so that agencies, whether in rulemaking, adjudicating, acting or failing to act, do not become stagnant backwaters of caprice and lawlessness. “Law has reached its finest moments when it has freed man from the unlimited discretion of some ruler, some civil or military official, some bureaucrat.” United States v. Wunderlich, 342 U. S. 98, 101 (1951).

*849For these and other reasons,6 reliance on prosecutorial discretion, itself a fading talisman, to justify the unreviewabilty of agency inaction is inappropriate. See generally Stewart & Sunstein, Public Programs and Private Rights, 95 Harv. L. Rev. 1195,1285-1286, n. 386 (1982) (discussing differences between agency inaction and prosecutorial discretion); Note, Judicial Review of Administrative Inaction, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 627, 658-661 (1983) (same). To the extent arguments about traditional notions of prosecutorial discretion have any force at all in this context, they ought to apply only *850to an agency’s decision to decline to seek penalties against an individual for past conduct, not to a decision to refuse to investigate or take action on a public health, safety, or welfare problem.

II

The “tradition” of unreviewability upon which the majority relies is refuted most powerfully by a firmly entrenched body of lower court case law that holds reviewable various agency refusals to act.7 This case law recognizes that attempting to *851draw a line for purposes of judicial review between affirmative exercises of coercive agency power and negative agency refusals to act, see ante, at 832, is simply untenable; one of the very purposes fueling the birth of administrative agencies was the reality that governmental refusal to act could have just as devastating an effect upon life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as coercive governmental action. As Justice Frankfurter, a careful and experienced student of administrative law, wrote for this Court, “any distinction, as such, between ‘negative’ and ‘affirmative’ orders, as a touchstone of jurisdiction to review [agency action] serves no useful purpose.” Rochester Telephone Corp. v. United States, 307 U. S. 125, 143 (1939).8 The lower courts, facing *852the problem of agency inaction and its concrete effects more regularly than do we, have responded with a variety of solutions to assure administrative fidelity to congressional objectives: a demand that an agency expláin its refusal to act, a demand that explanations given be further elaborated, and injunctions that action “unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed,” 5 U. S. C. §706, be taken. See generally Stewart & Sunstein, 95 Harv. L. Rev., at 1279. Whatever the merits of any particular solution, one would have hoped the Court would have acted with greater respect for these efforts by responding with a scalpel rather than a blunderbuss.

To be sure, the Court no doubt takes solace in the view that it has created only a “presumption” of unreviewability, and that this “presumption may be rebutted where the substantive statute has provided guidelines for the agency to follow in exercising its enforcement powers.” Ante, at 832-833. But this statement implies far too narrow a reliance on positive law, either statutory or constitutional, see ibid., as the sole source of limitations on agency discretion not to enforce. In my view, enforcement discretion is also channelled by traditional background understandings against which the APA was enacted and which Congress hardly could be thought to have intended to displace in the APA.9 For example, a refusal to enforce that stems from a conflict of interest, that is the result of a bribe, vindictiveness or retaliation, or that traces to personal or other corrupt motives ought to be judicially remediable.10 Even in the absence *853of statutory “guidelines” precluding such factors as bases of decision, Congress should not be presumed to have departed from principles of rationality and fair process in enacting the APA.11 Moreover, the agency may well narrow its own enforcement discretion through historical practice, from which it should arguably not depart in the absence of explanation, or through regulations and informal action. Traditional principles of rationality and fair process do offer “meaningful standards” and “law to apply” to an agency’s decision not to act, and no presumption of unreviewability should be allowed to trump these principles.

Perhaps the Court’s reference to guidance from the “substantive statute” is meant to encompass such concerns and to allow the “common law” of judicial review of agency action to provide standards by which inaction can be reviewed. But in that case I cannot fathom what content the Court’s “presumption of unreviewability” might have. If inaction can be reviewed to assure that it does not result from improper abnegation of jurisdiction, from complete abdication of statutory responsibilities, from violation of constitutional rights, or from factors that offend principles of rational and fair administrative process, it would seem that a court must always inquire into the reasons for the agency’s action before deciding whether the presumption applies.12 As Judge Friendly said many years ago, review of even a decision over which substantial administrative discretion exists would then be available to determine whether that discretion had been *854abused because the decision was “made without a rational explanation, inexplicably departed from established policies, or rested ... on other considerations that Congress could not have intended to make relevant.” Wong Wing Hang v. INS, 360 F. 2d 715, 719 (CA2 1966). In that event, we would not be finding enforcement decisions unreviewable, but rather would be reviewing them on the merits, albeit with due deference, to assure that such decisions did not result from an abuse of discretion.

That is the basis upon which I would decide this case. Under § 706(A)(2) and Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136 (1967), agency action, including the failure to act, is re viewable to assure that it is not “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion,” unless Congress has manifested a clear and convincing intent to preclude review. Review of enforcement decisions must be suitably deferential in light of the necessary flexibility the agencies must have in this area, but at least when “enforcement” inaction allegedly deprives citizens of statutory benefits or exposes them to harms against which Congress has sought to provide protection, review must be on the merits to ensure that the agency is exercising its discretion within permissible bounds. See Berger, Administrative Arbitrariness: A Synthesis, 78 Yale L. J. 965 (1969); L. Jaffe, Judicial Control of Administrative Action 375 (1965).

Ill

The problem of agency refusal to act is one of the pressing problems of the modern administrative state, given the enormous powers, for both good and ill, that agency inaction, like agency action, holds over citizens. As Dunlop v. Bachowski, 421 U. S. 560 (1975), recognized, the problems and dangers of agency inaction are too important, too prevalent, and too multifaceted to admit of a single facile solution under which “enforcement” decisions are “presumptively unreviewable.” Over time, I believe the approach announced today will come to be understood, not as mandating that courts *855cover their eyes and their reasoning power when asked to review an agency’s failure to act, but as recognizing that courts must approach the substantive task of reviewing such failures with appropriate deference to an agency’s legitimate need to set policy through the allocation of scarce budgetary and enforcement resources. Because the Court’s approach, if taken literally, would take the courts out of the role of reviewing agency inaction in far too many cases, I join only the judgment today.

1

All Members of the Court in Dunlop v. Bachowski, 421 U. S. 560 (1975), agreed that a statement of basis and purpose was required for the denial of the enforcement request at issue there. See id., at 571-575; id., at 594 (Rehnquist, J., concurring in result in part and dissenting in part). Given the revisionist view the Court takes today of Dunlop, perhaps these statements too are to be limited to the specific facts out of which they emerged. Yet the Court’s suggestion that review is proper when the agency asserts a lack of jurisdiction to act, see ante, at 833, n. 4, or some other basis inconsistent with congressional intent, would seem to presuppose the existence of a statement of basis and purpose explaining the basis for denial of enforcement action.

2

The Senate Committee Report accompanying the APA stated: “The mere filing of a petition does not require an agency to grant it, or to hold a hearing, or engage in any other public rule making proceedings. The refusal of an agency to grant the petition or to hold rule making proceedings, therefore, would not per se be subject to judicial reversal.” S. Doc. No. 248, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 201 (1946). As Judge McGowan has observed, “this language implies that judicial review would sometimes be available in the circumstances mentioned” in the Report. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. SEC, 196 U. S. App. D. C. 124, 136, n. 14, 606 F. 2d 1031, 1043, n. 14 (1979).

3

The Court did not ignore Abbott Laboratories in Southern R. Co. v. Seaboard Allied Milling Corp., 442 U. S. 444, 454, 462-463 (1979), a denial of enforcement case that required “clear and convincing evidence” of congressional intent to preclude review of the failure to investigate a complaint.

4

It is ironic that Vaca v. Sipes and the Confiscation Cases were cited by the Government in its brief in Dunlop when it unsuccessfully pressed the very proposition accepted today: that agency enforcement decisions are presumptively unreviewable. See Brief for Petitioner in Dunlop v. Bachowski, O. T. 1974, No. 74-466, pp. 25-31.

5

Cf. Southern R. Co. v. Seaboard Allied Milling Corp., supra (concluding, after extensive examination of history and structure of Act, that agency decisions not to investigate under § 15(8)(a) of the Interstate Commerce Act are unreviewable).

6

Legal historians have suggested that the notion of prosecutorial discretion developed in England and America largely because private prosecutions were simultaneously available at the time. See Langbein, Controlling Prosecutorial Discretion in Germany, 41 U. Chi. L. Rev. 439, 443-446 (1974). Private enforcement of regulatory statutes, such as the FDCA, is of course largely unavailable.

In addition, scholars have noted that the tradition of unreviewability of prosecutor’s decisions developed at a time when virtually all executive action was considered unreviewable. In asking what accounts for this “tradition,” one scholar offered the following rhetorical questions:

“Is it because the tradition became settled during the nineteenth century when courts were generally assuming that judicial intrusion into any administration would be unfortunate? Is it because the tradition became settled while the Supreme Court was actuated by its 1840 remark that ‘The interference of the Courts with the performance of the ordinary duties of the executive departments of the government, would be productive of nothing but mischief.’ [citing Decatur v. Paulding, 14 Pet. 497, 516 (1840)]. Is it because the tradition became settled before the courts made the twentieth-century discovery that the courts can interfere with executive action to protect against abuses but at the same time can avoid taking over the executive function? Is it because the tradition became settled before the successes of the modern system of limited judicial review became fully recognized?

“On the basis of what the courts know today about leaving administration to administrators but at the same time providing an effective check to protect against abuses, should the courts not take a fresh look at the tradition that prevents them from reviewing the prosecuting function? ” K. Davis, Discretionary Justice 211 (1969) (footnote omitted).

7

See, e. g., Bargmann v. Helms, 230 U. S. App. D. C. 164, 715 F. 2d 638 (1983); Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. EPA, 683 F. 2d 752, 753, 767-768 (CA3 1982); WWHT, Inc. v. FCC, 211 U. S. App. D. C. 218, 656 F. 2d 807 (1981); Carpet, Linoleum & Resilient Tile Layers, Local Union No. 119 v. Brown, 656 F. 2d 564 (CA10 1981); Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. SEC, 196 U. S. App. D. C. 124, 606 F. 2d 1031 (1979); British Airways Board v. Port Authority of New York, 564 F. 2d 1002, 1012-1013 (CA2 1977); Pennsylvania v. National Assn. of Flood Insurers, 520 F. 2d 11 (CA3 1975); REA Express, Inc. v. CAB, 507 F. 2d 42 (CA2 1974); Davis v. Romney, 490 F. 2d 1360 (CA3 1974); Adams v. Richardson, 156 U. S. App. D. C. 267, 480 F. 2d 1159 (1973) (en banc); International Harvester Co. v. Ruckelshaus, 155 U. S. App. D. C. 411, 478 F. 2d 615 (1973); Rockbridge v. Lincoln, 449 F. 2d 567 (CA9 1971); Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. Ruckelshaus, 142 U. S. App. D. C. 74, 439 F. 2d 584 (1971); Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. Hardin, 138 U. S. App. D. C. 391, 428 F. 2d 1093 (1970); Medical Committee for Human Rights v. SEC, 139 U. S. App. D. C. 226, 432 F. 2d 659 (1970), vacated as moot, 404 U. S. 403 (1972); Trailways of New England, Inc. v. CAB,, 412 F. 2d 926 (CA1 1969); International Union, United Auto., Aero. & Agric. Implement Workers v. NLRB, 427 F. 2d 1330 (CA6 1970); Public Citizen Health Research Group v. Auchter, 554 F. Supp. 242 (DC 1983), rev’d in part, 226 U. S. App. D. C. 413, 702 F. 2d 1150 (1983); Sierra Club v. Gorsuch, 551 F. Supp. 785 (ND Cal. 1982); Hoffmann-LaRoche, Inc. v. Weinberger, 425 F. Supp. 890 (DC 1975); NAACP v. Levi, 418 F. Supp. 1109 (DC 1976); Guerrero v. Garza, 418 F. Supp. 182 (WD Wis. 1976); Souder v. Brennan, 367 F. Supp. 808, 811 (DC 1973); City-Wide Coalition Against Childhood Lead Paint Poisoning v. Philadelphia Housing Auth., 356 F. Supp. 123 (ED Pa. 1973); American Public Health Assn. v. Veneman, 349 F. Supp. 1311 (DC 1972).

