lican, Democratic, and Independent, with perhaps a few What if one member of the House runs as a socialist or Particular items of legislation frequently produce large scale crossing of party lines. Are committee appointments to be juggled and rejuggled depending upon which measure is coming before a committee? . . . If so, are the adjustments to be based upon the supposed views of each member, or those of his constituents, or what? 549 F. 2d at 124-25. These objections provide more than enough reason to conclude that we should not adjudicate this controversy. It is not that we think a remedy could not be fashioned.27 Rather, we simply believe it would be, to quote the Davids court again, a "startlingly unattractive" idea, given our respect for a coequal branch of government, for us "to tell the Speaker of the . . . House of Representatives how many Democrats, and perhaps even which democrats, he is to appoint to the standing committees, and perhaps to each such committee." 549 F. 2d [1177] at 123. Our discretion to withhold equitable and declaratory relief supplies us with ample foundation upon which to base our decision. Thus we affirm the district court's 27 The Ninth Circuit declared, apparently in dictum, that a "judicially discoverable and manageable standard cannot be found" for resolving the dilemmas it had identified in the Davids suit. While that phrase originated in Baker v. Carr's discussion of nonjusticiable political questions, the Ninth Circuit expressly did not find the Davids suit to be nonjusticiable because of the political question doctrine. Elsewhere, this circuit has said that such "prudential considerations.. are inextricably linked to the question of standing." Winpisinger v. Watson, 628 F. 2d 133, 139-40 & n. 31 (D.C. Cir. 1980). See also Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org. 426 U.S. 26, 38, 96 S. Ct. 1917, 1924, 48 L. Ed. 2d 450 (1976) (where the Supreme Court incorporated in its standing analysis an inquiry into whether an alleged injury "is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision"); Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce v. Goldschmidt, 627 F. 2d 258 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (standing denied because plaintiffs, who were challenging an air-travel agreement alleged to have been improperly implemented by the Secretary of State without Senate ratification, could not show that court invalidation would enable them to obtain more amendable terms than those of the current agreement). We do not deny standing to appellants on the grounds that we could not administer relief. Use of the standing doctrine would be appropriate if ordering a change in the committee structure would fail to remedy appellants' complaints. See id. But while the Ninth Circuit may be right that it would be difficult to develop a thorough remedy, we probably could fashion a mathematically administrable remedy-even if it proved as awkward as the Supreme Court's remedies in the voting rights cases. See Dixon Reapportionment in the Supreme Court and Congress: Constitutional Struggle for Fair Representation, 63 Mich. L. Rev. 209 (1964). Once again, we treat our prudential reservations as part of our consideration of whether to provide relief, not as part of our inquiry into our Article III powers. dismissal, though not because of barriers presented by the Speech or Debate Clause, or the political question doctrine. BORK, Circuit Judge, concurring: Appellants complain that the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has assigned Republicans a proportion of committee and subcommittee seats substantially lower than the proportion of Republicans in the House as a whole. Appellants sue in their capacities as Republican members of the House and as voters and also purport to represent classes of Republican Representatives and voters represented by Republicans. The gravamen of their complaint is that the Democrats' action has unconstitutionally diminished the influence of appellants and those they would represent in this case in the legislative processs of the House. We affirm the district court's dismissal of the complaint. The majority reaches this result under a doctrine of remedial discretion which is a variant of the doctrine announced in Riegle v. Federal Open Market Committee, 656 F.2d 873 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1082, 102 S.Ct. 636, 70 L.Ed.2d 616 (1981). My colleagues find that plaintiffs have standing to maintain this action. In my view, jurisdiction is absent because the plaintiffs lack standing. I concur in the judgment for that reason. A brief review of the concept of standing, particularly the standing of legislator plaintiffs as it has developed in this circuit, will demonstrate why I think that my colleagues' position is unsupportable. I. The concept of standing relates to the fitness of a particular party to litigate a particular issue. To be a fit litigant the party must have "a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy" so "as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues." Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 703, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962). There is however, more to the concept of standing than that. The standing requirement contains so many variables that the Supreme Court once felt impelled to say that "[g]eneralizations about standing to sue are largely worthless as such," though one valid generalization is that the question is to be "considered in the framework of Article III which restricts judicial power to 'cases' and 'controversies.'" Association of Data Processing Service Organizations v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 151, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970). This court recently summarized the elements of standing in Riegle, 656 F.2d at 878: "the maximum burden which a plaintiff must bear to attain standing [consists of the] establishment of (i) injury-in-fact (ii) to an interest protected by the relevant law (iii) where the injury is caused by defendants' actions or capable of judicial redress." The element of "injury-in-fact," upon which the present case turns, is sometimes stated as "judicially cognizable injury." Metcalf v. National Petroleum Council, 553 F.2d 176, 187 (D.C.Cir. 1977). The term "judicially cognizable injury" brings to the surface what should be obvious in any event: injury in fact, far from being a simple, descriptive term, is a concept freighted with policies that limit the kinds of injury courts may consider. One might suppose that any person who feels strongly that he has been hurt by an other's act possesses "that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues." But