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Henry Morton Stanley

Sir Henry Morton Stanley (born John Rowlands; 28 January 1841 – 10 May 1904) was a Welsh-American  explorer, journalist, soldier, colonial administrator, author and politician who was famous for his exploration of Central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone. Besides his discovery of Livingstone, he is mainly known for his search for the sources of the Nile and Congo rivers, the work he undertook as an agent of King Leopold II of the Belgians which enabled the occupation of the Congo Basin region, and his command of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He was knighted in 1897, and served in Parliament as a Liberal Unionist member for Lambeth North from 1895 to 1900.

More than a century after his death, Stanley's legacy remains the subject of enduring controversy. Although he personally had high regard for many of the native African people who accompanied him on his expeditions, the exaggerated accounts of corporal punishment and brutality in his books fostered a public reputation as a hard-driving, cruel leader,  in contrast to the supposedly more humanitarian Livingstone. His contemporary image in Britain also suffered from the inaccurate perception that he was American. In the 20th century, his reputation was also seriously damaged by his role in establishing the Congo Free State for King Leopold II. Nevertheless, he is recognised for his important contributions to Western knowledge of the geography of Central Africa and for his resolute opposition to the slave trade in East Africa.

Early life
Henry Stanley was born as John Rowlands in Denbigh, Denbighshire, Wales. His mother Elizabeth Parry was 18 years old at the time of his birth. She abandoned him as a very young baby and cut off all communication. Stanley never knew his father, who died within a few weeks of his birth. There is some doubt as to his true parentage. As his parents were unmarried, his birth certificate describes him as a bastard; he was baptised in the parish of Denbigh on 19 February 1841, the register recording that he had been born on 28 January of that year. The entry states that he was the bastard son of John Rowland of Llys Llanrhaidr and Elizabeth Parry of Castle. The stigma associated with illegitimacy weighed heavily upon him all his life.

The boy was given his father's surname of Rowlands and brought up by his grandfather Moses Parry, a once-prosperous butcher who was living in reduced circumstances. He cared for the boy until he died, when John was five. Rowlands stayed with families of cousins and nieces for a short time, but he was eventually sent to the St Asaph Union Workhouse for the Poor. The overcrowding and lack of supervision resulted in his being frequently abused by older boys. Historian Robert Aldrich has alleged that the headmaster of the workhouse raped or sexually assaulted Rowlands, and that the older Rowlands was "incontrovertibly bisexual". When Rowlands was 10 years old, his mother and two half-siblings stayed for a short while in this workhouse, but he did not recognise them until the headmaster told him who they were.

Life in the United States
Rowlands emigrated to the United States in 1859 at age 18. He disembarked at New Orleans and, according to his own declarations, became friends by accident with Henry Hope Stanley, a wealthy trader. He saw Stanley sitting on a chair outside his store and asked him if he had any job openings. He did so in the British style: "Do you need a boy, sir?" The childless man had indeed been wishing he had a son, and the inquiry led to a job and a close relationship between them. Out of admiration, John took Stanley's name. Later, he wrote that his adoptive parent died two years after their meeting, but in fact the elder Stanley did not die until 1878. This and other discrepancies led John Bierman to argue that no adoption took place. Tim Jeal goes further, and, in his biography, subjects Stanley's account in his posthumously published Autobiography to detailed analysis. Because Stanley got so many basic facts wrong about his purported adoptive family, Jeal concludes that it is very unlikely that he ever met rich Henry Hope Stanley, and that an ordinary grocer, James Speake, was Rowlands' true benefactor until his (Speake's) sudden death in October 1859.

Stanley reluctantly joined in the American Civil War, first enrolling in the Confederate States Army's 6th Arkansas Infantry Regiment and fighting in the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. After being taken prisoner at Shiloh, he was recruited at Camp Douglas, Illinois, by its commander Colonel James A. Mulligan as a "Galvanized Yankee." He joined the Union Army on 4 June 1862 but was discharged 18 days later because of severe illness. After recovering, he served on several merchant ships before joining the US Navy in July 1864. He became a record keeper on board the USS Minnesota (1855), and participated in the First Battle of Fort Fisher and the Second Battle of Fort Fisher, which led him into freelance journalism. Stanley and a junior colleague jumped ship on 10 February 1865 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in search of greater adventures. Stanley was possibly the only man to serve in the Confederate Army, the Union Army, and the Union Navy.

British expedition to Abyssinia (1867–1868)

Following the American Civil War, Stanley became a journalist in the days of frontier expansion in the American West. He then organised an expedition to the Ottoman Empire that ended catastrophically when he was imprisoned. He eventually talked his way out of jail and received restitution for damaged expedition equipment.

In 1867, the emperor of Ethiopia, Tewodros II, held a British envoy and others hostage, and a force was sent to effect the release of the hostages. Stanley accompanied that force as a special correspondent of the New York Herald. His report on the Battle of Magdala in 1868 was the first to be published, as he had bribed a telegraph operator to send his story first, even before the official army report. After his message was sent, the cable broke; British government officials were greatly irritated to learn of the battle from an American newspaper. Subsequently, he was assigned to report on Spain's Glorious Revolution in 1868. In 1870, Stanley undertook several assignments for the Herald in the Middle East and the Black Sea region, visiting Egypt, Jerusalem, Constantinople, the Crimea, the Caucasus, Persia and India, during which time he apparently carved his name into a stone of the ancient palace at Persepolis in Persia.

Finding David Livingstone expedition (1871–1872)

Stanley travelled to Zanzibar in March 1871, later claiming that he outfitted an expedition with 192 porters. In his first dispatch to the New York Herald, however, he stated that his expedition numbered only 111. This was in line with figures in his diaries. James Gordon Bennett Jr., publisher of the New York Herald and funder of the expedition, had delayed sending to Stanley the money he had promised, so Stanley borrowed money from the United States Consul.

During the 700 mi expedition through the tropical forest, his thoroughbred stallion died within a few days after a bite from a tsetse fly, many of his porters deserted, and the rest were decimated by tropical diseases.

Stanley found David Livingstone on 10 November 1871 in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania. He later claimed to have greeted him with the now-famous line, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" However, this line does not appear in his journal from the time—the two pages directly following the recording of his initial spotting of Livingstone were torn out of the journal at some point—and it is likely that Stanley simply embellished the pithy line sometime afterwards. Neither man mentioned it in any of the letters they wrote at this time, and Livingstone tended to instead recount the reaction of his servant, Susi, who cried out: "An Englishman coming! I see him!" The phrase is first quoted in a summary of Stanley's letters published by The New York Times on 2 July 1872. Stanley biographer Tim Jeal argued that the explorer invented it afterwards to help raise his standing because of "insecurity about his background", though ironically the phrase was mocked in the press for being absurdly formal for the situation.

The Herald ' s own first account of the meeting, published 1 July 1872, reports:

"Preserving a calmness of exterior before the Arabs which was hard to simulate as he reached the group, Mr. Stanley said: – 'Doctor Livingstone, I presume?' A smile lit up the features of the pale white man as he answered: 'Yes, and I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.'"

Stanley joined Livingstone in exploring the region, finding that there was no waterway from Lake Tanganyika to the Nile. On his return, he wrote a book about his experiences: How I Found Livingstone; travels, adventures, and discoveries in Central Africa (1872).

First trans-Africa expedition (1874–1877)

In 1874, the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph financed Stanley on another expedition to Africa. His ambitious objective was to complete the exploration and mapping of the Central African Great Lakes and rivers, in the process circumnavigating Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and locating the source of the Nile. Between 1875 and 1876 Stanley succeeded in the first part of his objective, establishing that Lake Victoria had only a single outlet, the one discovered by John Hanning Speke on 21 July 1862 and named Ripon Falls. If this was not the Nile's source, then the separate massive northward flowing river called by Livingstone, the Lualaba, and mapped by him in its upper reaches, might flow on north to connect with the Nile via Lake Albert and thus be the river's primary source. It was therefore essential that Stanley should trace the course of the Lualaba downstream (northward) from Nyangwe, the point where Livingstone had left it in July 1871. Between November 1876 and August 1877, Stanley and his men navigated the Lualaba up to and beyond the point where it turned sharply westward, away from the Nile, identifying itself as the Congo River. Having succeeded with this second objective, they then traced the river to the sea. During this expedition, Stanley used sectional boats and dug-out canoes to pass the large cataracts that separated the Congo into distinct tracts. These boats were transported around the rapids before being reassembled to travel on the next section of river. In passing the rapids many of his men were drowned, including his last white colleague, Frank Pocock. The expedition was repeatedly attacked by natives in canoes. Stanley and his men reached the Portuguese outpost of Boma, around 100 km from the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic Ocean, after 999 days on 9 August 1877. Muster lists and Stanley's diary (12 November 1874) show that he started with 228 people and reached Boma with 114 survivors, with him the only European left alive out of four. In Stanley's Through the Dark Continent (1878) (in which he coined the term "Dark Continent" for Africa), Stanley said that his expedition had numbered 356, the exaggeration detracting from his achievement.