To be sure, some of these cases involved the refusal to initiate rule-making proceedings, and the majority expressly disavows any claim that *851its presumption of unreviewability applies to such refusals. See ante, at 825, n. 2. But the majority offers no explanation of how an enforcement request that seeks protection of the public or statutory beneficiaries from present and future concrete harms, or from loss of deserved benefits, implicates considerations substantially different from those at stake in judicial review of the refusal to initiate rulemaking proceedings.

8

Justice Frankfurter went to some length in Rochester Telephone to expose the fallacy of any purported distinction between agency action and inaction:

“ ‘[Negative order’ and ‘affirmative order’ are not appropriate terms of art. . . . ‘Negative’ has really been an obfuscating adjective in that it implied a search for a distinction — non-action as against action — which does not involve the real considerations on which rest, as we have seen, the reviewability of Commission orders within the framework of its discretionary authority and within the general criteria of justiciability. ‘Negative’ and ‘affirmative,’ in the context of these problems, is as unilluminating and mischief-making a distinction as the outmoded line between ‘nonfeasance’ and ‘misfeasance.’

“. . . An order of the Commission dismissing a complaint on the merits and maintaining the status quo is an exercise of administrative function, no more and no less, than an order directing some change in status.... In the application of relevant canons of judicial review an order of the Commission directing the adoption of a practice might raise considerations absent from a situation where the Commission merely allowed such a practice to continue. But this bears on the disposition of a case and should not control jurisdiction.” 307 U. S., at 140-142 (emphasis added; footnotes omitted).

9

The Court cites 5 K. Davis, Administrative Law §28:5 (1984), for the proposition that the APA did not alter the “common law” of judicial'review of agency action; Davis’ correct statement ought to make clear that traditional principles of fair and rational decisionmaking were incorporated into, rather than obliterated by, the APA, and that judicial review is available to assure that agency action, including inaction, is consistent with these principles. See also Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. v. Curran, 456 U. S. 853, 378 (1982) (“[W]e must examine Congress’ perception of the law that it was shaping or reshaping”).

10

“A scheme injecting a personal interest, financial or otherwise, into the enforcement process may bring irrelevant or impermissible factors into *853the prosecutorial decision and in some contexts raise serious constitutional questions.” Marshall v. Jerrico, Inc., 446 U. S. 238, 249-250 (1980).

11

Indeed, “[t]he more general and powerful the background understanding, the less likely it is to have been stated explicitly by the legislature, even if the legislature in fact shares that understanding.” Stewart & Sunstein, Public Programs and Private Rights, 95 Harv. L. Rev. 1195, 1231 (1982).

12

When an agency asserts that a refusal to enforce is based on enforcement priorities, it may be that, to survive summary judgment, a plaintiff must be able to offer some basis for calling this assertion into question or for justifying his inability to do so.

LUJAN, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR v. DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE et al.

No. 90-1424.

Argued December 3, 1991

Decided June 12, 1992

*556Scalia, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, III-A, and IV, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and White, Kennedy, Soutek, and Thomas, 33., joined, and an opinion with respect to Part III-B, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and White and Thomas, JJ., joined. Kennedy, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which Souter, J., joined, post, p. 579. Stevens, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, *557p. 581. Blackmun, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which O’Connor, J., joined, post, p. 689.

Edwin S. Kneedler argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Starr, Acting Assistant Attorney General Hartman, Deputy Solicitor General Wallace, Robert L. Klarquist, David C. Shilton, Thomas L. Sansonetti, and Michael Young.

Brian B. O’Neill argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were Steven C. Schroer and Richard A. Duncan*

*

Terence P. Ross, Daniel J. Popeo, and Richard A Samp filed a brief for the Washington Legal Foundation et al. as amici curiae urging reversal.

Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the City of Austin et al. by William A Butler, Angus E. Crane, Michael J. Bean, Kenneth Oden, James M. McCormack, and Wm. Robert Irvin; for the American Association of Zoological Parks & Aquariums et al. by Ronald J. Greene and W. Hardy Callcott; for the American Institute of Biological Sciences by Richard J. Wertheimer and Charles M. Chambers; and for the Ecotrop-ica Foundation of Brazil et al. by Durwood J. Zaelke.

A brief of amici curiae was filed for the State of Texas et al. by Patrick J. Mahoney, Dan Morales, Attorney General of Texas, Will Pryor, First Assistant Attorney General, Mary F. Keller, Deputy Attorney General, and Nancy N. Lynch, Mary Ruth Holder, and Shannon J. Kilgore, Assistant Attorneys General, Grant Woods, Attorney General of Arizona, Winston Bryant, Attorney General of Arkansas, Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General of California, Robert A Butterworth, Attorney General of Florida, Michael E. Carpenter, Attorney General of Maine, Frank J. Kelley, Attorney General of Michigan, Hubert H. Humphrey III, Attorney General of Minnesota, Robert J. Del Tufo, Attorney General of New Jersey, Robert Abrams, Attorney General of New York, Lee Fisher, Attorney General of Ohio, and Jeffrey L. Amestoy, Attorney General of Vermont, Victor A Kovner, Leonard J. Koerner, Neal M. Janey, and Louise H. Renne.

Justice Scalia

delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, III-A, and IY, and an opinion with respect to Part III-B, in which The Chief Justice, Justice White, and Justice Thomas join.

This case involves a challenge to a rule promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior interpreting § 7 of the Endangered *558Species Act of 1973 (ESA), 87 Stat. 892, as amended, 16 U. S. C. § 1586, in such fashion as to render it applicable only to actions within the United States or on the high seas. The preliminary issue, and the only one we reach, is whether respondents here, plaintiffs below, have standing to seek judicial review of the rule.

I

The ESA, 87 Stat. 884, as amended, 16 U. S. C. § 1531 et seq., seeks to protect species of animals against threats to their continuing existence caused by man. See generally TVA v. Hill, 437 U. S. 153 (1978). The ESA instructs the Secretary of the Interior to promulgate by regulation a list of those species which are either endangered or threatened under enumerated criteria, and to define the critical habitat of these species. 16 U. S. C. §§ 1533, 1536. Section 7(a)(2) of the Act then provides, in pertinent part:

“Each Federal agency shall, in consultation with and with the assistance of the Secretary [of the Interior], insure that any action authorized, funded, or carried out by such agency ... is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species or threatened species or result in the destruction or adverse modifica- . tion of habitat of such species which is determined by the Secretary, after consultation as appropriate with affected States, to be critical.” 16 U. S. C. § 1536(a)(2).

In 1978, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior, and the Secretary of Commerce respectively, promulgated a joint regulation stating that the obligations imposed by § 7(a)(2) extend to actions taken in foreign nations. 43 Fed. Reg. 874 (1978). The next year, however, the Interior Department began to reexamine its position. Letter from Leo Kuliz, Solicitor, Department of the Interior, to Assistant Secretary, Fish and Wildlife and Parks, Aug. 8, 1979. A revised joint regulation, reinterpret*559ing § 7(a)(2) to require consultation only for actions taken in the United States or on the high seas, was proposed in 1983, 48 Fed. Reg. 29990, and promulgated in 1986, 61 Fed. Reg. 19926; 50 CFR 402.01 (1991).

Shortly thereafter, respondents, organizations dedicated to wildlife conservation and other environmental causes, filed this action against the Secretary of the Interior, seeking a declaratory judgment that the new regulation is in error as to the geographic scope of § 7(a)(2) and an injunction requiring the Secretary to promulgate a new regulation restoring the initial interpretation. The District Court granted the Secretary’s motion to dismiss for lack of standing. Defenders of Wildlife v. Hodel, 658 F. Supp. 43, 47-48 (Minn. 1987). The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed by a divided vote. Defenders of Wildlife v. Hodel, 851 F. 2d 1035 (1988). On remand, the Secretary moved for summary judgment on the standing issue, and respondents moved for summary judgment on the merits. The District Court denied the Secretary’s motion, on the ground that the Eighth Circuit had already determined the standing question in this case; it granted respondents’ merits motion, and ordered the Secretary to publish a revised regulation. Defenders of Wildlife v. Hodel, 707 F. Supp. 1082 (Minn. 1989). The Eighth Circuit affirmed. 911 F. 2d 117 (1990). We granted certiorari, 500 U. S. 915 (1991).

II

While the Constitution of the United States divides all power conferred upon the Federal Government into “legislative Powers,” Art. I, § 1, “[t]he executive Power,” Art. II, § 1, and “[t]he judicial Power,” Art. Ill, § 1, it does not attempt to define those terms. To be sure, it limits the jurisdiction of federal courts to “Cases” and “Controversies,” but an executive inquiry can bear the name “case” (the Hoffa case) and a legislative dispute can bear the name “controversy” (the Smoot-Hawley controversy). Obviously, then, the Constitution’s central mechanism of separation of powers de*560pends largely upon common understanding of what activities are appropriate to legislatures, to executives, and to courts. In The Federalist No. 48, Madison expressed the view that “[i]t is not infrequently a question of real nicety in legislative bodies whether the operation of a particular measure will, or will not, extend beyond the legislative sphere,” whereas “the executive power [is] restrained within a narrower compass and . . . more simple in its nature,” and “the judiciary [is] described by landmarks still less uncertain.” The Federalist No. 48, p. 256 (Carey and McClellan eds. 1990). One of those landmarks, setting apart the “Cases” and “Controversies” that are of the justiciable sort referred to in Article III — “serving] to identify those disputes which are appropriately resolved through the judicial process,” Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149, 155 (1990) — is the doctrine of standing. Though some of its elements express merely prudential considerations that are part of judicial self-government, the core component of standing is an essential and unchanging part of the case-or-controversy requirement of Article III. See, e. g., Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 751 (1984).

Over the years, our cases have established that the irreducible constitutional minimum of standing contains three elements. First, the plaintiff must have suffered an “injury in fact” — an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, see id., at 756; Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 508 (1975); Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 740-741, n. 16 (1972);1 and (b) “actual or imminent, not ‘conjectural’ or ‘hypothetical,’” Whitmore, supra, at 155 (quoting Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 102 (1983)). Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of — the injury has to be “fairly ... trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not. .. th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court.” Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare *561Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 41-42 (1976). Third, it must be “likely,” as opposed to merely “speculative,” that the injury will be “redressed by a favorable decision.” Id., at 38, 43.

The party invoking federal jurisdiction bears the burden of establishing these elements. See FW/PBS, Inc. v. Dallas, 493 U. S. 215, 231 (1990); Warth, supra, at 508. Since they are not mere pleading requirements but rather an indispensable part of the plaintiff’s case, each element must be supported in the same way as any other matter on which the plaintiff bears the burden of proof, i. e., with the manner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the litigation. See Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U. S. 871, 883-889 (1990); Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U. S. 91, 114-115, and n. 31 (1979); Simon, supra, at 45, n. 25; Warth, supra, at 527, and n. 6 (Brennan, J., dissenting). At the pleading stage, general factual allegations of injury resulting from the defendant’s conduct may suffice, for on a motion to dismiss we “presum[e] that general allegations embrace those specific facts that are necessary to support the claim.” National Wildlife Federation, supra, at 889. In response to a summary judgment motion, however, the plaintiff can no longer rest on such “mere allegations,” but must “set forth” by affidavit or other evidence “specific facts,” Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56(e), which for purposes of the summary judgment motion will be taken to be true. And at the final stage, those facts (if controverted) must be “supported adequately by the evidence adduced at trial.” Gladstone, supra, at 115, n. 31.

When the suit is one challenging the legality of government action or inaction, the nature and extent of facts that must be averred (at the summary judgment stage) or proved (at the trial stage) in order to establish standing depends considerably upon whether the plaintiff is himself an object of the action (or forgone action) at issue. If he is, there is ordinarily little question that the action or inaction has *562caused him injury, and that a judgment preventing or requiring the action will redress it. When, however, as in this case, a plaintiff’s asserted injury arises from the government’s allegedly unlawful regulation (or lack of regulation) of someone else, much more is needed. In that circumstance, causation and redressability ordinarily hinge on the response of the regulated (or regulable) third party to the government action or inaction — and perhaps on the response of others as well. The existence of one or more of the essential elements of standing “depends on the unfettered choices made by independent actors not before the courts and whose exercise of broad and legitimate discretion the courts cannot presume either to control or to predict,” ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U. S. 605, 615 (1989) (opinion of Kennedy, J.); see also Simon, supra, at 41-42; and it becomes the burden of the plaintiff to adduce facts showing that those choices have been or will be made in such manner as to produce causation and permit redressability of injury. E. g., Warth, supra, at 505. Thus, when the plaintiff is not himself the object of the government action or inaction he challenges, standing is not precluded, but it is ordinarily “substantially more difficult” to establish. Allen, supra, at 758; Simon, supra, at 44-45; Warth, supra, at 505.

