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Cite as: 524 U. S. 11 (1998)

35

Scalia, J., dissenting

wrong to think that generalized grievances have only con-
cerned us when they are abstract. One need go no further
than Richardson to prove that—unless the Court believes
that deprivation of information is an abstract injury, in which
event this case could be disposed of on that much broader
ground.

Id., at 560, n. 1.

What is noticeably lacking in the Court’s discussion of our
generalized-grievance jurisprudence is all reference to two
words that have ﬁgured in it prominently: “particularized”
and “undifferentiated.” See Richardson, supra, at 177;
Lujan, 504 U. S., at 560, and n. 1.
“Particularized” means
that “the injury must affect the plaintiff in a personal and
If the effect is “undiffer-
individual way.”
entiated and common to all members of the public,” Richard-
son, supra, at 177 (internal quotation marks and citations
omitted), the plaintiff has a “generalized grievance” that
must be pursued by political, rather than judicial, means.
These terms explain why it is a gross oversimpliﬁcation to
reduce the concept of a generalized grievance to nothing
more than “the fact that [the grievance] is widely shared,”
ante, at 25, thereby enabling the concept to be dismissed as
a standing principle by such examples as “large numbers of
individuals suffer[ing] the same common-law injury (say, a
widespread mass tort), or . . . large numbers of voters suf-
fer[ing] interference with voting rights conferred by law,”
ante, at 24. The exempliﬁed injuries are widely shared, to
be sure, but each individual suffers a particularized and
differentiated harm. One tort victim suffers a burnt leg,
another a burnt arm—or even if both suffer burnt arms they
are different arms. One voter suffers the deprivation of
his franchise, another the deprivation of hers. With the
generalized grievance, on the other hand, the injury or depri-
vation is not only widely shared but it is undifferentiated.
The harm caused to Mr. Richardson by the alleged disregard
of the Statement-of-Accounts Clause was precisely the same
as the harm caused to everyone else: unavailability of a de-