Stanley attributed his success to his leading African porters, saying that his success was "all due to the pluck and intrinsic goodness of 20 men ... take the 20 out and I could not have proceeded beyond a few days' journey". Professor James Newman has written that "establishing the connection between the Lualaba and Congo Rivers and locating the source of the Victoria Nile" justified him (Newman) in stating that: "In terms of exploration and discovery as defined in nineteenth-century Europe, he (Stanley) clearly stands at the top."

International Upper Congo Expedition (1879–1884)

On 15 April 1877, King Leopold II of the Belgians sent his first expedition to Central Africa, then still under the flag of the International African Association. The members of the expedition, four Belgians, departing from Zanzibar, had the goal of establishing a scientific post in Karema, in today's Tanzania, but even before the group entered Central Africa, two of them had already died, one from a sun stroke, the other from a severe fever, upon which the other members of the expedition resigned. Because of these difficulties, Leopold realised how important it was to find experienced men to lead his expeditions. He first tried to persuade Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, but he had already entered French service; his eye now fell on Stanley. Stanley had first hoped to continue his pioneering work in Africa under the British flag. But neither the Foreign Office nor Edward, the Prince of Wales, felt called to receive Stanley after the many rumours of his looting and killing in the interior of the African continent. Leopold eagerly received a disenchanted Stanley at his palace in June 1878, and signed a five-year contract with him in November.

Stanley persuaded Leopold that the first step should be the construction of a wagon trail around the Congo rapids and a chain of trading stations on the river. To avoid discovery, materials and workers were shipped in by various roundabout routes, and communications between Stanley and Leopold were entrusted to Colonel Maximilien Strauch.

Stanley as Leopold's agent
In 1879, Stanley left for Africa for his first mission, ostensibly working for the Comité d'études du Haut-Congo, under Leopold's orders. King Leopold gave Stanley clear instructions: "It is not about Belgian colonies. It is about establishing a new state that is as large as possible and about its governance. It should be clear that in this project there can be no question of granting the Negroes the slightest form of political power. That would be ridiculous. The whites, who lead the posts, have all the power."

Stanley described in writings his dismay with the terrible scenes taking place in Congo. At the same time, his "findings" conveyed an idea that the Dark Continent must submit, willingly or otherwise. Stanley's writings show that he, too, held this view. "Only by proving that we are superior to the savages, not only through our power to kill them but through our entire way of life, can we control them as they are now, in their present stage; it is necessary for their own well-being, even more than ours."

Unexpectedly, France had sent its own expedition to the Congo Basin. Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza had undermined Stanley's mission by concluding contracts himself with native heads of state. The creation of a station that would later be called Brazzaville could not be prevented. Leopold was furious, writing angrily to Strauch: "The terms of the treaties Stanley has made with native chiefs do not satisfy me. There must at least be an added article to the effect that they delegate to us their sovereign rights ... the treaties must be as brief as possible and in a couple of articles must grant us everything."

Since everything in Central Africa was about the balance of power between the Great Powers, Leopold considered his next moves and sent an envoy to Berlin to press for a conference. Leopold wanted the International Association of the Congo boundaries drawn by Stanley to be officially confirmed, thus giving the Association an official status.

On 26 February 1885, the Berlin Act was signed. The Act regulated an immense free trade zone in the Congo Basin and made it a neutral territory. Furthermore, the Act declared war on slavery. The act contained only one article that Leopold disliked: Article 17 gave the superpowers the right to establish an international commission to supervise the freedom of trade and navigation in Congo. As a result, Leopold would not be able to collect customs duties on the Congo River

In 1890, on the 25th anniversary of Leopold's reign as Belgian monarch, Stanley was taken from one banquet hall to another, proclaimed a hero. Leopold honoured him with the Order of Leopold. Together they examined the entire Congolese situation. The key question was how the Free State could become profitable. Stanley pointed out to the monarch, among other things, the potential of rubber production. Stanley wrote: "You can find it on almost any tree. As we made our way through the forest, it was literally raining rubber juice. Our clothes were full of it. The Congo has so many tributaries that a well-organized company can easily extract a few tons of rubber per year here. You only have to sail up such a river and the branches with rubber hang almost up to your ship."

In 1891, rubber extraction was divided among concessionaires. This soon led to abuses, when the switch was made to "forced labour".

Founding of Leopoldville (Kinshasa)
Stanley, who had left from a post at Vivi near Matadi on 21 February 1880, arrived at Stanley pool on 3 December 1882. Building a road from Vivi to Isangila, Stanley took almost 2 years to traverse the rapids towing with him 50 tonnes of equipment, including 2 dismantled steamboats and a barge. After he arrived at Stanley pool, a local king, Makoko of the Anziku Kingdom, gave him a site near Kintambo to build a city. Despite hostilities from another nearby king, Ngaliema, he decided to start the construction of Leopoldville on the hillside of Khonzo Izulu. Today Kinshasa's population is 17,000,000, and it is one of the world's fastest growing megacities.

Dealings with Zanzibari slave traders

Tippu Tip, the most powerful of Zanzibar's slave traders of the 19th century, was well known to Stanley, as was the social chaos and devastation brought by slave-hunting. It had only been through Tippu Tip's help that Stanley had found Livingstone, who had survived years on the Lualaba under Tippu Tip's friendship. Now, Stanley discovered that Tippu Tip's men had reached still further west in search of fresh populations to enslave.

Four years earlier, the Zanzibaris had thought the Congo deadly and impassable and warned Stanley not to attempt to go there, but when Tippu Tip learned that Stanley had survived, he was quick to act. Villages throughout the region were burned and depopulated. Tippu Tip had raided 118 villages, killed 4,000 Africans, and, when Stanley reached his camp, had 2,300 slaves, mostly young women and children, in chains ready to transport halfway across the continent to the markets of Zanzibar.

Having found the new ruler of the Upper Congo, Stanley had no choice but to negotiate an agreement with him, to stop Tip coming further downstream and attacking Leopoldville and other stations. To achieve this, he had to allow Tip to build his final river station just below Stanley Falls, which prevented vessels from sailing further upstream. At the end of his physical resources, Stanley returned home, to be replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Francis de Winton, a former British Army officer.

Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (1887–1890)
In 1886, Stanley led the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition to "rescue" Emin Pasha, the governor of Equatoria in the southern Sudan, who was threatened by Mahdist forces. King Leopold II demanded that Stanley take the longer route via the Congo River, hoping to acquire more territory and perhaps even Equatoria After immense hardships and great loss of life, Stanley met Emin in 1888, mapped the Ruwenzori Range and Lake Edward, and emerged from the interior with Emin and his surviving followers at the end of 1890. Despite its success, this expedition tarnished Stanley's name because of the conduct of the other Europeans on the expedition. Army Major Edmund Musgrave Barttelot was killed by an African porter after behaving with extreme cruelty. James Sligo Jameson, heir to Irish whiskey manufacturer Jameson's, allegedly bought a 10-year-old girl and offered her to cannibals to document and sketch how she was cooked and eaten. Stanley found out only when Jameson had died of fever.

The spread of sleeping sickness across areas of central and eastern Africa that were previously free of the disease has been attributed to this expedition, but this hypothesis has been disputed. Sleeping sickness had been endemic in these regions for generations and then flared into epidemics as colonial trade increased trade throughout Africa during the ensuing decades.

In a number of publications made after the expedition, Stanley asserts that the purpose of the effort was singular; to offer relief to Emin Pasha. For example, he writes the following while explaining the final route decision.

"The advantages of the Congo route were about five hundred miles shorter land journey, and less opportunities for deserting. It also quieted the fears of the French and Germans that, behind this professedly humanitarian quest, we might have annexation projects."

However, Stanley's other writings point to a secondary goal which was precisely territorial annexation. He writes in his book on the expedition about his meeting with the Sultan of Zanzibar, when he arrived there at the start of the expedition, and a certain matter that was discussed at that meeting. At first, he is not explicit on the agenda but it is clear enough:

"We then entered heartily into our business; how absolutely necessary it was that he should promptly enter into an agreement with the English within the limits assigned by Anglo-German treaty. It would take too long to describe the details of the conversation, but I obtained from him the answer needed."

A few pages further in the same book, Stanley explains what the matter was about and this time, he makes it clear that indeed, it had to do with annexation.

