The concept of "standing" refers to whether the court has the jurisdiction to hear a particular case, which is a nice way of saying that a litigant does not in fact have the right to sue, or take a case to court. The current court has increasingly restricted the concept of standing, meaning that access to the courts has contracted recently. Cases, like the one involving have been the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, not on the merits, but because the person who brought the case forward was not directly affected by the law.
Linda Greenhouse predicts that the Supreme Court will get tangled up now that conservatives want to challenge the constitutionality of the health care law, among other things.