Ill

We think the Court of Appeals failed to apply the foregoing principles in denying the Secretary’s motion for summary judgment. Respondents had not made the requisite demonstration of (at least) injury and redressability.

A

Respondents’ claim to injury is that the lack of consultation with respect to certain funded activities abroad “increases] the rate of extinction of endangered and threatened species.” Complaint ¶ 5, App. 13. Of course, the desire to use or observe an animal species, even for purely esthetic purposes, is undeniably a cognizable interest for purpose of *563standing. See, e. g., Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S., at 734. “But the ‘injury in fact’ test requires more than an injury to a cognizable interest. It requires that the party seeking review be himself among the injured.” Id., at 734-735. To survive the Secretary’s summary judgment motion, respondents had to submit affidavits or other evidence showing, through specific facts, not only that listed species were in fact being threatened by funded activities abroad, but also that one or more of respondents’ members would thereby be “directly” affected apart from their “ ‘special interest’ in th[e] subject.” Id., at 735, 739. See generally Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm’n, 432 U. S. 333, 343 (1977).

With respect to this aspect of the case, the Court of Appeals focused on the affidavits of two Defenders’ members— Joyce Kelly and Amy Skilbred. Ms. Kelly stated that she traveled to Egypt in 1986 and “observed the traditional habitat of the endangered nile crocodile there and intend[s] to do so again, and hope[s] to observe the crocodile directly,” and that she “will suffer harm in fact as the result of [the] American ... role ... in overseeing the rehabilitation of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile . . . and [in] developing] . . . Egypt’s . . . Master Water Plan.” App. 101. Ms. Skilbred averred that she traveled to Sri Lanka in 1981 and “observed th[e] habitat” of “endangered species such as the Asian elephant and the leopard” at what is now the site of the Mahaweli project funded by the Agency for International Development (AID), although she “was unable to see any of the endangered species”; “this development project,” she continued, “will seriously reduce endangered, threatened, and endemic species habitat including areas that I visited . . . [, which] may severely shorten the future of these species”; that threat, she concluded, harmed her because she “intend[s] to return to Sri Lanka in the future and hope[s] to be more fortunate in spotting at least the endangered elephant and leopard.” Id., at 145-146. When Ms. Skilbred was asked *564at a subsequent deposition if and when she had any plans to return to Sri Lanka, she reiterated that “I intend to go back to Sri Lanka,” but confessed that she had no current plans: “I don’t know [when]. There is a civil war going on right now. I don’t know. Not next year, I will say. In the future.” Id., at 318.

We shall assume for the sake of argument that these affidavits contain facts showing that certain agency-funded projects threaten listed species — though that is questionable. They plainly contain no facts, however, showing how damage to the species will produce “imminent” injury to Mses. Kelly and Skilbred. That the women “had visited” the areas of the projects before the projects commenced proves nothing. As we have said in a related context, “‘Past exposure to illegal conduct does not in itself show a present case or controversy regarding injunctive relief... if unaccompanied by any continuing, present adverse effects.’ ” Lyons, 461 U. S., at 102 (quoting O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 495-496 (1974)). And the affiants’ profession of an “inten[t]” to return to the places they had visited before — where they will presumably, this time, be deprived of the opportunity to observe animals of the endangered species — is simply not enough. Such “some day” intentions — without any description of concrete plans, or indeed even any specification of when the some day will be — do not support a finding of the “actual or imminent” injury that our cases require. See supra, at 560.2

*565Besides relying upon the Kelly and Skilbred affidavits, respondents propose a series of novel standing theories. The first, inelegantly styled “ecosystem nexus,” proposes that any person who uses any part of a “contiguous ecosystem” adversely affected by a funded activity has standing even if the activity is located a great distance away. This approach, as the Court of Appeals correctly observed, is inconsistent with our opinion in National Wildlife Federation, which held that a plaintiff claiming injury from environmental dam*566age must use the area affected by the challenged activity and not an area roughly “in the vicinity” of it. 497 U. S., at 887-889; see also Sierra Club, 405 U. S., at 735. It makes no difference that the general-purpose section of the ESA states that the Act was intended in part “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved,” 16 U. S. C. § 1531(b). To say that the Act protects ecosystems is not to say that the Act creates (if it were possible) rights of action in persons who have not been injured in fact, that is, persons who use portions of an ecosystem not perceptibly affected by the unlawful action in question.

Respondents’ other theories are called, alas, the “animal nexus” approach, whereby anyone who has an interest in studying or seeing the endangered animals anywhere on the globe has standing; and the “vocational nexus” approach, under which anyone with a professional interest in such animals can sue. Under these theories, anyone who goes to see Asian elephants in the Bronx Zoo, and anyone who is a keeper of Asian elephants in the Bronx Zoo, has standing to sue because the Director of the Agency for International Development (AID) did not consult with the Secretary regarding the AID-funded project in Sri Lanka. This is beyond all reason. Standing is not “an ingenious academic exercise in the conceivable,” United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP), 412 U. S. 669, 688 (1973), but as we have said requires, at the summary judgment stage, a factual showing of perceptible harm. It is clear that the person who observes or works with a particular animal threatened by a federal decision is facing perceptible harm, since the very subject of his interest will no longer exist. It is even plausible — though it goes to the outermost limit of plausibility — to think that a person who observes or works with animals of a particular species in the very area of the world where that species is threatened by a federal decision is facing such harm, since some animals that *567might have been the subject of his interest will no longer exist, see Japan Whaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Society, 478 U. S. 221, 281, n. 4 (1986). It goes beyond the limit, however, and into pure speculation and fantasy, to say that anyone who observes or works with an endangered species, anywhere in the world, is appreciably harmed by a single project affecting some portion of that species with which he has no more specific connection.3

*568B

Besides failing to show injury, respondents failed to demonstrate redressability. Instead of attacking the separate decisions to fund particular projects allegedly causing them harm, respondents chose to challenge a more generalized level of Government action (rules regarding consultation), the invalidation of which would affect all overseas projects. This programmatic approach has obvious practical advantages, but also obvious difficulties insofar as proof of causation or redressability is concerned. As we have said in another context, “suits challenging, not specifically identifiable Government violations of law, but the particular programs agencies establish to carry out their legal obligations . . . [are], even when premised on allegations of several instances of violations of law,... rarely if ever appropriate for federal-court adjudication.” Allen, 468 U. S., at 759-760.

The most obvious problem in the present case is redress-ability. Since the agencies funding the projects were not parties to the case, the District Court could accord relief only against the Secretary: He could be ordered to revise his regulation to require consultation for foreign projects. But this would not remedy respondents’ alleged injury unless the funding agencies were bound by the Secretary’s regulation, which is very much an open question. Whereas in other contexts the ESA is quite explicit as to the Secretary’s controlling authority, see, e. g., 16 U. S. C. § 1533(a)(1) (“The Secretary shall” promulgate regulations determining endangered species); § 1535(d)(1) (“The Secretary is authorized to provide financial assistance to any State”), with respect to consultation the initiative, and hence arguably the initial responsibility for determining statutory necessity, lies with *569the agencies, see § 1536(a)(2) (“Each Federal agency shall, in consultation with and with the assistance of the Secretary, insure that any” funded action is not likely to jeopardize endangered or threatened species) (emphasis added). When the Secretary promulgated the regulation at issue here, he thought it was binding on the agencies, see 51 Fed. Reg. 19928 (1986). The Solicitor General, however, has repudiated that position here, and the agencies themselves apparently deny the Secretary’s authority. (During the period when the Secretary took the view that § 7(a)(2) did apply abroad, AID and FWS engaged in a running controversy over whether consultation was required with respect to the Mahaweli project, AID insisting that consultation applied only to domestic actions.)

Respondents assert that this legal uncertainty did not affect redressability (and hence standing) because the District Court itself could resolve the issue of the Secretary’s authority as a necessary part of its standing inquiry. Assuming that it is appropriate to resolve an issue of law such as this in connection with a threshold standing inquiry, resolution by the District Court would not have remedied respondents’ alleged injury anyway, because it would not have been binding upon the agencies. They were not parties to the suit, and there is no reason they should be obliged to honor an incidental legal determination the suit produced.4 The *570Court of Appeals tried to finesse this problem by simply proclaiming that “[w]e are satisfied that an injunction requiring the Secretary to publish [respondents’ desired] regulatio[n] . . . would result in consultation.” Defenders of Wildlife, 851 F. 2d, at 1042, 1043-1044. We do not know what would justify that confidence, particularly when the Justice Department (presumably after consultation with the agencies) has taken the position that the regulation is not binding.5 The *571short of the matter is that redress of the only injury in fact respondents complain of requires action (termination of funding until consultation) by the individual funding agencies; and any relief the District Court could have provided in this suit against the Secretary was not likely to produce that action.

A further impediment to redressability is the fact that the agencies generally supply only a fraction of the funding for a foreign project. AID, for example, has provided less than 10% of the funding for the Mahaweli project. Respondents have produced nothing to indicate that the projects they have named will either be suspended, or do less harm to listed species, if that fraction is eliminated. As in Simon, 426 U. S., at 43-44, it is entirely conjectural whether the non-agency activity that affects respondents will be altered or affected by the agency activity they seek to achieve.6 There is no standing.

IV

The Court of Appeals found that respondents had standing for an additional reason: because they had suffered a “procedural injury.” The so-called “citizen-suit” provision of the ESA provides, in pertinent part, that “any person may com-*572menee a civil suit on his own behalf (A) to enjoin any person, including the United States and any other governmental instrumentality or agency ... who is alleged to be in violation of any provision of this chapter.” 16 U. S. C. § 1540(g). The court held that, because § 7(a)(2) requires interagency consultation, the citizen-suit provision creates a “procedural righ[t]” to consultation in all “persons” — so that anyone can file suit in federal court to challenge the Secretary’s (or presumably any other official’s) failure to follow the assertedly correct consultative procedure, notwithstanding his or her inability to allege any discrete injury flowing from that failure. 911 F. 2d, at 121-122. To understand the remarkable nature of this holding one must be clear about what it does not rest upon: This is not a case where plaintiffs are seeking to enforce a procedural requirement the disregard of which could impair a separate concrete interest of theirs (e. g., the procedural requirement for a hearing prior to denial of their license application, or the procedural requirement for an environmental impact statement before a federal facility is constructed next door to them).7 Nor is it simply a case where concrete injury has been suffered by many persons, as in mass fraud or mass tort situations. Nor, finally, is it the *573unusual case in which Congress has created a concrete private interest in the outcome of a suit against a private party for the Government’s benefit, by providing a cash bounty for the victorious plaintiff. Rather, the court held that the injury-in-fact requirement had been satisfied by congressional conferral upon all persons of an abstract, self-contained, noninstrumental “right” to have the Executive observe the procedures required by law. We reject this view.8

We have consistently held that a plaintiff raising only a generally available grievance about government — claiming only harm to his and every citizen’s interest in proper application of the Constitution and laws, and seeking relief that *574no more directly and tangibly benefits him than it does the public at large — does not state an Article III case or controversy. For example, in Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U. S. 126, 129-130 (1922), we dismissed a suit challenging the propriety of the process by which the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. Justice Brandéis wrote for the Court:

“[This is] not a case within the meaning of . . . Article III ... . Plaintiff has [asserted] only the right, possessed by every citizen, to require that the Government be administered according to law and that the public moneys be not wasted. Obviously this general right does not entitle a private citizen to institute in the federal courts a suit. . . .” Ibid.

In Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447 (1923), we dismissed for lack of Article III standing a taxpayer suit challenging the propriety of certain federal expenditures. We said:

“The party who invokes the power [of judicial review] must be able to show not only that the statute is invalid but that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as the result of its enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally.... Here the parties plaintiff have no such case.... [T]heir complaint... is merely that officials of the executive department of the government are executing and will execute an act of Congress asserted to be unconstitutional; and this we are asked to prevent. To do so would be not to decide a judicial controversy, but to assume a position of authority over the governmental acts of another and coequal department, an authority which plainly we do not possess.” Id., at 488-489.

In Ex parte Lévitt, 302 U. S. 633 (1937), we dismissed a suit contending that Justice Black’s appointment to this Court violated the Ineligibility Clause, Art. I, §6, cl. 2. *575“It is an established principle,” we said, “that to entitle a private individual to invoke the judicial power to determine the validity of executive or legislative action he must show that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining a direct injury as the result of that action and it is not sufficient that he has merely a general interest common to all members of the public.” 302 U. S., at 634. See also Doremus v. Board of Ed. of Hawthorne, 342 U. S. 429, 433-434 (1952) (dismissing taxpayer action on the basis of Mellon).

More recent cases are to the same effect. In United States v. Richardson, 418 U. S. 166 (1974), we dismissed for lack of standing a taxpayer suit challenging the Government’s failure to disclose the expenditures of the Central Intelligence Agency, in alleged violation of the constitutional requirement, Art. I, § 9, cl. 7, that “a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.” We held that such a suit rested upon an impermissible “generalized grievance,” and was inconsistent with “the framework of Article III” because “the impact on [plaintiff] is plainly undifferentiated and ‘common to all members of the public.’ ” Richardson, supra, at 171, 176-177. And in Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208 (1974), we dismissed for the same reasons a citizen-taxpayer suit contending that it was a violation of the Incompatibility Clause, Art. I, §6, cl. 2, for Members of Congress to hold commissions in the military Reserves. We said that the challenged action, “standing alone, would adversely affect only the generalized interest of all citizens in constitutional governance . . . . We reaffirm Lévitt in holding that standing to sue may not be predicated upon an interest of th[is] kind . . . .” Schlesinger, supra, at 217, 220. Since Schlesinger we have on two occasions held that an injury amounting only to the alleged violation of a right to have, the Government act in accordance with law was not judicially cognizable because *576“‘assertion of a right to a particular kind of Government conduct, which the Government has violated by acting differently, cannot alone satisfy the requirements of Art. Ill without draining those requirements of meaning.’” Allen, 468 U. S., at 754; Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 483 (1982). And only two Terms ago, we rejected the notion that Article III permits a citizen suit to prevent a condemned criminal’s execution on the basis of “ ‘the public interest protections of the Eighth Amendment’ once again, “[t]his allegation raise[d] only the ‘generalized interest of all citizens in constitutional governance’... and [was] an inadequate basis on which to grant... standing.” Whitmore, 495 U. S., at 160.

To be sure, our generalized-grievance cases have typically involved Government violation of procedures assertedly ordained by the Constitution rather than the Congress. But there is absolutely no basis for making the Article III inquiry turn on the source of the asserted right. Whether the courts were to act on their own, or at the invitation of Congress, in ignoring the concrete injury requirement described in our cases, they would be discarding a principle fundamental to the separate and distinct constitutional role of the Third Branch — one of the essential elements that identifies those “Cases” and “Controversies” that are the business of the courts rather than of the political branches. “The province of the court,” as Chief Justice Marshall said in Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 170 (1803), “is, solely, to decide on the rights of individuals.” Vindicating the public interest (including the public interest in Government observance of the Constitution and laws) is the function of Congress and the Chief Executive. The question presented here is whether the public interest in proper administration of the laws (specifically, in agencies’ observance of a particular, statutorily prescribed procedure) can be converted into an individual right by a statute that denominates it as such, and *577that permits all citizens (or, for that matter, a subclass of citizens who suffer no distinctive concrete harm) to sue. If the concrete injury requirement has the separation-of-powers significance we have always said, the answer must be obvious: To permit Congress to convert the undifferentiated public interest in executive officers’ compliance with the law into an “individual right” vindicable in the courts is to permit Congress to transfer from the President to the courts the Chief Executive’s most important constitutional duty, to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” Art. II, § 3. It would enable the courts, with the permission of Congress, “to assume a position of authority over the governmental acts of another and co-equal department,” Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S., at 489, and to become “ ‘virtually continuing monitors of the wisdom and soundness of Executive action.’” Allen, supra, at 760 (quoting Laird v. Tatum, 408 U. S. 1, 15 (1972)). We have always rejected that vision of our role:

“When Congress passes an Act empowering administrative agencies to carry on governmental activities, the power of those agencies is circumscribed by the authority granted. This permits the courts to participate in law enforcement entrusted to administrative bodies only to the extent necessary to protect justiciable individual rights against administrative action fairly beyond the granted powers.... This is very far from assuming that the courts are charged more than administrators or legislators with the protection of the rights of the people. Congress and the Executive supervise the acts of administrative agents. . . . But under Article III, Congress established courts to adjudicate cases and controversies as to claims of infringement of individual rights whether by unlawful action of private persons or by the exertion of unauthorized administrative power.” Stark v. Wickard, 321 U. S. 288, 309-310 (1944) (footnote omitted).

*578“Individual rights,” within the meaning of this passage, do not mean public rights that have been legislatively-pronounced to belong to each individual who forms part of the public. See also Sierra Club, 405 U. S., at 740-741, n. 16.

Nothing in this contradicts the principle that “[t]he . . . injury required by Art. Ill may exist solely by virtue of ‘statutes creating legal rights, the invasion of which creates standing.’ ” Warth, 422 U. S., at 500 (quoting Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614, 617, n. 3 (1973)). Both of the cases used by Linda R. S. as an illustration of that principle involved Congress’ elevating to the status of legally cognizable injuries concrete, defacto injuries that were previously inadequate in law (namely, injury to an individual’s personal interest in living in a racially integrated community, see Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 409 U. S. 205, 208-212 (1972), and injury to a company’s interest in marketing its product free from competition, see Hardin v. Kentucky Utilities Co., 390 U. S. 1, 6 (1968)). As we said in Sierra Club, “[Statutory] broadening [of] the categories of injury that may be alleged in support of standing is a different matter from abandoning the requirement that the party seeking review must himself have suffered an injury.” 405 U. S., at 738. Whether or not the principle set forth in Warth can be extended beyond that distinction, it is clear that in suits against the Government, at least, the concrete injury requirement must remain.

* * *

We hold that respondents lack standing to bring this action and that the Court of Appeals erred in denying the summary judgment motion filed by the United States. The opinion of the Court of Appeals is hereby reversed, and the cause is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

1

By particularized, we mean that the injury must affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual way.

2

The dissent acknowledges the settled requirement that the injury complained of be, if not actual, then at least imminent, but it contends that respondents could get past summary judgment because “a reasonable finder of fact could conclude ... that... Kelly or Skilbred will soon return to the project sites.” Post, at 691. This analysis suffers either from a factual or from a legal defect, depending on what the “soon” is supposed to mean. If “soon” refers to the standard mandated by our precedents— that the injury be “imminent,” Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149, 155 (1990) — we are at a loss to see how, as a factual matter, the standard can be met by respondents’ mere profession of an intent, some day, to *565return. But if, as we suspect, “soon” means nothing more than “in this lifetime,” then the dissent has undertaken quite a departure from our precedents. Although “imminence” is concededly a somewhat elastic concept, it cannot be stretched beyond its purpose, which is to ensure that the alleged injury is not too speculative for Article III purposes — that the injury is “ ‘ “certainly impending,” ’ ” id, at 168 (emphasis added). It has been stretched beyond the breaking point when, as here, the plaintiff alleges only an injury at some indefinite future time, and the acts necessary to make the injury happen are at least partly within the plaintiff’s own control. In such circumstances we have insisted that the injury proceed with a high degree of immediacy, so as to reduce the possibility of deciding a case in which no injury would have occurred at all. See, e. g., id,., at 156-160; Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 102-106 (1983).

There is no substance to the dissent’s suggestion that imminence is demanded only when the alleged harm depends upon “the affirmative actions of third parties beyond a plaintiff’s control,” post, at 592. Our cases mention third-party-caused contingency, naturally enough; but they also mention the plaintiff’s failure to show that he will soon expose himself to the injury, see, e. g., Lyons, supra, at 105-106; O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 497 (1974); Ashcroft v. Mattis, 431 U. S. 171, 172-173, n. 2 (1977) (per curiam). And there is certainly no reason in principle to demand evidence that third persons will take the action exposing the plaintiff to harm, while presuming that the plaintiff himself will do so.

Our insistence upon these established requirements of standing does not mean that we would, as the dissent contends, “demand . . . detailed descriptions” of damages, such as a “nightly schedule of attempted activities” from plaintiffs alleging loss of consortium. Post, at 593. That case and the others posited by the dissent all involve actual harm; the existence of standing is clear, though the precise extent of harm remains to be determined at trial. Where there is no actual harm, however, its imminence (though not its precise extent) must be established.

3

The dissent embraces each of respondents’ “nexus” theories, rejecting this portion of our analysis because it is “unable to see how the distant location of the destruction necessarily (for purposes of ruling at summary judgment) mitigates the harm” to the plaintiff. Post, at 694-595. But summary judgment must be entered “against a party who fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party’s case, and on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial.” Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U. S. 317, 322 (1986). Respondents had to adduce facts, therefore, on the basis of which it could reasonably be found that concrete injury to their members was, as our cases require, “certainly impending.” The dissent may be correct that the geographic remoteness of those members (here in the United States) from Sri Lanka and Aswan does not “necessarily” prevent such a finding — but it assuredly does so when no further facts have been brought forward (and respondents have produced none) showing that the impact upon animals in those distant places will in some fashion be reflected here. The dissent’s position to the contrary reduces to the notion that distance never prevents harm, a proposition we categorically reject. It cannot be that a person with an interest in an animal automatically has standing to enjoin federal threats to that species of animal, anywhere in the world. Were that the case, the plaintiff in Sierra Club, for example, could have avoided the necessity of establishing anyone’s use of Mineral King by merely identifying one of its members interested in an endangered species of flora or fauna at that location. Justice Blackmun’s accusation that a special rule is being crafted for “environmental claims,” post, at 595, is correct, but he is the craftsman.

Justice Stevens, by contrast, would allow standing on an apparent “animal nexus” theory to all plaintiffs whose interest in the animals is “genuine.” Such plaintiffs, we are told, do not have to visit the animals because the animals are analogous to family members. Post, at 583-584, and n. 2. We decliné to join Justice Stevens in this Linnaean leap. It is unclear to us what constitutes a “genuine” interest; how it differs from *568a “nongenuine” interest (which nonetheless prompted a plaintiff to file suit); and why such an interest in animals should be different from such an interest in anything else that is the subject of a lawsuit.

4

We need not linger over the dissent’s facially impracticable suggestion, post, at 595-596, that one agency of the Government can acquire the power to direct other agencies by simply claiming that power in its own regulations and in litigation to which the other agencies are not parties. As for the contention that the other agencies will be “collaterally estopped” to challenge our judgment that they are bound by the Secretary of the Interior’s views, because of their participation in this suit, post, at 596-597: Whether or not that is true now, it was assuredly not true when this suit was filed, naming the Secretary alone. “The existence of federal jurisdiction ordinarily depends on the facts as they exist when the complaint is filed.” Newman-Green, Inc. v. Alfonzo-Larrain, 490 U. S. 826, 830 (1989) (empha*570sis added). It cannot be that, by later participating in the suit, the State Department and AID retroactively created a redressability (and hence a jurisdiction) that did not exist at the outset.