"I have settled several little commissions at Zanzibar satisfactorily. One was to get the Sultan to sign the concessions which Mackinnon tried to obtain a long time ago. As the Germans have magnificent territory east of Zanzibar, it was but fair that England should have some portion for the protection she has accorded to Zanzibar since 1841 ... The concession that we wished to obtain embraced a portion of East African coast, of which Mombasa and Malindi were the principal towns. For eight years, to my knowledge, the matter had been placed before His Highness, but the Sultan's signature was difficult to obtain." The records at the National Archives at Kew, London, offer an even deeper insight and show that annexation was a purpose he had been aware of for the expedition. This is because there are a number of treaties curated there (and gathered by Stanley himself from what is present-day Uganda during the Emin Pasha Expedition), ostensibly gaining British protection for a number of African chiefs. Amongst these were a number that have long been identified as possible frauds. A good example is treaty number 56, supposedly agreed upon between Stanley and the people of "Mazamboni, Katto, and Kalenge". These people had signed over to Stanley, "the Sovereign Right and Right of Government over our country for ever in consideration of value received and for the protection he has accorded us and our Neighbours against KabbaRega and his Warasura."

Later years
On his return to Europe, Stanley married English artist Dorothy Tennant. They adopted a child named Denzil, who was the son of one of Stanley's first cousins, though Stanley concealed this fact from the public and possibly even from Dorothy. Denzil later donated around 300 items to the Stanley archives at the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium in 1954. He died in 1959.

Mainly at his wife's behest, Stanley took up British citizenship and entered Parliament as a Liberal Unionist member for Lambeth North, serving from 1895 to 1900. He disliked politics and made little impression on Parliament. He became Sir Henry Morton Stanley when he was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in the 1899 Birthday Honours, in recognition of his service to the British Empire in Africa. In 1890, he was given the Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold by King Leopold II.

Stanley died at his home at 2 Richmond Terrace, Whitehall, London on 10 May 1904. At his funeral, he was eulogised by Daniel P. Virmar. His grave is in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels' Church in Pirbright, Surrey, marked by a large piece of granite inscribed with the words "Henry Morton Stanley, Bula Matari, 1841–1904, Africa". Bula Matari translates as "Breaker of Rocks" or "Breakstones" in Kongo and was Stanley's name among locals in Congo. It can be translated as a term of endearment for, as the leader of Leopold's expedition, he commonly worked with the labourers breaking rocks with which they built the first modern road along the Congo River. Author Adam Hochschild suggested that Stanley understood it as a heroic epithet, but there is evidence that Nsakala, the man who coined it, had meant it humorously.

Overview
Having survived for ten years of his childhood in the workhouse at St Asaph, it is postulated that he needed as a young man to be thought of as harder and more formidable than other explorers. This made him exaggerate punishments and hostile encounters. It was a serious error of judgement for which his reputation continues to pay a heavy price. In the conclusion to his account of a fight with a fellow boy while in the workhouse, Stanley remarked, "Often since have I learned how necessary is the application of force for the establishment of order. There comes a time when pleading is of no avail." He was accused of indiscriminate cruelty against Africans by contemporaries, which included men who served under him or otherwise had first-hand information. Stanley himself acknowledged, "Many people have called me hard, but they are always those whose presence a field of work could best dispense with, and whose nobility is too nice to be stained with toil."

About society women, Stanley wrote that they were "toys to while slow time" and "trifling human beings." When he met the American journalist and traveller May Sheldon, he was attracted because she was a modern woman who insisted on serious conversation and not social chit-chat. "She soon lets you know that chaff won't do," he wrote. The authors of the book The Congo: Plunder and Resistance tried to argue that Stanley had "a pathological fear of women, an inability to work with talented co-workers, and an obsequious love of the aristocratic rich," This is not only at odds with his opinions about society women, but Stanley's intimate correspondence in the Royal Museum of Central Africa, between him and his two fiancées, Katie Gough Roberts and Alice Pike, as well as between him and the American journalist May Sheldon, and between him and his wife Dorothy Tennant, shows that he enjoyed close relationships with those women, but both Roberts and Pike ultimately rejected him when he refused to abandon his protracted travels.

When Stanley married Dorothy, he invited his friend, Arthur Mounteney Jephson, to visit while they were on their honeymoon. Dr. Thomas Parke also came because Stanley was seriously ill at the time. Stanley's good relations with these two colleagues from the Emin Pasha Expedition could possibly be seen as demonstrating that he could get along with colleagues.

General opinion about African people
In Through the Dark Continent, Stanley observed the peoples of the region, and wrote that "the savage only respects force, power, boldness, and decision". Stanley further wrote: "If Europeans will only ... study human nature in the vicinity of Stanley Pool (Kinshasa), they will go home thoughtful men, and may return again to this land to put to good use the wisdom they should have gained ... during their peaceful sojourn."

In How I Found Livingstone (1872), he wrote that he was "prepared to admit any black man possessing the attributes of true manhood, or any good qualities ... to a brotherhood with myself."

Stanley insulted and shouted at William Grant Stairs and Arthur Jephson for mistreating the Wangwana. He described the history of Boma as "two centuries of pitiless persecution of black men by sordid whites". He also wrote about what he thought was the superior beauty of black people in comparison with whites. According to Jeal, Stanley was not a racist, unlike his contemporaries Sir Richard Burton and Sir Samuel Baker.

Opinion about mixed African-Arab peoples
The Wangwana of Zanzibar were of mixed Arabian and African ancestry: "Africanized Arabs", in Stanley's words. They became the backbone of all his major expeditions and were referred to as "his dear pets" by sceptical young officers on the Emin Pasha Expedition, who resented their leader for favouring the Wangwana above themselves. "All are dear to me", Stanley told William Grant Stairs and Arthur Jephson, "who do their duty and the Zanzibaris have quite satisfied me on this and on previous expeditions." Stanley came to think of an individual Wangwana as "superior in proportion to his wages to ten Europeans". When Stanley first met a group of his Wangwana assistants, he was surprised: "They were an exceedingly fine looking body of men, far more intelligent in appearance than I could ever have believed African barbarians could be".

On the other hand, in one of his books, Stanley said about mixed Afro-Arab people: "For the half-castes I have great contempt. They are neither black nor white, neither good nor bad, neither to be admired nor hated. They are all things, at all times ... If I saw a miserable, half-starved negro, I was always sure to be told, he belonged to a half-caste. Cringing and hypocritical, cowardly and debased, treacherous and mean ... this syphilitic, blear-eyed, pallid-skinned, abortion of an Africanized Arab."

Accounts of cruel treatment toward African people
The British House of Commons appointed a committee to investigate missionary reports of Stanley's mistreatment of native populations in 1871, which was likely secured by Horace Waller, a member on the committee of the Anti-slavery Society and fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. The British vice consul in Zanzibar, John Kirk (Waller's brother-in-law) conducted the investigation. Stanley was charged with excessive violence, wanton destruction, the selling of labourers into slavery, the sexual exploitation of native women and the plundering of villages for ivory and canoes. Kirk's report to the British Foreign Office was never published, but in it, he claimed: "If the story of this expedition were known it would stand in the annals of African discovery unequalled for the reckless use of power that modern weapons placed in his hands over natives who never before heard a gun fired." When Kirk was appointed to investigate reports of brutality against Stanley, he was delighted because he had hated Stanley for almost a decade. Firstly, for having publicly exposed him (Kirk) for having failed to send provisions to Livingstone from Zanzibar during the late 1860s; secondly, because Stanley had revealed in the press that Kirk had sent slaves to David Livingstone as porters, rather than the free men Livingstone had made very plain he wanted. Kirk was related to Horace Waller by marriage; and so Waller also hated Stanley on Kirk's behalf. He used his membership of the executive committee of the Universities Mission to Central Africa to persuade J. P. Farler (a missionary in East Africa) to name Stanley's assistants who might provide evidence against the explorer and be prepared to be interviewed by Kirk in Zanzibar. An American merchant in Zanzibar, Augustus Sparhawk, wrote that several of Stanley's African assistants, including Manwa Sera, "a big rascal and too fond of money", had been bribed to tell Kirk what he wanted to hear. Stanley was accused, in Kirk's report, of cruelty to his Wangwana carriers and guards whom he idolised and who re-enlisted with him again and again. He wrote to the owner of the Daily Telegraph, insisting that he (Lawson) force the British government to send a warship to take the Wangwana home to Zanzibar and to pay all their back wages. If a ship was not sent, they would die on their overland journey home. The ship was sent. Stanley's hatred of the promiscuity that had caused his illegitimacy and his legendary shyness with women, made the Kirk report's claim that he had accepted an African mistress offered to him by Kabaka Mutesa exceedingly implausible. Both Stanley and his colleague, Frank Pocock, loathed slavery and the slave trade and wrote about this loathing in letters and diaries at this time, which speaks against the likelihood that they sold their own men. The report was never shown to Stanley, so he had been unable to defend himself.

In a letter to the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society in the 1870s, Conservative MP and treasurer of the Aborigines' Protection Society, Sir Robert Fowler, who believed Kirk's report and refused to "whitewash Stanley", insisted that his "heartless butchery of unfortunate natives has brought dishonour on the British flag and must have rendered the course of future travellers more perilous and difficult."