the law does not view the matter that simply. Courts may take cognizance only of injuries of certain types, and the limitations are often defined less by the reality of the litigants "adverseness" than by the courts' view of the legitimate boundaries of their own power. "In essence the question of standing is whether the litigant is entitled to have the court decide the merits of the dispute or of particular issues. This inquiry involves both constitutional limitations on federal court jurisdiction and prudential limitations on its exercise. In both dimensions it is founded in concern about [1178] the proper-and properly limited-role of the court in a domocratic society," Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2205, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975) (citation omitted.) This theme is apparent in many Supreme Court decisions. In Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974), for example, plaintiffs sued in their capacities as both taxpayers and citizens to require the Secretary of Defense to remove Members of Congress from membership in the military reserve. The suit alleged that such membership violated the "Incompatibility Clause" of Art. I, § 6, cl. 2: "no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office." The Supreme Court held that plaintiffs lacked standing to sue because, in essence, plaintiffs alleged an injury that was common to all citizens and taxpayers and so asserted only "generalized grievances." See Reservists, 418 U.S. at 217, 94 S.Ct. at 2930 (citing Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 106, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 1955-1956, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968)). Such grievances are not that direct, palpable harm that injury in fact requires. See United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974); Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 92 S.Ct. 2318, 33 L.Ed.2d 154 (1972); Ex parte Levitt, 302 U.S. 633, 58 S.Ct. 1, 82 L.Ed. 493 (1937). It did not matter that plaintiffs in Reservists, Richardson, Tatum, and Levitt were motivated to litigate quite as much as any other plaintiffs, for, as the Chief Justice stated in Reservists: We have no doubt about the sincerity of respondents' "is not a question of motivation but of possession 418 U.S. at 225-26, 94 S.Ct. at 2934. Similarly, in refusing to accept as judicially cognizable a taxpayer organization's complaint that the conveyance of government-owned property to an educational institution supervised by a religious order violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the Court stated: Although [plaintiffs] claim that the Constitution has been of the alleged constitutional error, other than the psycho- Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United For Separation of Church and State, 454 U.S. 464, 485-86, 102 S. Ct. 752, 765, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) (emphasis in original). The law, of course, often takes account of psychological consequences. The Supreme Court's refusal to do so when a plaintiff makes the serious asertion that the harm is created by the unconstitutional conduct of the government can only mean that the Court perceives that to confer standing in such cases would impermissibly alter its function. To make judicially cognizable all injuries that persons actually feel and can articulate would widen immeasurably, perhaps illimitably, the authority of the federal courts to govern the life of the society. "Relaxation of standing requirements is directly related to the expansion of judicial power." Richardson, 418 U.S. at 188, 94 S.Ct. at 2952 (Powell, J., concurring). Conversely, by refusing to expand standing, by attempting to confine jurisdiction so far as possible to cases of a "form historically viewed as capable of judicial resolution," Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 101, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 1953, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968), courts can at least attempt to keep their scope of authority constant over time and so leave the resolution of a wide variety of problems to other institutions, both public and private. All of the doctrines that cluster about Article III-not only standing but [1179] mootness, ripeness, political question, and the like-relate in part, and in different though overlapping ways, to an idea, which is more than an intuition but less than a rigorous and explicit theory, about the constitutional and prudential limits to the powers of an unelected, unrepresentative judiciary in our kind of government. It is clear, then, that standing doctrine incorporates concerns about the role proper to the federal judiciary. This case presents the further questions, whether among those concerns is the issue of separation of powers and whether separation-of-powers considerations are relevant to a request that a court order the reallocation of committee assignments in Congress. It is on these questions that I differ from my colleagues. It is true that the Supreme Court once indicated that separation of powers is no part of the Article III component of standing: The question whether a particular person is a proper party 21-618 O-83-49 Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. at 100-101, 88 S.Ct. at 1953. Subsequently, however, the Court suggested that separation-of-powers considerations properly find a place in the judge-made prudential aspects of standing: [T]he Court has held that when the asserted harm is a Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. at 499-500, 95 S.Ct. at 2205-2206. That alone would be enough to demonstrate that the standing concept incoporates concerns about the powers appropriate to each branch of the federal government and that we must take those concerns into account here. The Court's 1982 decision in Valley Forge, however, goes farther and reads separation-of-powers concepts back into that part of the standing requirement which rests upon a constitutional, rather than a prudential foundation. Discussing the requirement of injury, Justice Rehnquist's opinion for the majority states: In this manner does Art. III limit the federal judicial Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 472, 102 S.Ct. at 758. After noting that "[t]he exercise of the judicial power also affects relationships between the co-equal arms of the national government," id., the opinion goes on to quote with approval from Justice Powell's concurring opinion in Richardson: "[R]epeated and essentially head-on confrontations be- 454 U.S. at 474, 102 S.Ct. at 759 (citation omitted). We should be ever mindful of the contradictions that |