Opinion ID: 186456
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Order of Proceeding

Text: 7 As the Supreme Court stated in Steel Co., For a court to pronounce upon the meaning ... of a state or federal law when it has no jurisdiction to do so is, by very definition, for a court to act ultra vires. 523 U.S. at 101-02, 118 S.Ct. 1003. The court must therefore address questions pertaining to its or a lower court's jurisdiction before proceeding to the merits. Tenet v. Doe, ___ U.S. ___, ___, n. 4, 125 S.Ct. 1230, 1235 n. 4, 161 L.Ed.2d 82 (2005). 8 The appellants apparently assume, but point to no authority suggesting, a dismissal under the political question doctrine is an adjudication on the merits. That is not how the Supreme Court sees the matter: 9 [T]he concept of justiciability, which expresses the jurisdictional limitations imposed upon federal courts by the `case or controversy' requirement of Art. III, embodies ... the ... political question doctrine[ ] .... [T]he presence of a political question [thus] suffices to prevent the power of the federal judiciary from being invoked by the complaining party. 10 Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 215, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974). 11 Moreover, Steel Co. does not dictate a sequencing of jurisdictional issues. Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S. 574, 584, 119 S.Ct. 1563, 143 L.Ed.2d 760 (1999) (within court's discretion to address personal jurisdiction before subject-matter jurisdiction); see also Toca Producers v. FERC, 411 F.3d 262, 264 (D.C.Cir.2005) (addressing ripeness before standing). Rather, as this court held In re Papandreou, a court that dismisses on other non-merits grounds such as forum non conveniens and personal jurisdiction, before finding subject-matter jurisdiction, makes no assumption of law-declaring power that violates the separation of powers principles underlying ... Steel Company.  139 F.3d 247, 255 (1998). As the Supreme Court stated in Tenet, application of the Totten rule of dismissal, [92 U.S. 105, 23 L.Ed. 605 (1876),] like the abstention doctrine of Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), or the prudential standing doctrine, represents the sort of `threshold question' we have recognized may be resolved before addressing jurisdiction. 125 S.Ct. at 1235 n. 4. Likewise, we need not resolve the question of the district court's subject-matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1330—that is, whether Japan is entitled to sovereign immunity under the FSIA, see Creighton Ltd. v. Gov't of the State of Qatar, 181 F.3d 118, 121 (D.C.Cir.1999) (the FSIA is the sole basis for obtaining jurisdiction over a foreign state in our courts)—before considering whether the complaint presents a nonjusticiable political question, see Ruhrgas, 526 U.S. at 585, 119 S.Ct. 1563 (It is hardly novel for a federal court to choose among threshold grounds for denying audience to a case on the merits).