General Charles George Gordon remarked in a letter to Richard Francis Burton that Stanley shared Samuel Baker's tendency to write openly about deploying firearms against Africans in self-defense: "These things may be done, but not advertised", Burton himself wrote that Stanley "shoots negros as if they were monkeys" in an October 1876 letter to Kirk. He also loathed Stanley for disproving his long-held theory that Lake Tanganyika, which he was the first European to discover, was the true source of the Nile, which may have influenced Burton to misrepresent Stanley's activities in Africa.

In 1877, not long after one of Stanley's expeditions, Farler met with African porters who had been part of the expedition and wrote, "Stanley's followers give dreadful accounts to their friends of the killing of inoffensive natives, stealing their ivory and goods, selling their captives, and so on. I do think a commission ought to inquire into these charges, because if they are true, it will do untold harm to the great cause of emancipating Africa ... I cannot understand all the killing that Stanley has found necessary". Stanley, when reporting the American Indian Wars as a young reporter, had been encouraged by his editors to exaggerate the number of Indians killed by the US Army. The legacy for Stanley, of being a helpless illegitimate boy, deserted by both parents, was a deep sense of inferiority that could only be kept at bay by claims of being much more powerful and feared than he was. Tim Jeal, in his biography of Stanley, has shown by a study of Stanley's diary and his colleague Frank Pocock's diary that on almost every occasion when there was conflict with Africans on the Congo in 1875–76, Stanley exaggerated the scale of the conflict and the deaths on both sides. On 14 February 1877, according to his colleague, Frank Pocock's diary, Stanley's nine canoes, and his sectional boat the Lady Alice, were attacked and followed by eight canoes, crewed by Africans with firearms. In Stanley's book, Through the Dark Continent, Stanley inflated this incident into a major battle, by increasing the number of hostile canoes to 60 and adjusting the casualties accordingly.

Stanley wrote with some measure of satisfaction when describing how Captain John Hanning Speke, the first European to visit Uganda, had been punched in the teeth for disobedience to Sidi Mubarak Bombay, a caravan leader also employed by Stanley, which made Stanley claim that he would never allow Bombay to have the audacity to stand up for a boxing match with him. In the same paragraph, Stanley described how he several months later administered punishment to the African.

William Grant Stairs found Stanley during the Emina Pasha expedition to be cruel, secretive and selfish. John Rose Troup, in his book about the Emin Pasha expedition, said that he saw Stanley's self-serving and vindictive side: "In the forgoing letter he brings forward disgraceful charges, that really do not refer to me at all, although he blames me for what happened. The injustice of his accusations, made as they are without documentary or, as far as I can learn, any evidence, can hardly be made clear to the public, but they must be aware, when they read what has preceded this correspondence, that he has acted as no one in his position should have acted".

By way of counterpoint, it may be noted that, in later in life, Stanley rebuked subordinates for inflicting needless corporal punishment. For beating one of his most trusted African's servants, he told Lieutenant Carlos Branconnier "that cruelty was not permissible" and that he would dismiss him for a future offence, and he did. Stanley was admired by Arthur Jephson, whom William Bonny, the acerbic medical assistant, described as the "most honourable" officer on the expedition. Jephson wrote, "Stanley never fights where there is the smallest chance of making friends with the natives and he is wonderfully patient & long suffering with them". Writer Tim Jeal has argued that during Stanley's 1871 expedition, he treated his indigenous porters well under "contemporary standards."

Possible inspiration for Heart of Darkness
The legacy of death and destruction in the Congo region during the Free State period and the fact that Stanley had worked for Leopold are considered by author Norman Sherry to have made him an inspiration for Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Conrad, however, had spent six months of 1890 as a steamship captain on the Congo, years after Stanley had been there (1879–1884) and five years after Stanley had been recalled to Europe and ceased to be Leopold's chief agent in Africa.

Works depicting Stanley

 * Stanley and Livingstone, a 1939 film, stars Spencer Tracy as Stanley and Cedric Hardwicke as Livingstone.
 * The 1949 comedy film Africa Screams is the story of a dimwitted clerk named Stanley Livington, played by Lou Costello. He is mistaken for a famous African explorer and recruited to lead a treasure hunt.
 * Stanley was portrayed by Ed Kemmer in a 1962 episode, "The Truth Teller", on the syndicated television anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. Barney Phillips was cast as General Winfield Scott Hancock. In the story line, investigative reporter Stanley arrives at Fort Larned, Kansas to assess Hancock's success in avoiding war on the frontier. Charles Carlson filled the role of Wild Bill Hickok.
 * Stanley Livingston, played by Mort Marshall, whose name invokes both Stanley and David Livingtone, was the zoo director on Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, a 1963-66 animated series.
 * In 1971, the BBC produced a six-part dramatised documentary series entitled Search for the Nile. Much of the series was shot on location, with Stanley played by Keith Buckley.
 * Stanley appears as a character in Simon Gray's 1978 play The Rear Column. The play tells the story of the men left behind to wait for Tippu Tib while Stanley went on to relieve Emin Pasha.
 * Stanley was portrayed by Aidan Quinn in the TV movie Forbidden Territory: Stanley's Search for Livingstone (1997).
 * A Nintendo video game based on his life was released in 1992 called Stanley: The Search for Dr. Livingston.
 * In 2004, Welsh journalist Tim Butcher wrote his book Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart. The book followed Stanley's journey through the Congo.
 * The 2009 History Channel series Expedition Africa documented a group of explorers attempting to traverse the route of Stanley's expedition in search of Livingstone.
 * In 2015, Oscar Hijuelos's novel Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise retold the story of Stanley's life through a focus on his friendship with Mark Twain.

Honours and legacy

A former hospital in St Asaph, north Wales, was named after Stanley in honour of his birth in the area. It was formerly the workhouse in which he spent much of his early life. Memorials to Stanley were erected in St Asaph and in Denbigh (a statue of Stanley with an outstretched hand) in 2011. A working party was set up in 2020 to consider new wording for a plaque on the St Asaph obelisk, and a public consultation and vote was held in 2021 over a proposal to remove the Denbigh statue, which resulted in an 80 per cent majority for retaining the statue.

Taxa named in honour of Stanley include:
 * freshwater snail Gabbiella stanleyi (E. A. Smith, 1877)
 * freshwater snail genus Stanleya Bourguignat, 1885

The mineral stanleyite is named in his honour, as the describer of the mineral was surnamed Livingstone but a mineral named livingstonite (named for David Livingstone) already existed.

Stanley Electric, a major Japanese supplier of automotive lighting, was named by founder Takaharu Kitano after Stanley in admiration of his "perseverance and pioneering spirit".

title: Henry Morton Stanley


text:
Standing (law)

In law, standing or locus standi is a condition that a party seeking a legal remedy must show they have, by demonstrating to the court, sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case. A party has standing in the following situations:

 * The party is directly subject to an adverse effect by the statute or action in question, and the harm suffered will continue unless the court grants relief in the form of damages or a finding that the law either does not apply to the party or that the law is void or can be nullified. In informal terms, a party must have something to lose. The party has standing because they will be directly harmed by the conditions for which they are asking the court for relief.
 * The party is not directly harmed by the conditions by which they are petitioning the court for relief but asks for it because the harm involved has some reasonable relation to their situation, and the continued existence of the harm may affect others who might not be able to ask a court for relief. In the United States, this is the grounds for asking for a law to be struck down as violating the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, because while the plaintiff might not be directly affected, the law might so adversely affect others that one might never know what was not done or created by those who fear they would become subject to the law. This is known as the "chilling effects" doctrine.
 * The party is granted automatic standing by act of law. For example, under some environmental laws in the United States, a party may sue someone causing pollution to certain waterways without a federal permit, even if the party suing is not harmed by the pollution being generated. The law allows the plaintiff to receive attorney's fees if they substantially prevail in the action. In some U.S. states, a person who believes a book, film or other work of art is obscene may sue in their own name to have the work banned directly without having to ask a District Attorney to do so.

In the United States, the current doctrine is that a person cannot bring a suit challenging the constitutionality of a law unless they can demonstrate that they are or will "imminently" be harmed by the law. Otherwise, the court will rule that the plaintiff "lacks standing" to bring the suit, and will dismiss the case without considering the merits of the claim of unconstitutionality.

International courts
The Council of Europe created the first international court before which individuals have automatic locus standi.

Australia
Australia has a common law understanding of locus standi or standing which is expressed in statutes such as the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 and common law decisions of the High Court of Australia especially the case Australian Conservation Foundation v Commonwealth (1980). At common law, the test for standing is whether the plaintiff has a "special interest in the subject matter of the action". Under the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 to have standing the applicant must be "a person who is aggrieved", defined as "a person whose interests are adversely affected" by the decision or conduct complained of. This has generally been interpreted in accordance with the common law test.

There is no open standing, unless statute allows it, or represents needs of a specified class of people. The issue is one of remoteness.

Standing may apply to class of aggrieved people, where essentially the closeness of the plaintiff to the subject matter is the test. Furthermore, a plaintiff must show that he or she has been specially affected in comparison with the public at large.