The dissent’s rejoinder that redressability was clear at the outset because the Secretary thought the regulation binding on the agencies, post, at 598-599, n. 4, continues to miss the point: The agencies did not agree with the Secretary, nor would they be bound by a district court holding (as to this issue) in the Secretary’s favor. There is no support for the dissent’s novel contention, ibid., that Rule 19 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, governing joinder of indispensable parties, somehow alters our longstanding rule that jurisdiction is to be assessed under the facts existing when the complaint is filed. The redressability element of the Article III standing requirement and the “complete relief” referred to by Rule 19 are not identical. Finally, we reach the dissent’s contention, post, at 599, n. 4, that by refusing to waive our settled rule for purposes of this case we have made “federal subject-matter jurisdiction ... a one-way street running the Executive Branch’s way.” That is so, we are told, because the Executive can dispel jurisdiction where it previously existed (by either conceding the merits or by pointing out that nonparty agencies would not be bound by a ruling), whereas a plaintiff cannot retroactively create jurisdiction based on postcomplaint litigation conduct. But any defendant, not just the Government, can dispel jurisdiction by conceding the merits (and presumably thereby suffering a judgment) or by demonstrating standing defects. And permitting a defendant to point out a preexisting standing defect late in the day is not remotely comparable to permitting a plaintiff to establish standing on the basis of the defendant’s litigation conduct occurring after standing is erroneously determined.

5

Seizing on the fortuity that the case has made its way to this Court, Justice Stevens protests that no agency would ignore “an authoritative construction of the [ESA] by this Court.” Post, at 585. In that he is probably correct; in concluding from it that plaintiffs have demonstrated redressability, he is not. Since, as we have pointed out above, standing *571is to be determined as of the commencement of suit; since at that point it could certainly not be known that the suit would reach this Court; and since it is not likely that an agency would feel compelled to accede to the legal view of a district court expressed in a case to which it was not a party; redressability clearly did not exist.

6

The dissent criticizes us for “overlooking]” memoranda indicating that the Sri Lankan Government solicited and required AID’s assistance to mitigate the effects of the Mahaweli project on endangered species, and that the Bureau of Reclamation was advising the Aswan project. Post, at 600-601. The memoranda, however, contain no indication whatever that the projects will cease or be less harmful to listed species in the absence of AID funding. In fact, the Sri Lanka memorandum suggests just the opposite: It states that AID’s role will be to mitigate the “ ‘negative impacts to the wildlife,’ ” post, at 600, which means that the termination of AID funding would exacerbate respondents’ claimed injury.

7

There is this much truth to the assertion that “procedural rights” are special: The person who has been accorded a procedural right to protect his concrete interests can assert that right without meeting all the normal standards for redressability and immediacy. Thus, under our case law, one living adjacent to the site for proposed construction of a federally licensed dam has standing to challenge the licensing agency's failure to prepare an environmental impact statement, even though he cannot establish with any certainty that the statement will cause the license to be withheld or altered, and even though the dam will not be completed for many years. (That is why we do not rely, in the present case, upon the Government’s argument that, even if the other agencies were obliged to consult with the Secretary, they might not have followed his advice.) What respondents’ “procedural rights” argument seeks, however, is quite different from this: standing for persons who have no concrete interests affected — persons who live (and propose to live) at the other end of the country from the dam.

8

The dissent’s discussion of this aspect of the case, post, at 601-606, distorts our opinion. We do not hold that an individual cannot enforce procedural rights; he assuredly can, so long as the procedures in question are designed to protect some threatened concrete interest of his that is the ultimate basis of his standing. The dissent, however, asserts that there exist “classes of procedural duties ... so enmeshed with the prevention of a substantive, concrete harm that an individual plaintiff may be able to demonstrate a sufficient likelihood of injury just through the breach of that procedural duty.” Post, at 605. If we understand this correctly, it means that the Government’s violation of a certain (undescribed) class of procedural duty satisfies the concrete-injury requirement by itself, without any showing that the procedural violation endangers a concrete interest of the plaintiff (apart from his interest in having the procedure observed). We cannot agree. The dissent is unable to cite a single case in which we actually found standing solely on the basis of a “procedural right” unconnected to the plaintiff’s own concrete harm. Its suggestion that we did so in Japan Whaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Soc., 478 U. S. 221 (1986), and Robertson v. Methow Valley Citizens Council, 490 U. S. 332 (1989), post, at 602-603, 605, is not supported by the facts. In the former case, we found that the environmental organizations had standing because the “whale watching and studying of their members w[ould] be adversely affected by continued whale harvesting,” see 478 U. S., at 230-231, n. 4; and in the latter we did not so much as mention standing, for the very good reason that the plaintiff was a citizens’ council for the area in which the challenged construction was to occur, so that its members would obviously be concretely affected, see Methow Valley Citizens Council v. Regional Forester, 833 F. 2d 810, 812-813 (CA9 1987).

*579Justice Kennedy,

with whom Justice Souter joins, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

Although I agree with the essential' parts of the Court’s analysis, I write separately to make several observations.

I agree with the Court’s conclusion in Part III-A that, on the record before us, respondents have failed to demonstrate that they themselves are “among the injured.” Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 735 (1972). This component of the standing inquiry is not satisfied unless

“[plaintiffs ... demonstrate a ‘personal stake in the outcome.’ . . . Abstract injury is not enough. The plaintiff must show that he ‘has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury’ as the result of the challenged official conduct and the injury or threat of injury must be both ‘real and immediate,’ not ‘conjectural’ or ‘hypothetical.’” Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 101-102 (1983) (citations omitted).

While it may seem trivial to require that Mses. Kelly and Skilbred acquire airline tickets to the project sites or announce a date certain upon which they will return, see ante, at 564, this is not a case where it is reasonable to assume that the affiants will be using the sites on a regular basis, see Sierra Club v. Morton, supra, at 735, n. 8, nor do the affiants claim to have visited the sites since the projects commenced. With respect to the Court’s discussion of respondents’ “ecosystem nexus,” “animal nexus,” and “vocational nexus” theories, ante, at 565-567, I agree that on this record respondents’ showing is insufficient to establish standing on any of these bases. I am not willing to foreclose the possibility, however, that in different circumstances a nexus theory similar to those proffered here might support a claim to standing. See Japan Whaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Society, 478 U. S. 221, 231, n. 4 (1986) (“[Rjespondents . . . undoubtedly have alleged a sufficient ‘injury in fact’ in that *580the whale watching and studying of their members will be adversely affected by continued whale harvesting”).

In light of the conclusion that respondents have not demonstrated a concrete injury here sufficient to support standing under our precedents, I would not reach the issue of re-dressability that is discussed by the plurality in Part III-B.

I also join Part IV of the Court’s opinion with the following observations. As Government programs and policies become more complex and far reaching, we must be sensitive to the articulation of new rights of action that do not have clear analogs in our common-law tradition. Modern litigation has progressed far from the paradigm of Marbury suing Madison to get his commission, Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803), or Ogden seeking an injunction to halt Gibbons’ steamboat operations, Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1 (1824). In my view, Congress has the power to define injuries and articulate chains of causation that will give rise to a case or controversy where none existed before, and I do not read the Court’s opinion to suggest a contrary view. See Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 500 (1975); ante, at 578. In exercising this power, however, Congress must at the very least identify the injury it seeks to vindicate and relate the injury to the class of persons entitled to bring suit. The citizen-suit provision of the Endangered Species Act does not meet these minimal requirements, because while the statute purports to confer a right on “any person ... to enjoin . . . the United States and any other governmental instrumentality or agency . . . who is alleged to be in violation of any provision of this chapter,” it does not of its own force establish that there is an injury in “any person” by virtue of any “violation.” 16 U. S. C. § 1540(g)(1)(A).

The Court’s holding that there is an outer limit to the power of Congress to confer rights of action is a direct and necessary consequence of the case and controversy limitations found in Article III. I agree that it Would exceed those limitations if, at the behest of Congress and in the ab*581sence of any showing of concrete injury, we were to entertain citizen suits to vindicate the public’s nonconcrete interest in the proper administration of the laws. While it does not matter how many persons have been injured by the challenged action, the party bringing suit must show that the action injures him in a concrete and personal way. This requirement is not just an empty formality. It preserves the vitality of the adversarial process by assuring both that the parties before the court have an actual, as opposed to professed, stake in the outcome, and that “the legal questions presented... will be resolved, not in the rarified atmosphere of a debating society, but in a concrete factual context conducive to a realistic appreciation of the consequences of judicial action.” Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 472 (1982). In addition, the requirement of concrete injury confines the Judicial Branch to its proper, limited role in the constitutional framework of Government.

An independent judiciary is held to account through its open proceedings and its reasoned judgments. In this process it is essential for the public to know what persons or groups are invoking the judicial power, the reasons that they have brought suit, and whether their claims are vindicated or denied. The concrete injury requirement helps assure that there can be an answer to these questions; and, as the Court’s opinion is careful to show, that is part of the constitutional design.

With these observations, I concur in Parts I, II, III-A, and IV of the Court’s opinion and in the judgment of the Court.

Justice Stevens,

concurring in the judgment.

Because I am not persuaded that Congress intended the consultation requirement in § 7(a)(2) of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA), 16 U. S. C. § 1536(a)(2), to apply to activities in foreign countries, I concur in the judgment of reversal. I do not, however, agree with the Court’s conclu*582sion that respondents lack standing because the threatened injury to their interest in protecting the environment and studying endangered species is not “imminent.” Nor do I agree with the plurality’s additional conclusion that respondents’ injury is not “redressable” in this litigation.

HH

In my opinion a person who has visited the critical habitat of an endangered species has a professional interest in preserving the species and its habitat, and intends to revisit them in the future has standing to challenge agency action that threatens their destruction. Congress has found that a wide variety of endangered species of fish, wildlife, and plants are of “aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people.” 16 U. S. C. § 1531(a)(3). Given that finding, we have no license to demean the importance of the interest that particular individuals may have in observing any species or its habitat, whether those individuals are motivated by esthetic enjoyment, an interest in professional research, or an economic interest in preservation of the species. Indeed, this Court has often held that injuries to such interests are sufficient to confer standing,1 and the Court reiterates that holding today. See ante, at 562-563.

The Court nevertheless concludes that respondents have not suffered “injury in fact” because they have not shown that the harm to the endangered species will produce “imminent” injury to them. See ante, at 564. I disagree. An injury to an individual’s interest in studying or enjoying a species and its natural habitat occurs when someone (whether it be the Government or a private party) takes action that harms that species and habitat. In my judgment, *583therefore, the “imminence” of such an injury should be measured by the timing and likelihood of the threatened environmental harm, rather than — as the Court seems to suggest, ante, at 564, and n. 2 — by the time that might elapse between the present and the time when the individuals would visit the area if no such injury should occur.

To understand why this approach is correct and consistent with our precedent, it is necessary to consider the purpose of the standing doctrine. Concerned about “the proper— and properly limited — role of the courts in a democratic society,” we have long held that “Art. Ill judicial power exists only to redress or otherwise to protect against injury to the complaining party.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 498-499 (1975)., The plaintiff must have a “personal stake in the outcome” sufficient to “assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult . . . questions.” Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204 (1962). For that reason, “[a]bstract injury is not enough. It must be alleged that the plaintiff ‘has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury’ as the result of the challenged statute or official conduct... . The injury or threat of injury must be both ‘real and immediate,’ not ‘conjectural,’ or ‘hypothetical.’ ” O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 494 (1974) (quoting Golden v. Zwickler, 394 U. S. 103, 109-110 (1969)).

Consequently, we have denied standing to plaintiffs whose likelihood of suffering any concrete adverse effect from the challenged action was speculative. See, e. g., Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149, 158-159 (1990); Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 105 (1983); O’Shea, 414 U. S., at 497. In this case, however, the likelihood that respondents will be injured by the destruction of the endangered species is not speculative. If respondents are genuinely interested in the preservation of the endangered species and intend to study or observe these animals in the future, their injury will occur as soon as the animals are destroyed. Thus the only poten*584tial source of “speculation” in this case is whether respondents’ intent to study or observe the animals is genuine.2 In my view, Joyce Kelly and Amy Skilbred have introduced sufficient evidence to negate petitioner’s contention that their claims of injury are “speculative” or “conjectural.” As Justice Blackmun explains, post, at 591-592, a reasonable finder of fact could conclude, from their past visits, their professional backgrounds, and their affidavits and deposition testimony, that Ms. Kelly and Ms. Skilbred will return to the project sites and, consequently, will be injured by the destruction of the endangered species and critical habitat.

