Ex parte Levitt, 302 U.S. 633 (1937), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

.

In August 1937, President President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

 nominated Senator Hugo Black

Hugo Black

Hugo Lafayette Black was an American politician and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, Black represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1927 to 1937, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 1971. Black was nominated to the Supreme...

 to the Supreme Court. In March of that year, however, Congress had passed an act "permitting Justices to retire at full salary after a period of specified service, thereby increas[ing] the emoluments of the office ... while [Black] was a Senator." Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 219 (1974). The appointment thus ran clearly afoul of the ineligibility clause

Ineligibility Clause

The Ineligibility Clause, one of the two clauses often called the Emoluments Clause, and sometimes also referred to as the Incompatibility Clause or the Sinecure Clause, is found in Article 1, Section 6, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution...

's bar on Senators being "appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which ... shall have been increased during such time...." Nevertheless, Black was confirmed and appointed.

Shortly thereafter, citing the ineligibility clause problem, Albert Levitt

Albert Levitt

Albert Levitt was a judge, law professor, attorney, and candidate for political office. While he was a memorable teacher at Washington and Lee University, and as judge of the United States District Court for the Virgin Islands ordered that woman voters must be registered, he later came to hold...

 filed a pro se motion in that court requesting leave to petition for an order requiring Black to show cause why he should be permitted to serve as an Associate Justice of this Court. In a brief per curiam opinion, the court dismissed the case for want of standing:

The grounds of this motion are that the appointment of Mr. Justice Black by the President and the confirmation thereof by the Senate of the United States were null and void by reason of his ineligibility under Article I, Section 6, Clause 2, of the Constitution of the United States, and because there was no vacancy for which the appointment could lawfully be made. The motion papers disclose no interest upon the part of the petitioner other than that of a citizen and a member of the bar of this Court. That is insufficient. It is an established principle that to entitle a private individual to invoke the judicial power to determine the validity of executive or legislative action he must show that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining a direct injury as the result of that action and it is not sufficient that he has merely a general interest common to all members of the public. Tyler v. Judges, 179 U.S. 405, 406; Southern Ry. Co. v. King, 217 U.S. 524, 534; Newman v. Frizzell, 238 U.S. 537, 549, 550; Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U.S. 126, 129; Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 488. The motion is denied.