Also, while there is no open standing per se, prerogative writs like certiorari, writ of prohibition, quo warranto and habeas corpus have a low burden in establishing standing. Australian courts also recognise amicus curiae (friend of the court), and the various Attorneys General have a presumed standing in administrative law cases.

Canada
In Canadian administrative law, whether an individual has standing to bring an application for judicial review, or an appeal from the decision of a tribunal, is governed by the language of the particular statute under which the application or the appeal is brought. Some statutes provide for a narrow right of standing while others provide for a broader right of standing.

Frequently a litigant wishes to bring a civil action for a declaratory judgment against a public body or official. This is considered an aspect of administrative law, sometimes with a constitutional dimension, as when the litigant seeks to have legislation declared unconstitutional.

Public interest standing
The Supreme Court of Canada developed the concept of public interest standing in three constitutional cases commonly called "the Standing trilogy": Thorson v. Attorney General of Canada, Nova Scotia Board of Censors v. McNeil, and Minister of Justice v. Borowski. The trilogy was summarized as follows in Canadian Council of Churches v. Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration):

"It has been seen that when public interest standing is sought, consideration must be given to three aspects. First, is there a serious issue raised as to the invalidity of legislation in question? Second, has it been established that the plaintiff is directly affected by the legislation or if not does the plaintiff have a genuine interest in its validity? Third, is there another reasonable and effective way to bring the issue before the court?"

Public-interest standing is also available in non-constitutional cases, as the Court found in Finlay v. Canada (Minister of Finance).

Nigeria
Like in other jurisdictions, the right to approach a court is contained in the Constitution. The right to approach a court has been interpreted in several cases, this has led to the right to be view differently in different cases. In recent times, there have been different approaches to locus standi. They are:

 * Traditional approach — only the party who has suffered pecuniary damage or special damage can seek redress in a court of law. In the case of Airtel Networks Ltd. v. George it was held that "a party is said to have locus if he has shown sufficient interest in the action and that his civil rights and obligations have been or are in danger of being infringed". Under this approach, a party can only seek redress provided he has proved to the satisfaction of the court that he has suffered sufficient damage over and above any other persons in the concern action. Particularly, only the Attorney General can seek redress in any case on public affairs except the party is authorised through fiat emanates from the Attorney General.
 * Liberal approach — a departure or exception to the traditional approach. Locus standi may be granted to any person who challenges any unconstitutionality provided the person is subject to the constitution. This expands locus standi on constitutional issues. Justice Aboki of the Court of Appeal said "the requirement of (strict) locus standi become unnecessary in constitutional issues as it will merely impede judicial function". Likewise, any person can challenge infringement of fundamental human rights.

United Kingdom
In British administrative law, an applicant needs to have a sufficient interest in the matter to which the application relates. This sufficient interest requirement has been construed liberally by the courts. As Lord Diplock put it:

"[i]t would ... be a grave danger to escape lacuna in our system of public law if a pressure group ... or even a single public spirited taxpayer, were prevented by outdated technical rules of locus standi from bringing the matter to the attention of the court to vindicate the rule of law and get the unlawful conduct stopped."

In the law of contract, the doctrine of privity means that only those who are party to a contract can sue or be sued upon it. This doctrine was substantially amended by the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999, which allows third parties specified in a contract to enforce it provided the contract expressly grants them the right to do so.

Almost all criminal prosecutions are brought by the state via the Crown Prosecution Service, so private prosecutions are rare. An exception was the case of Whitehouse v Lemon where Mrs Mary Whitehouse, a self-appointed guardian of suburban morality, was permitted to bring a private prosecution for blasphemous libel (an offence still in existence until 2008) against the publisher of Gay News, Denis Lemon. Victims of crime have standing to sue the perpetrator and they may claim criminal injuries compensation from the state. If the state fails properly to bring a case, the victim or his family may have standing to bring a private prosecution, as in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

United States
In United States law, the Supreme Court has stated, "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."

There are a number of requirements that a plaintiff must establish to have standing before a federal court. Some are based on the case or controversy requirement of the judicial power of Article Three of the United States Constitution, § 2, cl.1. As stated there, "The Judicial Power shall extend to all Cases . . .[and] to Controversies . . ." The requirement that a plaintiff have standing to sue is a limit on the role of the judiciary and the law of Article III standing is built on the idea of separation of powers.

Federal courts may exercise power only "in the last resort, and as a necessity". The Supreme Court has determined that the case or controversy requirement found in Article Three of the United States Constitution prohibits United States federal courts from issuing advisory opinions. Accordingly, before the court will hear a case, it must find that the parties have a tangible interest at stake in the matter, the issue presented must be "mature for judicial resolution" or ripe, and a justiciable issue must remain before the court throughout the course of the lawsuit.

The American doctrine of standing is assumed as having begun with the case of Frothingham v. Mellon. However, legal standing truly rests its first prudential origins in Fairchild v. Hughes, (1922) which was authored by Justice Louis Brandeis. In Fairchild, a citizen sued the Secretary of State and the Attorney General to challenge the procedures by which the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. Prior to it, the doctrine was that all persons had a right to pursue a private prosecution of a public right. Since then the doctrine has been embedded in judicial rules and some statutes.

In 2011, in Bond v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant charged with violating a federal statute does have standing to challenge the constitutionality of that statute under the Tenth Amendment.

Standing requirements
There are three standing requirements:

 * 1) Injury-in-fact: The plaintiff must have suffered or imminently will suffer injury—an invasion of a legally protected interest that is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or imminent (that is, neither conjectural nor hypothetical; not abstract).  The injury can be either economic, non-economic, or both.
 * 2) Causation: There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of, so that the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant and not the result of the independent action of some third party who is not before the court.
 * 3) Redressability: It must be likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that a favorable court decision will redress the injury.

Prudential limitations
Additionally, there are three major prudential (judicially created) standing principles (prudential standing). Congress can override these principles via statute:

Additionally, third parties who do not have standing may be able to sue under the next friend doctrine if the third party is an infant, mentally handicapped, or not a party to a contract. One example of a statutory exception to the prohibition of third party standing exists in the qui tam provision of the Civil False Claims Act.
 * 1) General prohibition of third-party standing: A party may only assert their own rights and cannot raise the claims of a third party who is not before the court; exceptions exist where the third party has interchangeable economic interests with the injured party, or a person unprotected by a particular law sues to challenge the oversweeping of the law into the rights of others. For example, a party suing over a law prohibiting certain types of visual material, may sue because the 1st Amendment rights of theirs, and others engaged in similar displays, might be damaged.
 * 1) Prohibition of generalized grievances: A plaintiff cannot sue if the injury is widely shared in an undifferentiated way with many people. For example, the general rule is that there is no federal taxpayer standing, as complaints about the spending of federal funds are too remote from the process of acquiring them. Such grievances are ordinarily more appropriately addressed in the representative branches.
 * 2) Zone of interest test: There are in fact two tests used by the United States Supreme Court for the zone of interest
 * 3) Zone of injury: The injury is the kind of injury that Congress expected might be addressed under the statute.
 * 4) Zone of interests: The party is arguably within the zone of interest protected by the statute or constitutional provision.

Recent development of the doctrine
In 1984, the Supreme Court reviewed and further outlined the standing requirements in a major ruling concerning the meaning of the three standing requirements of injury, causation, and redressability. In the suit, parents of black public school children alleged that the Internal Revenue Service was not enforcing standards and procedures that would deny tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools. The Court found that the plaintiffs did not have the standing necessary to bring suit. Although the Court established a significant injury for one of the claims, it found the causation of the injury (the nexus between the defendant's actions and the plaintiff's injuries) to be too attenuated. "The injury alleged was not fairly traceable to the Government conduct respondents challenge as unlawful".

In another major standing case, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992), the Supreme Court elaborated on the redressability requirement for standing. The case involved a challenge to a rule promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior interpreting §7 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). The rule rendered §7 of the ESA applicable only to actions within the United States or on the high seas. The Court found that the plaintiffs did not have the standing necessary to bring suit, because no injury had been established. The injury claimed by the plaintiffs was that damage would be caused to certain species of animals and that this in turn injures the plaintiffs by the reduced likelihood that the plaintiffs would see the species in the future. The court insisted though that the plaintiffs had to show how damage to the species would produce imminent injury to the plaintiffs. The Court found that the plaintiffs did not sustain this burden of proof. "The 'injury in fact' test requires more than an injury to a cognizable interest. It requires that the party seeking review be himself among the injured". The injury must be imminent and not hypothetical.

Beyond failing to show injury, the Court found that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate the standing requirement of redressability. The Court pointed out that the respondents chose to challenge a more generalized level of government action, "the invalidation of which would affect all overseas projects". This programmatic approach has "obvious difficulties insofar as proof of causation or redressability is concerned".

In a 2000 case, ''Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens'', 529 U.S. 765 (2000), the United States Supreme Court endorsed the "partial assignment" approach to qui tam relator standing to sue under the False Claims Act — allowing private individuals to sue on behalf of the U.S. government for injuries suffered solely by the government.

In a 2009 case, Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U.S. 488 (2009), the Supreme Court held the petitioner environmental organizations' claim that it was "statistically likely" that some of their members would visit the affected lands was insufficient to support Article III standing. The majority opinion stated the "deprivation of a procedural right without some concrete interest that is affected by the deprivation . . . is insufficient to create Article III standing."

Taxpayer standing
The initial case that established the doctrine of standing, Frothingham v. Mellon, was a taxpayer standing case.

Taxpayer standing is the concept that any person who pays taxes should have standing to file a lawsuit against the taxing body if that body allocates funds in a way that the taxpayer feels is improper. The United States Supreme Court has held that taxpayer standing is not by itself a sufficient basis for standing against the United States government. The Court has consistently found that the conduct of the federal government is too far removed from individual taxpayer returns for any injury to the taxpayer to be traced to the use of tax revenues, e.g., United States v. Richardson.

In DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, the Court extended this analysis to state governments as well. However, the Supreme Court has also held that taxpayer standing is constitutionally sufficient to sue a municipal government in a federal court.

States are also protected against lawsuits by their sovereign immunity. Even where states waive their sovereign immunity, they may nonetheless have their own rules limiting standing against simple taxpayer standing against the state. Furthermore, states have the power to determine what will constitute standing for a litigant to be heard in a state court, and may deny access to the courts premised on taxpayer standing alone.

In California, taxpayers have standing to sue for any 'illegal expenditure of, waste of, or injury to the estate, funds, or other property of a local agency'. In Florida, a taxpayer has standing to sue if the state government is acting unconstitutionally with respect to public funds, or if government action is causing some special injury to the taxpayer that is not shared by taxpayers in general. In Virginia, the Supreme Court of Virginia has more or less adopted a similar rule. An individual taxpayer generally has standing to challenge an act of a city or county where they live, but does not have general standing to challenge state expenditures.

Standing to challenge statutes
With limited exceptions, a party cannot have standing to challenge the constitutionality of a statute unless they will be subjected to the provisions of that statute. There are some exceptions, however; for example, courts will accept First Amendment challenges to a statute on overbreadth grounds, where a person who is only partially affected by a statute can challenge the parts that do not affect him on the grounds that laws that restrict speech have a chilling effect on other people's right to free speech.

The only other way someone can have standing to challenge the constitutionality of a statute is if the existence of the statute would otherwise deprive him of a right or a privilege even if the statute itself would not apply to him. The Virginia Supreme Court made this point clear in the case of Martin v. Ziherl 607 S.E.2d 367 (Va. 2005). Martin and Ziherl were girlfriend and boyfriend and engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse when Martin discovered that Ziherl had infected her with herpes, even though he knew he was infected and did not inform her of this. She sued him for damages, but because it was illegal (at the time the case was filed) to commit "fornication" (sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who are not married), Ziherl argued that Martin could not sue him because joint tortfeasors – those involved in committing a crime – cannot sue each other over acts occurring as a result of a criminal act (Zysk v. Zysk, 404 S.E.2d 721 (Va. 1990)). Martin argued in rebuttal that because of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas (finding that state's sodomy law unconstitutional), Virginia's anti-fornication law was also unconstitutional for the reasons cited in Lawrence. Martin argued, therefore, she could, in fact, sue Ziherl for damages.

Lower courts decided that because the Commonwealth's Attorney does not prosecute fornication cases and no one had been prosecuted for fornication anywhere in Virginia in over 100 years, Martin had no risk of prosecution and thus lacked standing to challenge the statute. Martin appealed. Since Martin had something to lose – the ability to sue Ziherl for damages – if the statute was upheld, she had standing to challenge the constitutionality of the statute even though the possibility of her being prosecuted for violating it was zero. Since the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence had found that there is a privacy right in one's private, noncommercial sexual practices, the Virginia Supreme Court decided that the statute against fornication was unconstitutional. The finding gave Martin standing to sue Ziherl since the decision in Zysk was no longer applicable.

However, the only reason Martin had standing to challenge the statute was that she had something to lose if it stayed on the books.

Standing to challenge a contract award
Only an "interested party" has standing to challenge a federal contract award. In this context, an "interested party" is a company or person who bid for a contract, or a prospective bidder, whose "direct economic interest would be affected by the award of the contract" to another business.

Ballot measures
In Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Supreme Court ruled that being the proponents of a ballot measure is not by itself enough to confer legal standing. In that case, Proposition 8 had banned same-sex marriage in California, a ban that was ruled unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled that the proponents of Proposition 8 has no standing in court since they failed to show that they were harmed by the decision.

State law
State law on standing differs substantially from federal law and varies considerably from state to state.

California
Californians may bring "taxpayer actions" against public officials for wasting public funds through mismanagement of a government agency, where the relief sought is an order compelling the official not to waste money and fulfill his duty to protect the public fisc.

On December 29, 2009,  the California Court of Appeal for the Sixth District ruled that California Code of Civil Procedure Section 367 cannot be read as imposing a federal-style standing doctrine on California's code pleading system of civil procedure. In California, the fundamental inquiry is always whether the plaintiff has sufficiently plead a cause of action, not whether the plaintiff has some entitlement to judicial action separate from proof of the substantive merits of the claim advanced. The court acknowledged that the word "standing" is often sloppily used to refer to what is really jus tertii, and held that jus tertii in state law is not the same thing as the federal standing doctrine.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Standing (law)


text:
Ripeness

In United States law, ripeness refers to the readiness of a case for litigation; "a claim is not ripe for adjudication if it rests upon contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all." For example, if a law of ambiguous quality has been enacted but never applied, a case challenging that law lacks the ripeness necessary for a decision.

The goal is to prevent premature adjudication; if a dispute is insufficiently developed, any potential injury or stake is too speculative to warrant judicial action. Ripeness issues most usually arise when a plaintiff seeks anticipatory relief, such as an injunction.

Originally stated in Liverpool, New York & Philadelphia Steamship Co. v. Commissioners of Emigration (1885), ripeness is one the seven rules of the constitutional avoidance doctrine established in Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority (1936) that requires that the Supreme Court of the United States to "not 'anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it. The Court fashioned a two-part test for assessing ripeness challenges to federal regulations. The case is often applied to constitutional challenges to federal and state statutes as well. The Court said in Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, :

 * Without undertaking to survey the intricacies of the ripeness doctrine it is fair to say that its basic rationale is to prevent the courts, through avoidance of premature adjudication, from entangling themselves in abstract disagreements over administrative policies, and also to protect the agencies from judicial interference until an administrative decision has been formalized and its effects felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties. The problem is best seen in a twofold aspect, requiring us to evaluate both the fitness of the issues for judicial decision and the hardship to the parties of withholding court consideration.

In both Abbott Laboratories and its first companion case, Toilet Goods Association v. Gardner,, the Court upheld pre-enforcement review of an administrative regulation. However, the Court denied such review in the second companion case because any harm from noncompliance with the FDA regulation at issue was too speculative in the Court's opinion to justify judicial review. Justice Harlan wrote for the Court in all three cases.

The ripeness doctrine should not be confused with the advisory opinion doctrine, another justiciability concept in American law.

title: Ripeness


text:
Mootness

The terms moot, mootness and moot point are used in both English and American law, although with different meanings.

In the legal system of the United States, a matter is "moot" if further legal proceedings with regard to it can have no effect, or events have placed it beyond the reach of the law. Thereby the matter has been deprived of practical significance or rendered purely academic.

The U.S. development of this word stems from the practice of moot courts, in which hypothetical or fictional cases were argued as a part of legal education. These purely academic issues led the U.S. courts to describe cases where developing circumstances made any judgment ineffective as "moot". The terms mootness and moot court should therefore not be confused.

The mootness doctrine can be compared to the ripeness doctrine, another court rule (rather than law), that holds that judges should not rule on cases based entirely on anticipated disputes or hypothetical facts. These rules and similar doctrines, taken together, prevent the federal courts of the United States from issuing advisory opinions, as required by the Case or Controversy Clause of the United States Constitution.

The usage in the British legal system, on the other hand, is that the term "moot" has the meaning of "remains open to debate" or "remains unresolved". The divergence in usage was first observed in the United States and the extent to which the U.S. definition is used in U.S. jurisprudence and public discourse has ensured it is rarely used in a British courtroom. This is partially to avoid ambiguity, but also because the British definition is rarely relevant in practical cases.

U.S. federal courts
In the U.S. federal judicial system, a moot case must be dismissed, there being a constitutional limitation on the jurisdiction of the federal courts. The reason for this is that Article Three of the United States Constitution limits the jurisdiction of all federal courts to "cases and controversies". Thus, a civil action or appeal in which the court's decision will not affect the rights of the parties is ordinarily beyond the power of the court to decide, provided it does not fall within one of the recognized exceptions.

A textbook example of such a case is the United States Supreme Court case DeFunis v. Odegaard,. The plaintiff was a student who had been denied admission to law school, and had then been provisionally admitted during the pendency of the case. Because the student was slated to graduate within a few months at the time the decision was rendered, and there was no action the law school could take to prevent that, the Court determined that a decision on its part would have no effect on the student's rights. Therefore, the case was dismissed as moot.

However, there is disagreement as to both the source of the standards, and their application in the courts. Some courts and observers opine that cases must be dismissed because this is a constitutional bar, and there is no "case or controversy"; others have rejected the pure constitutional approach and adopted a so-called "prudential" view, where dismissal may depend upon a host of factors, whether the particular person has lost a viable interest in the case, or whether the issue itself survives outside the interests of the particular person, whether the circumstance are likely to recur, etc. In actual practice, the U.S. federal courts have been uneven in their decisions, which has led to the accusation that determinations are ad hoc and 'result-oriented.'

There are four major exceptions to this mootness rule. These are cases of "voluntary cessation" on the part of the defendant; questions that involve secondary or collateral legal consequences; questions that are "capable of repetition, yet evading review"; and questions involving class actions where the named party ceases to represent the class.

Voluntary cessation
Where a defendant is acting wrongfully, but as a tactic to avoid an adverse decision, ceases to engage in such conduct once a litigation has been threatened or commenced, the court will still not deem this correction to moot the case. Obviously, a party could stop acting improperly just long enough for the case to be dismissed and then resume the improper conduct. For example, in Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc.,, the Supreme Court held that an industrial polluter, against whom various deterrent civil penalties were being pursued, could not claim that the case was moot, even though the polluter had ceased polluting and had closed the factory responsible for the pollution. The court noted that so long as the polluter still retained its license to operate such a factory, it could open similar operations elsewhere if not deterred by the penalties sought.

A separate situation occurs when a court dismisses as "moot" a legal challenge to an existing law, in the case where the law being challenged is either amended or repealed through legislation before the court case could be settled. Since the remedy available for a bad law is simply the removal or changing of the law, the court's decision cannot create an outcome different than that which has already occurred. As such, any decision would merely be advisory, in violation of the Case or Controversy clause. While this sometimes casually referred to as voluntary cessation, the differences in available remedy make it distinct from technical voluntary cessation.

A recent instance of this occurred in Moore v. Madigan, where Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan declined to appeal a ruling from the Seventh Circuit striking down Illinois' handgun carry ban to the United States Supreme Court. As Illinois subsequently passed a law legalizing concealed carry with a state-issued license, the appeal would have been moot since the original case or controversy was no longer relevant.

Secondary or collateral legal consequences
"The obvious fact of life is that most criminal convictions do in fact entail adverse collateral legal consequences. The mere possibility that this will be the case is enough to preserve a criminal case from ending ignominiously in the limbo of mootness." Sibron v. New York.

Capable of repetition, yet evading review
A court will allow a case to go forward if it is the type for which persons will frequently be faced with a particular situation, but will likely cease to be in a position where the court can provide a remedy for them in the time that it takes for the justice system to address their situation. The most frequently cited example is the 1973 United States Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade,, which challenged a Texas law forbidding abortion in most circumstances. The state argued that the case was moot because plaintiff Roe was no longer pregnant by the time the case was heard. As Justice Blackmun wrote in the majority opinion:

"The normal 266-day human gestation period is so short that the pregnancy will come to term before the usual appellate process is complete. If that termination makes a case moot, pregnancy litigation seldom will survive much beyond the trial stage, and appellate review will be effectively denied. Our law should not be that rigid."

By contrast, in McCorvey v. Hill, 2004, the case failed to proceed based on being moot, without standing and out of time.

The Court cited Southern Pacific Terminal Co. v. ICC,, which had held that a case was not moot when it presented an issue that was "capable of repetition, yet evading review". Perhaps in response to increasing workloads at all levels of the judiciary, the recent trend in the Supreme Court and other U.S. courts has been to construe this exception rather narrowly.

Many cases fall under the "capable of repetition" doctrine; however, because there is a review process available under most circumstances, the exception to declaring mootness did not apply to such cases. In ''Memphis Light, Gas & Water Div. v. Craft'', 436 U. S. 1, 8–9 (1978), the court noted that claims for damages save cases from mootness.

Class action representatives
Where a class action lawsuit is brought, with one named plaintiff actually representing the interests of many others, the case will not become moot even if the named plaintiff ceases to belong to the class that is seeking a remedy. In Sosna v. Iowa,, the plaintiff represented a class that was challenging an Iowa law that required persons to reside there for a year before seeking a divorce in Iowa's courts. The Supreme Court held that, although the plaintiff successfully divorced in another state, her attorneys could continue to competently advance the interests of other members of the class.

Abuse of mootness doctrine not acceptable
Construction of a project without regulatory compliance cannot be used to moot a court case challenge simply because construction has been completed. Since remedies remain available even long after the project has been completed, the case remains non-moot.

For example, where an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was challenged, completion of the project construction could not be used to evade regulatory compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as the 9th Circuit Court explained: "”In the case at hand, were this Court to find the EIS inadequate, or the decision to build along Route D-1 arbitrary and capricious, the agency would have to correct the decision-making process, and ultimately could be required to remove the line from this route. Clearly, therefore, this case presents a live controversy with concrete facts, and parties with adverse interests. The building of the towers has not made the case hypothetical or abstract — the towers still cross the fields of the Landowners, continually obstructing their irrigation systems — and this Court has the power to decide if they may stay or if they may have to be removed. * * * If the fact that the towers are built and operating were enough to make the case nonjusticiable, as the dissent states, then the BPA (and all similar entities) could merely ignore the requirements of NEPA, build its structures before a case gets to court, and then hide behind the mootness doctrine. Such a result is not acceptable.'"

U.S. state courts
The U.S. state courts are not subject to the Article III limitations on their jurisdiction, and some state courts are permitted by their local constitutions and laws to render opinions in moot cases where the establishment of a legal precedent is desirable. They may also establish exceptions to the doctrine. For instance, in some state courts the prosecution can lodge an appeal after a defendant is acquitted: although the appellate court cannot set aside a not-guilty verdict due to double jeopardy, it can issue a ruling as to whether a trial court's ruling on a particular issue during the trial was erroneous. This opinion will then be binding on future cases heard by the courts of that state.

Some U.S. states also accept certified questions from the federal courts or the courts of other states. Under these procedures, state courts can issue opinions, usually for the purpose of clarifying or updating state law, in cases not actually pending in those courts.

Outside the U.S.
Although free from the U.S. Constitutional limitation, Canada has recognized that considerations of judicial economy and comity with the legislative and executive branch may justify a decision to dismiss an allegedly moot case, as deciding hypothetical controversies is tantamount to legislating. Considerations of the effectiveness of advocacy involved in the adversarial system and the possibility of recurrence of an alleged constitutional violation may sway the court. Additionally, the federal and provincial governments can ask for advisory opinions in hypothetical scenarios, termed reference questions, from their respective highest courts.

Moot point
The phrase 'moot point' refers (in American English) to an issue that is irrelevant to a subject being discussed or (in British English) to one that is debatable. Due to the relatively uncommon usage of the word moot, and because "moot" and "mute" are homophones in some pronunciations, this is sometimes erroneously rendered as "mute point".

title: Mootness


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Default (law)

In law, a default is the failure to do something required by law or to comply with a contractual obligation. Legal obligations can arise when a response or appearance is required in legal proceedings, after taking out a loan, or as agreed in a contract; failure to carry them out puts one in defaults of the obligations.

The concept of a "deliberate default" was considered in a UK legal case determined in 2010, De Beers UK Ltd. v Atos Origin It Services UK Ltd., where a contract had referred to this term. Edwards-Stuart J described "deliberate default" as meaning, in his view, "a default that is deliberate, in the sense that the person committing the relevant act knew that it was a default (i.e. in this case a breach of contract). I consider that it does not extend to recklessness and is therefore narrower than wilful misconduct (although the latter will embrace deliberate default)." Before the De Beers case there was little judicial guidance on the meaning of "deliberate default".

The same term ("deliberate defaulters") has been used by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the UK to describe "people who deliberately get their tax affairs wrong".

Default in legal proceedings
Failure to appear at a required time in legal proceedings can constitute a default.

In the United States, for example, when a party has failed to file meaningful response to pleadings within the time allowed, with the result that only one side of a controversy has been presented to the court, the party who has pleaded a claim for relief and received no response may request entry of default. In some jurisdictions the court may proceed to enter judgment immediately: others require that the plaintiff file a notice of intent to take the default judgment and serve it on the unresponsive party. If this notice is not opposed, or no adequate justification for the delay or lack of response is presented, then the plaintiff is entitled to judgment in his favor. Such a judgment is referred to as a "default judgment" and, unless otherwise ordered, has the same effect as a judgment entered in a contested case.

It is possible to vacate or remove the default judgment, depending on the particular state's law.

Entry of default in the United States district courts is governed by Rule 55 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Financial default
A common type of default is failure to meet the financial obligations of a loan. This can occur due to inability to pay, or voluntarily in a strategic default. When the debtor is a government, it is called a sovereign default.

A notice of default is a notification given to a borrower stating that a payment has not been made by the predetermined deadline, or is otherwise in default on the mortgage contract. Other ways a borrower may be in default include not providing proper insurance coverage for the property, or not paying due property taxes as agreed. It dictates that if the money owed (plus an additional legal fee), or other breach(es) are not paid/remedied in a given time, the lender may choose to foreclose the borrower's property. Any other people who may be affected by the foreclosure may also receive a copy of the notification.

title: Default (law)


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Clare Martin

Clare Majella Martin (born 15 June 1952) is a former Australian journalist and politician. She was elected to the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly in a shock by-election win in 1995. She was appointed Opposition Leader in 1999, and won a surprise victory at the 2001 territory election, becoming the first Labor Party (ALP) and first female Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. At the 2005 election, she led Territory Labor to the second-largest majority government in the history of the Territory, before resigning as Chief Minister on 26 November 2007.

Early life
Martin was one of ten children. Her parents were Catholics and Democratic Labor Party supporters. Her uncle, Kevin Cairns, was a Liberal minister and MP in the McMahon government, but the family was not inclined towards his conservative politics. Martin's ancestry includes the Coughlin family, which also had NSW's first female statistician and the noted test cricketer Victor Trumper. The family was originally from County Offaly, Ireland, until the Cromwell invasion, then left County Cork in the 1850s just after the Great Famine. After attending Loreto Normanhurst, Martin graduated from the University of Sydney in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, in which her major study was Music.

Pre-political career
Having spent time in London and other overseas cities, she began working as a typist for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney in 1978. In 1979, she became a trainee reporter. After several years, she began to take an interest in presenting, but was told that she would not be given a position in Sydney unless she had experience elsewhere. In February 1983, Martin was then offered a six-month position presenting a morning radio show in Darwin for the ABC Radio station 5DR.

She had little intention of staying there, and briefly returned to Canberra in May 1983, before being offered a job in Sydney. However, at the same time, Martin's partner was offered a partner's position at the law firm he had worked in Darwin. He liked living in Darwin and was keen to take up the position, so Martin agreed to decline the Sydney job and return to Darwin in May 1985 where she gained another position on an ABC Radio morning show.

In 1986, Martin made the move to television, as the presenter of The 7.30 Report until 1988. After returning from long service leave where she cared for her two young children, Martin returned to work in 1990 to work on ABC Radio's morning program.

Political career
Martin had been interested in political journalism for some years, although she was not a member of any party, believing that party affiliation compromises journalistic integrity. In 1994, she was approached to contest the Darwin Legislative Assembly seat of Casuarina for the Labor Party at the 1994 election. However, she was defeated by Country Liberal Party candidate Peter Adamson. She soon resigned from the party and returned to journalism, but when former CLP Chief Minister Marshall Perron resigned from his Darwin seat of Fannie Bay, Martin opted to contest the ensuing by-election as the Labor candidate. Fannie Bay, like most Darwin electorates, had been a CLP stronghold; Perron held it with a majority of 8 percent. However, in a considerable upset, Martin went on to win the seat by 69 votes, becoming one of only two ALP MLAs in Darwin.
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Martin worked hard to retain her seat at the 1997 election, and was successful, holding Fannie Bay despite a heavy defeat for the ALP. She subsequently served as Shadow Minister for Lands under then leader Maggie Hickey. When Hickey unexpectedly resigned in February 1999, Martin was in a position to succeed her, and was soon elected party leader, and hence Opposition Leader. She soon emerged as a vocal critic of the Burke government's policy of mandatory sentencing, and began preparing the ALP for the next election, which was then two years away.

Term as Chief Minister
Martin faced her first electoral test as leader at the 2001 election. At the time, the Country Liberal Party had held office for 27 years, and Labor had never come particularly close to government. Indeed, it had never managed to win more than nine seats at any election. However, the ALP was coming off a particularly successful eighteen months, and Martin ran a skilled campaign. She was also able to take advantage of a number of gaffes made by then-Chief Minister Denis Burke, such as the decision to preference One Nation over the ALP – which lost the CLP a number of votes in crucial Darwin seats. The election also came during a bad time for the federal Coalition government, which was under fire for introducing a GST after previously vowing not to do so.

Despite this, most commentators were predicting the CLP would be returned for a ninth term in government, albeit with a reduced majority. However, in a shock result, Labor scored an eight-seat swing, achieving majority government by one seat. It did so on the strength of an unexpected Labor wave in Darwin. Labor had gone into the election holding only two seats in the capital—those of Martin and Paul Henderson—and had never held more than two seats in Darwin at any time. In the 2001 election, however, Labor took all but one seat in Darwin, including all seven seats in the northern part of the city. Darwin's northern suburbs are somewhat more diverse than the rest of the city. In the process, they ousted four sitting MLAs; Labor had not unseated a CLP incumbent since 1980. Although the CLP won a bare majority of the two-party vote, Labor's gains in Darwin were enough to make Martin the first ALP and first female Chief Minister in the history of the Northern Territory. Martin herself was reelected with a healthy swing of 9.2 percent in Fannie Bay, turning it into a safe Labor seat in one stroke.

As Chief Minister, Martin immediately set about making changes, repealing the territory's controversial mandatory sentencing laws, and introducing freedom of information legislation, which had been neglected during the CLP's 27-year rule.

Aboriginal issues
Although Martin appointed Aboriginal Territorians to her cabinet, she has been criticised for not improving the lot of her Aboriginal constituents, who on average have a life expectancy well below that of white Australians. A respected commentator in The Bulletin suggested that she had gone slow on Aboriginal issues because she feared a white backlash that could have resulted in her government being toppled.

The life expectancy of the Northern Territory's Aboriginal citizens did not increase markedly during Martin's administration. Alcohol abuse continued to be a major issue in Aboriginal communities and third-world diseases like trachoma could be seen in remote Aboriginal townships. However, in 2006, Martin rejected accusations by John Howard and Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, that her government had been underfunding Aboriginal communities. A summit between the federal and territory governments was proposed by Mal Brough in May 2006, but this was snubbed by Martin.

Martin was critical of the Federal Government's intervention in Aboriginal communities as announced in 2007. She opposed certain aspects of the intervention such as removal of the permit system. In response, the Federal Government rejected the Territory's argument, saying it was essential to remove artificial barriers to Aboriginal townships that prevent the measures needed to improve living conditions for Indigenous children

Achievements
In the longer term, she oversaw the completion of the Adelaide-Darwin railway, which had begun under the Burke government, and vowed to resurrect the stalled statehood movement. She also managed to markedly boost the ALP's standing among the electorate, as seen in the 2003 Katherine by-election, which saw a major swing to the party.

By 2005, the Northern Territory, under Martin's leadership, had achieved the following:
 * the highest economic growth in Australia at 7.2 per cent
 * the lowest small business taxes
 * record population growth
 * the highest building approval rates
 * surging house prices and record levels of home ownership.
 * Property crime almost halved
 * Approval for $1 billion development of Darwin wharf precinct

As Chief Minister, Martin led the ALP to the 2005 election, which was their first as an incumbent government in the Territory. Martin campaigned largely on law and order issues. It was predicted that the ALP would win a relatively narrow victory. However, in a result that had not been predicted by any commentators or even the most optimistic Labor observers, Martin led the ALP to a smashing victory. The final result gave 19 seats to the ALP, 4 to the opposition CLP and 2 to independents. The ALP won six seats from the CLP, four of which they had never won before in any election. Two of them were in Palmerston, an area where Labor had never previously come close to winning. In the most unexpected victory of all, the ALP even managed to unseat the Opposition Leader and former Chief Minister, Burke, in his own Palmerston-area electorate. Labor won the second-largest majority government in the history of the Territory, bettered only by the CLP's near-sweep of the Legislative Assembly at the first elections, in 1974.

On 10 September 2007, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie announced he would leave politics that week. This left Martin as Labor's longest-serving current state or territory leader, and as the longest-serving state or territory head of government in Australia, until she herself announced her resignation on 26 November 2007.

Resignation
On 26 November 2007, Clare Martin and her deputy Syd Stirling announced their resignations at a media conference in Darwin. Education Minister Paul Henderson was elected as the new leader and Chief Minister by the ALP caucus.

Post-political career
In 2008, Martin became chief executive officer of the Australian Council of Social Service, based in Sydney. In August 2010 she returned to the Northern Territory to become a Professorial Fellow in the Public and Social Policy Research Institute at Charles Darwin University.

In June 2019, she was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to the people and Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory, and as a community advocate.

title: Clare Martin