The plurality also concludes that respondents’ injuries are not redressable in this litigation for two reasons. First, respondents have sought only a declaratory judgment that the Secretary of the Interior’s regulation interpreting § 7(a)(2) to require consultation only for agency actions in the United States or on the high seas is invalid and an injunction requiring him to promulgate a new regulation requiring consultation for agency actions abroad as well. But, the plurality opines, even if respondents succeed and a new regulation is *585promulgated, there is no guarantee that federal agencies that are not parties to this case will actually consult with the Secretary. See ante, at 568-571. Furthermore, the plurality continues, respondents have not demonstrated that federal agencies can influence the behavior of the foreign governments where the affected projects are located. Thus, even if the agencies consult with the Secretary and terminate funding for foreign projects, the foreign governments might nonetheless pursue the projects and jeopardize the endangered species. See ante, at 571. Neither of these reasons is persuasive.

We must presume that if this Court holds that § 7(a)(2) requires consultation, all affected agencies would abide by that interpretation and engage in the requisite consultations. Certainly the Executive Branch cannot be heard to argue that an authoritative construction of the governing statute by this Court may simply be ignored by any agency head. Moreover, if Congress has required consultation between agencies, we must presume that such consultation will have a serious purpose that is likely to produce tangible results. As Justice Blackmun explains, post, at 599-601, it is not mere speculation to think that foreign governments, when faced with the threatened withdrawal of United States assistance, will modify their projects to mitigate the harm to endangered species.

II

Although I believe that respondents have standing, I nevertheless concur in the judgment of reversal because I am persuaded that the Government is correct in its submission that § 7(a)(2) does not apply to activities in foreign countries. As with all questions of statutory construction, the question whether a statute applies extraterritorially is one of congressional intent. Foley Bros., Inc. v. Filardo, 336 U. S. 281, 284-285 (1949). We normally assume that “Congress is primarily concerned with domestic conditions,” id., at 285, and therefore presume that “‘legislation of Congress, unless a *586contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States,'” EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U. S. 244, 248 (1991) (quoting Foley Bros., 336 U. S., at 285).

Section 7(a)(2) provides, in relevant part:

“Each Federal agency shall, in consultation with and with the assistance of the Secretary [of the Interior or Commerce, as appropriate3], insure that any action authorized, funded, or carried out by such agency (hereinafter in this section referred to as an ‘agency action’) is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species or threatened species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of habitat of such species which is determined by the Secretary, after consultation as appropriate with affected States, to be critical, unless such agency has been granted an exemption for such action by the Committee pursuant to subsection (h) of this section....” 16 U. S. C. § 1536(a)(2).

Nothing in this text indicates that the section applies in foreign countries.4 Indeed, the only geographic reference in *587the section is in the “critical habitat” clause,5 which mentions “affected States.” The Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce have consistently taken the position that they need not designate critical habitat in foreign countries. See 42 Fed. Reg. 4869 (1977) (initial regulations of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce). Consequently, neither Secretary interprets § 7(a)(2) to require federal agencies to engage in consultations to ensure that their actions in foreign countries will not adversely affect the critical habitat of endangered or threatened species.

That interpretation is sound, and, in fact, the Court of Appeals did not question it.6 There is, moreover, no indication that Congress intended to give a different geographic scope to the two clauses in § 7(a)(2). To the contrary, Congress recognized that one of the “major causes” of extinction of *588endangered species is the “destruction of natural habitat.” S. Rep. No. 93-307, p. 2 (1973); see also H. Rep. No. 93-412, p. 2 (1973); TVA v. Hill, 437 U. S. 153, 179 (1978). It would thus be illogical to conclude that Congress required federal agencies to avoid jeopardy to endangered species abroad, but not destruction of critical habitat abroad.

The lack of an express indication that the consultation requirement applies extraterritorially is particularly significant because other sections of the ESA expressly deal with the problem of protecting endangered species abroad. Section 8, for example, authorizes the President to provide assistance to “any foreign country (with its consent)... in the development and management of programs in that country which [are] . . . necessary or useful for the conservation of any endangered species or threatened species listed by the Secretary pursuant to section 1533 of this title.” 16 U. S. C. § 1537(a). It also directs the Secretary of the Interior, “through the Secretary of State,” to “encourage” foreign countries to conserve fish and wildlife and to enter into bilateral or multilateral agreements. § 1537(b). Section 9 makes it unlawful to import endangered species into (or export them from) the United States or to otherwise traffic in endangered species “in interstate or foreign commerce.” §§ 1538(a)(1)(A), (E), (F). Congress thus obviously thought about endangered species abroad and devised specific sections of the ESA to protect them. In this context, the absence of any explicit statement that the consultation requirement is applicable to agency actions in foreign countries suggests that Congress did not intend that § 7(a)(2) apply extraterritorially.

Finally, the general purpose of the ESA does not evince a congressional intent that the consultation requirement be applicable to federal agency actions abroad. The congressional findings explaining the need for the ESA emphasize that “various species of fish, wildlife, and plants in the United States have been rendered extinct as a consequence *589of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation,” and that these species “are of aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people.” §§ 1531(1), (3) (emphasis added). The lack of similar findings about the harm caused by development in other countries suggests that Congress was primarily concerned with balancing development and conservation goals in this country.7

In short, a reading of the entire statute persuades me that Congress did not intend the consultation requirement in § 7(a)(2) to apply to activities in foreign countries. Accordingly, notwithstanding my disagreement with the Court’s disposition of the standing question, I concur in its judgment.

1

See, e. g., Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 734 (1972); United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP), 412 U. S. 669, 686-687 (1973); Japan Whaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Society, 478 U. S. 221, 230-231, n. 4 (1986).

2

As we recognized in Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S., at 735, the impact of changes in the esthetics or ecology of a particular area does “not fall indiscriminately upon every citizen. The alleged injury will be felt directly only by those who use [the area,] and for whom the aesthetic and recreational values of the area will be lessened ...Thus, respondents would not be injured by the challenged projects if they had not visited the sites or studied the threatened species and habitat. But, as discussed above, respondents did visit the sites; moreover, they have expressed an intent to do so again. This intent to revisit the area is significant evidence tending to confirm the genuine character of respondents’ interest, but I am not at all sure that an intent to revisit would be indispensable in every case. The interest that confers standing in a case of this kind is comparable, though by no means equivalent, to the interest in a relationship among family members that can be immediately harmed by the death of an absent member, regardless of when, if ever, a family reunion is planned to occur. Thus, if the facts of this case had shown repeated and regular visits by the respondents, cf. ante, at 579 (opinion of Kennedy, J.), proof of an intent to revisit might well be superfluous.

3

The ESA defines “Secretary” to mean “the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Commerce as program responsibilities are vested pursuant to the provisions of Reorganization Plan Numbered 4 of 1970.” 16 U. S. C. § 1632(15). As a general matter, “marine species are under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Commerce and all other species are under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior.” 61 Fed. Reg. 19926 (1986) (preamble to final regulations governing interagency consultation promulgated by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce).

4

Respondents point out that the duties in § 7(a)(2) are phrased in broad, inclusive language: “Each Federal agency” shall consult with the Secretary and ensure that “any action” does not jeopardize “any endangered or threatened species” or destroy or adversely modify the “habitat of such species.” See Brief for Respondents 36; 16 U. S. C. § 1636(a)(2). The Court of Appeals correctly recognized, however, that such inclusive language, by itself, is not sufficient to overcome the presumption against the *587extraterritorial application of statutes. 911 F. 2d 117, 122 (CA8 1990); see also Foley Bros., Inc. v. Filardo, 336 U. S. 281, 282, 287-288 (1949) (statute requiring an 8-hour day provision in “ ‘[ejvery contract made to which the United States ... is a party’” is inapplicable to contracts for work performed in foreign countries).

5

Section 7(a)(2) has two clauses which require federal agencies to consult with the Secretary to ensure that their actions (1) do not jeopardize threatened or endangered species (the “endangered species clause”), and (2) are not likely to destroy or adversely affect the habitat of such species (the “critical habitat clause”).

6

Instead, the Court of Appeals concluded that the endangered species clause and the critical habitat clause are “severable,” at least with respect to their “geographical scope,” so that the former clause applies extraterri-torially even if the latter does not. 911 F. 2d, at 125. Under this interpretation, federal agencies must consult with the Secretary to ensure that their actions in foreign countries are not likely to threaten any endangered species, but they need not consult to ensure that their actions are not likely to destroy the critical habitats of these species. I cannot subscribe to the Court of Appeals’ strained interpretation, for there is no indication that Congress intended to give such vastly different scope to the two clauses in § 7(a)(2).

7

Of course, Congress also found that “the United States has pledged itself as a sovereign state in the international community to conserve to the extent practicable the various species of fish or wildlife and plants facing extinction, pursuant to [several international agreements],” and that “encouraging the States ... to develop and maintain conservation programs which meet national and international standards is a key to meeting the Nation’s international commitments . . . .” 16 U. S. C. §§ 1531(4), (5). The Court of Appeals read these findings as indicative of a congressional intent to make § 7(a)(2)’s consultation requirement applicable to agency action abroad. See 911 F. 2d, at 122-123. I am not persuaded, however, that such a broad congressional intent can be gleaned from these findings. Instead, I think the findings indicate a more narrow congressional intent that the United States abide by its international commitments.

Justice Blackmun,

with whom Justice O’Connor joins, dissenting..

I part company with the Court in this case in two respects. First, I believe that respondents have raised genuine issues of fact — sufficient to survive summary judgment — both as to injury and as to redressability. Second, I question the Court’s breadth of language in rejecting standing for “procedural” injuries. I fear the Court seeks to impose fresh limitations on the constitutional authority of Congress to allow *590citizen suits in the federal courts for injuries deemed “procedural” in nature. I dissent.

I

Article III of the Constitution confines the federal courts to adjudication of actual “Cases” and “Controversies.” To ensure the presence of a “case” or “controversy,” this Court has held that Article III requires, as an irreducible minimum, that a plaintiff allege (1) an injury that is (2) “fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct” and that is (3) “likely to be redressed by the requested relief.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 751 (1984).

A

To survive petitioner’s motion for summary judgment on standing, respondents need not prove that they are actually or imminently harmed. They need show only a “genuine issue” of material fact as to standing. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56(c). This is not a heavy burden. A “genuine issue” exists so long as “the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party [respondents].” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U. S. 242, 248 (1986). This Court’s “function is not [it]self to weigh the evidence and determine the truth of the matter but to determine whether there is a genuine issue for trial.” Id., at 249.

The Court never mentions the “genuine issue” standard. Rather, the Court refers to the type of evidence it feels respondents failed to produce, namely, “affidavits or other evidence showing, through specific facts” the existence of injury. Ante, at 563. The Court thereby confuses respondents’ evidentiary burden- (i. e., affidavits asserting “specific facts”) in withstanding a summary judgment motion under Rule 56(e) with the standard of proof (i. e., the existence of a “genuine issue” of “material fact”) under Rule 56(c).

*5911

Were the Court to apply the proper standard for summary judgment, I believe it would conclude that the sworn affidavits and deposition testimony of Joyce Kelly and Amy Skil-bred advance sufficient facts to create a genuine issue for trial concerning whether one or both would be imminently harmed by the Aswan and Mahaweli projects. In the first instance, as the Court itself concedes, the affidavits contained facts making it at least “questionable” (and therefore within the province of the factfinder) that certain agency-funded projects threaten listed species.1 Ante, at 564. The only remaining issue, then, is whether Kelly and Skilbred have shown that they personally would suffer imminent harm.

I think a reasonable finder of fact could conclude from the information in the affidavits and deposition testimony that either Kelly or Skilbred will soon return to the project sites, thereby satisfying the “actual or imminent” injury standard. The Court dismisses Kelly’s and Skilbred’s general state*592ments that they intended to revisit the project sites as “simply not enough.” Ibid. But those statements did not stand alone. A reasonable finder of fact could conclude, based not only upon their statements of intent to return, but upon their past visits to the project sites, as well as their professional backgrounds, that it was likely that Kelly and Skilbred would make a return trip to the project areas. Contrary to the Court’s contention that Kelly’s and Skilbred’s past visits “prov[e] nothing,” ibid., the fact of their past visits could demonstrate to a reasonable factfinder that Kelly and Skil-bred have the requisite resources and personal interest in the preservation of the species endangered by the Aswan and Mahaweli projects to make good on their intention to return again. Cf. Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 102 (1983) (“Past wrongs were evidence bearing on whether there is a real and immediate threat of repeated injury”) (internal quotation marks omitted). Similarly, Kelly’s and Skilbred’s professional backgrounds in wildlife preservation, see App. 100, 144, 309-310, also make it likely — at least far more likely than for the average citizen — that they would choose to visit these areas of the world where species are vanishing.

