Standing, religion, and judicial power

Today, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Hein case, which presented a question involving "taxpayer standing" to challenge, on Establishment Clause grounds, certain features of the White House's faith-based initiative.  Here is a link to the opinion.  For my own part (and like Justice Scalia, who -- along with Justice Thomas -- concurred separately), I am inclined to think that the whole Flast enterprise of permitting taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause cases (but only in Establishment Clause cases) is misconceived.  That said, I'm pleased that the majority did not extend Flast in today's decision.  Yes, the state-of-the-law that results is (to put it mildly) conceptually muddled, but . . . that's life.

As I see it, today's decision is not so much about the place of religion in public life, or the relationship between the institutions of faith and those of government.  Instead, it is about the limited role and power of the federal judiciary.  As Justice Alito described, in his plurality opinion, the task of federal judges is to resolve certain controversies between parties with a concrete stake in the outcome; it is not to use lawsuits as a vehicle for reviewing or second-guessing policies with which some taxpayers disagree.

UPDATE:  Here is a link to a conversation between Prof. Walter Dellinger and me about today's First Amendment cases, on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer.