finding the appellate court’s decision to reach - 15 - No. 1-22-0970 the merits of an issue not presented by the parties below to be an “unacceptable exercise of its appellate jurisdiction[,]” because petitioner “had no opportunity to proffer [any] evidence” or to “present whatever legal arguments he may have in defense of the statute” and concluding that “injustice was more likely to be caused than avoided by deciding the issue without petitioner’s having had an opportunity to be heard”
How later courts described this case
- finding the appellate court’s decision to reach - 15 - No. 1-22-0970 the merits of an issue not presented by the parties below to be an “unacceptable exercise of its appellate jurisdiction[,]” because petitioner “had no opportunity to proffer [any] evidence” or to “present whatever legal arguments he may have in defense of the statute” and concluding that “injustice was more likely to be caused than avoided by deciding the issue without petitioner’s having had an opportunity to be heard”
- explaining that abortion providers may "assert the rights of women patients as against governmental interference with the abortion decision" because "[a] woman cannot safely secure an abortion without the aid of a physician," "the constitutionally protected abortion decision is one in which the physician is intimately involved," and "there are several obstacles" to the woman asserting her own rights
- explaining that the general principle will yield in circumstances where the litigant has suffered an actual injury, the litigant’s relationship to the third party is such that "the activity the litigant wishes to pursue” is "inextricably bound up with” the third party’s enjoyment of the right, and the third party is unable to assert, or hindered in asserting, the right
- explaining that third-party standing is allowed when the third party’s interests are “inextricably bound up with the activity the litigant wishes to pursue”; when the litigant is “fully, or very nearly, as effective a proponent of the right” as the third party; or when the third party is less able to assert her own rights
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Stevens,
concurring in part.
In this case (1) the plaintiff-physicians have a financial stake in the outcome' of the litigation, and (2) they claim that the statute impairs their own constitutional rights. They therefore clearly have standing to bring this action.
Because these two facts are present, I agree that the analysis in Part II-B of Mr. Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides an adequate basis for considering the arguments *122 based on the effect of the statute on the constitutional rights of their patients. Because I am not sure whether the analysis in Part II-B would, or should, sustain the doctors’ standing, apart from those two facts, I join only Parts I, II-A, and III of the Court’s opinion.