By requiring a “description of concrete plans” or “specification of when the some day [for a return visit] will be,” ante, at 564, the Court, in my view, demands what is likely an empty formality. No substantial barriers prevent Kelly or Skilbred from simply purchasing plane tickets to return to the Aswan and Mahaweli projects. This case differs from other cases in which the imminence of harm turned largely on the affirmative actions of third parties beyond a plaintiff’s control. See Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149, 155-156 (1990) (harm to plaintiff death-row inmate from fellow inmate’s execution depended on the court’s one day reversing plaintiff’s conviction or sentence and considering comparable sentences at resentencing); Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S., at 105 (harm dependent on police’s arresting plaintiff again *593and subjecting him to chokehold); Rizzo v. Goode, 423 U. S. 362, 372 (1976) (harm rested upon “what one of a small, unnamed minority of policemen might do to them in the future because of that unknown policeman’s perception of departmental disciplinary procedures”); O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 495-498 (1974) (harm from discriminatory conduct of county magistrate and judge dependent on plaintiffs’ being arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced); Golden v. Zwickler, 394 U. S. 103, 109 (1969) (harm to plaintiff dependent on a former Congressman’s (then serving a 14-year term as a judge) running again for Congress). To be sure, a plaintiff’s unilateral control over his or her exposure to harm does not necessarily render the harm nonspeculative. Nevertheless, it suggests that a finder of fact would be far more likely to conclude the harm is actual or imminent, especially if given an opportunity to hear testimony and determine credibility.

I fear the Court’s demand for detailed descriptions of future conduct will do little to weed out those who are genuinely harmed from those who are not. More likely, it will resurrect a code-pleading formalism in federal court summary judgment practice, as federal courts, newly doubting their jurisdiction, will demand more and more particularized showings of future harm. Just to survive summary judgment, for example, a property owner claiming a decline in the value of his property from governmental action might have to specify the exact date he intends to sell his property and show that there is a market for the property, lest it be surmised he might not sell again. A nurse turned down for a job on grounds of her race had better be prepared to show on what date she was prepared to start work, that she had arranged daycare for her child, and that she would not have accepted work at another hospital instead. And a Federal Tort Claims Act plaintiff alleging loss of consortium should make sure to furnish this Court with a “description of concrete plans” for her nightly schedule of attempted activities.

*5942

The Court also concludes that injury is lacking, because respondents’ allegations of “ecosystem nexus” failed to demonstrate sufficient proximity to the site of the environmental harm. Ante, at 565-566. To support that conclusion, the Court mischaracterizes our decision in Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U. S. 871 (1990), as establishing a general rule that “a plaintiff claiming injury from environmental damage must use the area affected by the challenged activity.” Ante, at 565-566. In National Wildlife Federation, the Court required specific geographical proximity because of the particular type of harm alleged in that case: harm to the plaintiff’s visual enjoyment of nature from mining activities. 497 U. S., at 888. One cannot suffer from the sight of a ruined landscape without being close enough to see the sites actually being mined. Many environmental injuries, however, cause harm distant from the area immediately affected by the challenged action. Environmental destruction may affect animals traveling over vast geographical ranges, see, e. g., Japan Whaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Society, 478 U. S. 221 (1986) (harm to American whale watchers from Japanese whaling activities), or rivers running long geographical courses, see, e. g., Arkansas v. Oklahoma, 503 U. S. 91 (1992) (harm to Oklahoma residents from wastewater treatment plant 39 miles from border). It cannot seriously be contended that a litigant’s failure to use the precise or exact site where animals are slaughtered or where toxic waste is dumped into a river means he or she cannot show injury.

The Court also rejects respondents’ claim of vocational or professional injury. The Court says that it is “beyond all reason” that a zoo “keeper” of Asian elephants would have standing to contest his Government’s participation in the eradication of all the Asian elephants in another part of the world. Ante, at 566. I am unable to see how the distant location of the destruction necessarily (for purposes of ruling *595at summary judgment) mitigates the harm to the elephant keeper. If there is no more access to a future supply of the animal that sustains a keeper’s livelihood, surely there is harm.

1 have difficulty imagining this Court applying its rigid principles of geographic formalism anywhere outside the context of environmental claims. As I understand it, environmental plaintiffs are under no special constitutional standing disabilities. Like other plaintiffs, they need show only that the action they challenge has injured them, without necessarily showing they happened to be physically near the location of the alleged wrong. The Court’s decision today should not be interpreted “to foreclose the possibility . . . that in different circumstances a nexus theory similar to those proffered here might support a claim to standing.” Ante, at 579 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).

B

A plurality of the Court suggests that respondents have not demonstrated redressability: a likelihood that a court ruling in their favor would remedy their injury. Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U. S. 59, 74-75, and n. 20 (1978) (plaintiff must show “substantial likelihood” that relief requested will redress the injury). The plurality identifies two obstacles. The first is that the “action agencies” (e. g., AID) cannot be required to undertake consultation with petitioner Secretary, because they are not directly bound as parties to the suit and are otherwise not indirectly bound by being subject to petitioner Secretary’s regulation. Petitioner, however, officially and publicly has taken the position that his regulations regarding consultation under § 7 of the Act are binding on action agencies. 50 CFR § 402.14(a) (1991).2 And he has previously *596taken the same position in this very litigation, having stated in his answer to the complaint that petitioner “admits the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was designated the lead agency for the formulation of regulations concerning section 7 of the [Endangered Species Act].” App. 246. I cannot agree with the plurality that the Secretary (or the Solicitor General) is now free, for the convenience of this appeal, to disavow his prior public and litigation positions. More generally, I cannot agree that the Government is free to play “Three-Card Monte” with its description of agencies’ authority to defeat standing against the agency given the lead in administering a statutory scheme.

Emphasizing that none of the action agencies are parties to this suit (and having rejected the possibility of their being indirectly bound by petitioner’s regulation), the plurality concludes that “there is no reason they should be obliged to honor an incidental legal determination the suit produced.” Ante, at 569. I am not as willing as the plurality is to assume that agencies at least will not try to follow the law. Moreover, I wonder if the plurality has not overlooked the extensive involvement from the inception of this litigation by the Department of State and AID.3 Under *597principles of collateral estoppel, these agencies are precluded from subsequently relitigating the issues decided in this suit.

“[0]ne who prosecutes or defends a suit in the name of another to establish and protect his own right, or who assists in the prosecution or defense of an action in aid of some interest of his own, and who does this openly to the knowledge of the opposing party, is as much bound by the judgment and as fully entitled to avail himself of it as an estoppel against an adverse party, as he would be if he had been a party to the record.” Souffront v. Compagnie des Sucreries de Porto Rico, 217 U. S. 475, 487 (1910).

This principle applies even to the Federal Government. In Montana v. United States, 440 U. S. 147 (1979), this Court held that the Government was estopped from relitigating in federal court the constitutionality of Montana’s gross receipts tax, because that issue previously had been litigated in state court by an individual contractor whose litigation had been financed and controlled by the Federal Government. “Thus, although not a party, the United States plainly had a sufficient ‘laboring oar’ in the conduct of the state-court litigation to actuate principles of estoppel.” Id., at 155. See also United States v. Mendoza, 464 U. S. 154, 164, n. 9 (1984) (Federal Government estopped where it “constituted a ‘party’ in all but a technical sense”). In my view, the action agencies have had sufficient “laboring oars” in this litigation since its inception to be bound from subsequent *598relitigation of the extraterritorial scope of the § 7 consultation requirement.4 As a result, I believe respondents’ injury would likely be redressed by a favorable decision.

*599The second redressability obstacle relied on by the plurality is that “the [action] agencies generally supply only a fraction of the funding for a foreign project.” Ante, at 571. What this Court might “generally” take to be true does not eliminate the existence of a genuine issue of fact to withstand summary judgment. Even if the action agencies supply only a fraction of the funding for a particular foreign project, it remains at least a question for the finder of fact whether threatened withdrawal of that fraction would affect foreign government conduct sufficiently to avoid harm to listed species.

The plurality states that “AID, for example, has provided less than 10% of the funding for the Mahaweli project.” Ibid. The plurality neglects to mention that this “fraction” amounts to $170 million, see App. 159, not so paltry a sum for a country of only 16 million people with a gross national product of less than $6 billion in 1986 when respondents filed *600the complaint in this action. Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Sri Lanka: A Country Study (Area Handbook Series) xvi-xvii (1990).

The plurality flatly states: “Respondents have produced nothing to indicate that the projects they have named will ... do less harm to listed species, if that fraction is eliminated.” Ante, at 571. As an initial matter, the relevant inquiry is not, as the plurality suggests, what will happen if AID or other agencies stop funding projects, but what will happen if AID or other agencies comply with the consultation requirement for projects abroad. Respondents filed suit to require consultation, not a termination of funding. Respondents have raised at least a genuine issue of fact that the projects harm endangered species and that the actions of AID and other United States agencies can mitigate that harm.

The plurality overlooks an Interior Department memorandum listing eight endangered or threatened species in the Mahaweli project area and recounting that “[t]he Sri Lankan government has requested the assistance of AID in mitigating the negative impacts to the wildlife involved.” App. 78. Further, a letter from the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service to AID states:

“The Sri Lankan government lacks the necessary finances to undertake any long-term management programs to avoid the negative impacts to the wildlife. The donor nations and agencies that are financing the [Mahaweli project] will be the key as to how successfully the wildlife is preserved. If wildlife problems receive the same level of attention as the engineering project, then the negative impacts to the environment can be alleviated. This means that there has to be long-term funding in sufficient amounts to stem the negative impacts of this project.” Id., at 216.

*601I do not share the plurality’s astonishing confidence that, on the record here, a factfinder could only conclude that AID was powerless to ensure the protection of listed species at the Mahaweli project.

As for the Aswan project, the record again rebuts the plurality’s assumption that donor agencies are without any authority to protect listed species. Kelly asserted in her affidavit — and it has not been disputed — that the Bureau of Reclamation was “overseeing” the rehabilitation of the Aswan project. Id., at 101. See also id., at 65 (Bureau of Reclamation publication stating: “In 1982, the Egyptian government . . . requested that Reclamation serve as its engineering advisor for the nine-year [Aswan] rehabilitation project”).

I find myself unable to agree with the plurality’s analysis of redressability, based as it is on its invitation of executive lawlessness, ignorance of principles of collateral estoppel, unfounded assumptions about causation, and erroneous conclusions about what the record does not say. In my view, respondents have satisfactorily shown a genuine issue of fact as to whether their injury would likely be redressed by a decision in their favor.

II

The Court concludes that any “procedural injury” suffered by respondents is insufficient to confer standing. It rejects the view that the “injury-in-fact requirement [is] satisfied by congressional conferral upon all persons of an abstract, self-contained, noninstrumental ‘right’ to have the Executive observe the procedures required by law.” Ante, at 573. Whatever the Court might mean with that very broad language, it cannot be saying that “procedural injuries” as a class are necessarily insufficient for purposes of Article III standing.

Most governmental conduct can be classified as “procedural.” Many injuries caused by governmental conduct, therefore, are categorizable at some level of generality as *602“procedural” injuries. Yet, these injuries are not categorically beyond the pale of redress by the federal courts. When the Government, for example, “procedurally” issues a pollution permit, those affected by the permittee’s pollutants are not without standing to sue. Only later cases will tell just what the Court means by its intimation that “procedural” injuries are not constitutionally cognizable injuries. In the meantime, I have the greatest of sympathy for the courts across the country that will struggle to understand the Court’s standardless exposition of this concept today.

The Court -expresses concern that allowing judicial enforcement of “agencies’ observance of a particular, statutorily prescribed procedure” would “transfer from the President to the courts the Chief Executive’s most important constitutional duty, to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ Art. II, § 8.” Ante, at 576, 577. In fact, the principal effect of foreclosing judicial enforcement of such procedures is to transfer power into the hands of the Executive at the expense — not of the courts — but of Congress, from which that power originates and emanates.

Under the Court’s anachronistically formal view of the separation of powers, Congress legislates pure, substantive mandates and has no business structuring the procedural manner in which the Executive implements these mandates. To be sure, in the ordinary course, Congress does legislate in black-and-white terms of affirmative commands or negative prohibitions on the conduct of officers of the Executive Branch. In complex regulatory areas, however, Congress often legislates, as it were, in procedural shades of gray. That is, it sets forth substantive policy goals and provides for their attainment by requiring Executive Branch officials to follow certain procedures, for example, in the form of reporting, consultation, and certification requirements.

The Court recently has considered two such procedurally oriented statutes. In Japan Whaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Society, 478 U. S. 221 (1986), the Court examined a *603statute requiring the Secretary of Commerce to certify to the President that foreign nations were not conducting fishing operations or trading which “diminis[h] the effectiveness” of an international whaling convention. Id., at 226. The Court expressly found standing to sue. Id., at 230-231, n. 4. In Robertson v. Methow Valley Citizens Council, 490 U. S. 332, 348 (1989), this Court considered injury from violation of the “action-forcing” procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), in particular the requirements for issuance of environmental impact statements.

The consultation requirement of §7 of the Endangered Species Act is a similar, action-forcing statute. Consultation is designed as an integral check on federal agency action, ensuring that such action does not go forward without full consideration of its effects on listed species. Once consultation is initiated, the Secretary is under a duty to provide to the action agency “a written statement setting forth the Secretary’s opinion, and a summary of the information on which the opinion is based, detailing how the agency action affects the species or its critical habitat.” 16 U. S. C. § 1536(b)(3)(A). The Secretary is also obligated to suggest “reasonable and prudent alternatives” to prevent jeopardy to listed species. Ibid. The action agency must undertake as well its own “biological assessment for the purpose of identifying any endangered species or threatened species” likely to be affected by agency action. § 1536(c)(1). After the initiation of consultation, the action agency “shall not make any irreversible or irretrievable commitment of resources” which would foreclose the “formulation or implementation of any reasonable and prudent alternative measures” to avoid jeopardizing listed species. § 1536(d). These action-forcing procedures are “designed to protect some threatened concrete interest,” ante, at 573, n. 8, of persons who observe and work with endangered or threatened species. That is why I am mystified by the Court’s unsupported conclusion that “[tjhis is not a case where plaintiffs *604are seeking to enforce a procedural requirement the disregard of which could impair a separate concrete interest of theirs.” Ante, at 572.

Congress legislates in procedural shades of gray not to aggrandize its own power but to allow maximum Executive discretion in the attainment of Congress’ legislative goals. Congress could simply impose a substantive prohibition on Executive conduct; it could say that no agency action shall result in the loss of more than 5% of any listed species. Instead, Congress sets forth substantive guidelines and allows the Executive, within certain procedural constraints, to decide how best to effectuate the ultimate goal. See American Power & Light Co. v. SEC, 329 U. S. 90, 105 (1946). The Court never has questioned Congress’ authority to impose such procedural constraints on Executive power. Just as Congress does not violate separation of powers by structuring the procedural manner in which the Executive shall carry out the laws, surely the federal courts do not violate separation of powers when, at the very instruction and command of Congress, they enforce these procedures.

To prevent Congress from conferring standing for “procedural injuries” is another way of saying that Congress may not delegate to the courts authority deemed “executive” in nature. Ante, at 577 (Congress may not “transfer from the President to the courts the Chief Executive’s most important constitutional duty, to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ Art. II, §3”). Here Congress seeks not to delegate “executive” power but only to strengthen the procedures it has legislatively mandated. “We have long recognized that the nondelegation doctrine does not prevent Congress from seeking assistance, within proper limits, from its coordinate Branches.” Touby v. United States, 500 U. S. 160, 165 (1991). “Congress does not violate the Constitution merely because it legislates in broad terms, leaving a certain degree of discretion to executive or judicial actors.” Ibid. (emphasis added).

*605Ironically, this Court has previously justified a relaxed review of congressional delegation to the Executive on grounds that Congress, in turn, has subjected the exercise of that power to judicial review. INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 953-954, n. 16 (1983); American Power & Light Co. v. SEC, 329 U. S., at 105-106. The Court’s intimation today that procedural injuries are not constitutionally cognizable threatens this understanding upon which Congress has undoubtedly relied. In no sense is the Court’s suggestion compelled by our “common understanding of what activities are appropriate to legislatures, to executives, and to courts.” Ante, at 560. In my view, it reflects an unseemly solicitude for an expansion of power of the Executive Branch.

It is to be hoped that over time the Court will acknowledge that some classes of procedural duties are so enmeshed with the prevention of a substantive, concrete harm that an individual plaintiff may be able to demonstrate a sufficient likelihood of injury just through the breach of that procedural duty. For example, in the context of the NEPA requirement of environmental-impact statements, this Court has acknowledged “it is now well settled that NEPA itself does not mandate particular results [and] simply prescribes the necessary process,” but “these procedures are almost certain to affect the agency’s substantive decision.” Robertson v. Methow Valley Citizens Council, 490 U. S., at 350 (emphasis added). See also Andrus v. Sierra Club, 442 U. S. 347, 350-351 (1979) (“If environmental concerns are not interwoven into the fabric of agency planning, the ‘action-forcing’ characteristics of [the environmental-impact statement requirement] would be lost”). This acknowledgment of an inextricable link between procedural and substantive harm does not reflect improper appellate factfinding. It reflects nothing more than the proper deference owed to the judgment of a coordinate branch — Congress—that certain procedures are directly tied to protection against a substantive harm.

*606In short, determining “injury” for Article III standing purposes is a fact-specific inquiry. “Typically ... the standing inquiry requires careful judicial examination of a complaint’s allegations to ascertain whether the particular plaintiff is entitled to an adjudication of the particular claims asserted.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S., at 752. There may be factual circumstances in which a congressionally imposed procedural requirement is so insubstantially connected to the prevention of a substantive harm that it cannot be said to work any conceivable injury to an individual litigant. But, as a general matter, the courts owe substantial deference to Congress’ substantive purpose in imposing a certain procedural requirement. In all events, “[o]ur separation-of-powers analysis does not turn on the labeling of an activity as ‘substantive’ as opposed to ‘procedural.’” Mistretta v. United States, 488 U. S. 361, 393 (1989). There is no room for a per se rule or presumption excluding injuries labeled “procedural” in nature.

III

In conclusion, I cannot join the Court on what amounts to a slash-and-burn expedition through the law of environmental standing. In my view, “[t]he very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 163 (1803).

I dissent.

1

The record is replete with genuine issues of fact about the harm to endangered species from the Aswan and Mahaweli projects. For example, according to an internal memorandum of the Fish and Wildlife Service, no fewer than eight listed species are found in the Mahaweli project area (Indian elephant, leopard, purple-faced langur, toque macaque, red face malkoha, Bengal monitor, mugger crocodile, and python). App. 78. The memorandum recounts that the Sri Lankan Government has specifically requested assistance from the Agency for International Development (AID) in “mitigating the negative impacts to the wildlife involved.” Ibid. In addition, a letter from the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service to AID warns: “The magnitude of the Accelerated Mahaweli Development Program could have massive environmental impacts on such an insular ecosystem as the Mahaweli River system.” Id., at 215. It adds: “The Sri Lankan government lacks the necessary finances to undertake any long-term management programs to avoid the negative impacts to the wildlife.” Id., at 216. Finally, in an affidavit' submitted by petitioner for purposes of this litigation, an AID official states that an AID environmental assessment “showed that the [Mahaweli] project could affect several endangered species.” Id., at 159.

2

This section provides in part:

“(a) Requirement for formal consultation. Each Federal agency shall review its actions at the earliest possible time to determine whether any *596action may affect listed species or critical habitat. If such a determination is made, formal consultation is required ....”

The Secretary’s intent to make the regulations binding upon other agencies is even clearer from the discussion accompanying promulgation of the consultation rules. See 61 Fed. Reg. 19928 (1986) (“Several commenters stated that Congress did not intend that the Service interpret or implement section 7, and believed that the Service should recast the regulations as ‘nonbinding guidelines’ that would govern only the Service’s role in consultation .... The Service is satisfied that it has ample authority and legislative mandate to issue this rule, and believes that uniform consultation standards and procedures are necessary to meet its obligations under section 7”).

3

For example, petitioner’s motion before the District Court to dismiss the complaint identified four attorneys from the Department of State and AID (an agency of the Department of State) as “counsel” to the attorneys from the Justice Department in this action. One AID lawyer actually *597entered a formal appearance before the District Court on behalf of AID. On at least one occasion petitioner requested an extension of time to file a brief, representing that “ ‘[a]n extension is necessary for the Department of Justice to consult with . . . the Department of State [on] the brief.’” See Brief for Respondents 31, n. 8. In addition, AID officials have offered testimony in this action.

4

The plurality now suggests that collateral-estoppel principles can have no application here, because the participation of other agencies in this litigation arose after its inception. Borrowing a principle from this Court’s statutory diversity jurisdiction cases and transferring it to the constitutional standing context, the Court observes: ‘“The existence of federal jurisdiction ordinarily depends on the facts as they exist when the complaint is filed.’ ” Ante, at 569, n. 4 (quoting Newman-Green, Inc. v. Alfonzo-Larrain, 490 U. S. 826, 830 (1989)). See also Mollan v. Torrance, 9 Wheat. 537, 539 (1824) (Marshall, C. J.). The plurality proclaims that “[i]t cannot be” that later participation of other agencies in this suit retroactively created a jurisdictional issue that did not exist at the outset. Ante, at 570, n. 4.

The plurality, however, overlooks at least three difficulties with this explanation. In the first place, assuming that the plurality were correct that events as of the initiation of the lawsuit are the only proper jurisdictional reference point, were the Court to follow this rule in this case there would be no question as to the compliance of other agencies, because, as stated at an earlier point in the opinion: “When the Secretary promulgated the regulation at issue here, he thought it was binding on the agencies.” Ante, at 569. This suit was commenced in October 1986, just three months after the regulation took effect. App. 21; 51 Fed. Reg. 19926 (1986). As the plurality further admits, questions about compliance of other agencies with the Secretary’s regulation arose only by later participation of the Solicitor General and other agencies in the suit. Ante, at 569. Thus, it was, to borrow the plurality’s own words, “assuredly not true when this suit was filed, naming the Secretary alone,” ante, at 569, n. 4, that there was any question before the District Court about other agencies being bound.

Second, were the plurality correct that, for purposes of determining redressability, a court may look only to facts as they exist when the complaint is filed, then the Court by implication would render a nullity part of Rule 19 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 19 provides in part for the joinder of persons if “in the person’s absence complete relief cannot be accorded among those already parties.” This presupposes non-redressability at the outset of the litigation. Under the plurality’s rationale, a district court would have no authority to join indispensable parties, because it would, as an initial matter, have no jurisdiction for lack of the power to provide redress at the outset of the litigation.

Third, the rule articulated in Newman-Green is that the existence of federal jurisdiction “ordinarily” depends on the facts at the initiation of *599the lawsuit. This is no ironclad per se rule without exceptions. Had the Solicitor General, for example, taken a position during this appeal that the § 7 consultation requirement does in fact apply extraterritorially, the controversy would be moot, and this Court would be without jurisdiction.

In the plurality’s view, federal subject-matter jurisdiction appears to be a one-way street running the Executive Branch’s way. When the Executive Branch wants to dispel jurisdiction over an action against an agency, it is free to raise at any point in the litigation that other nonparty agencies might not be bound by any determinations of the one agency defendant. When a plaintiff, however, seeks to preserve jurisdiction in the face of a claim of nonredressability, the plaintiff is not free to point to the involvement of nonparty agencies in subsequent parts of the litigation. The plurality does not explain why the street runs only one way — why some actions of the Executive Branch subsequent to initiation of a lawsuit are cognizable for jurisdictional purposes but others simply are not.

More troubling still is the distance this one-way street carries the plurality from the underlying purpose of the standing doctrine. The purpose of the standing doctrine is to ensure that courts do not render advisory opinions rather than resolve genuine controversies between adverse parties. Under the plurality’s analysis, the federal courts are to ignore their present ability to resolve a concrete controversy if at some distant point in the past it could be said that redress could not have been provided. The plurality perverts the standing inquiry.