[n13] It freezes upon both, for no reason other than that it seems wise to the majority of the present Court, a particular political theory for the selection of Representatives. However, Art. I, 2. WebAs in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 , which involved alleged malapportionment of seats in a state legislature, the District Court had jurisdiction of the subject matter; appellants had At the Massachusetts convention, Judge Dana approved 4 because it gave Congress power to prevent a state legislature from copying Great Britain, where, a borough of but two or three cottages has a right to send two representatives to Parliament, while Birmingham, a large and populous manufacturing town, lately sprung up, cannot send one. . It was impossible to foresee all the abuses that might be made of the discretionary power. . . . [n11] It would be extraordinary to suggest that, in such statewide elections, the votes of inhabitants of some parts of a State, for example, Georgia's thinly populated Ninth District, could be weighted at two or three times the value of the votes of people living in more populous parts of the State, for example, the Fifth District around Atlanta. . [n27]. What was an immediate consequence of these rulings? [n4] The cause there of the alleged "debasement" of votes for state legislators -- districts containing widely varying numbers of people -- was precisely that which was alleged to debase votes for Congressmen in Colegrove v. Green, supra, and in the present case. http://landmarkcases.c-span.org/Case/10/Baker-V-Carrhttps://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/369/186, http://landmarkcases.c-span.org/Case/10/Baker-V-Carr, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/369/186. . 2. [p5]. 22) 206 F.Supp. The above implications of the three-fifths compromise were recognized by Madison. It is surely beyond debate that the Constitution did not require the slave States to apportion their Representatives according to the dispersion of slaves within their borders. . Alternatively, it might have been thought that Representatives elected by free men of a State would speak also for the slaves. . Federal courts could create discoverable and manageable standards for granting relief in equal protection cases. See also the remarks of Mr. Graham. . . With this single qualification, I join the dissent because I think MR. JUSTICE HARLAN has unanswerably demonstrated that Art. The fallacy of the Court's reasoning in this regard is illustrated by its slide, obscured by intervening discussion (see ante pp. 2, Government in America: Elections and Updates Edition, George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, Robert L. Lineberry, Christina Dejong, Christopher E. Smith, George F Cole, federalism (chapter four) multiple choice que. The current case is different than Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. 1 (1849), because it is brought under the Equal Protection Clause and Luther challenged malapportionment under the Constitutions Guaranty Clause. The remarks of Madison cited by the Court are as follows: The necessity of a Genl. at 50-51 (Rufus King, Massachusetts); 3 id. In 1901, the Tennessee General Assembly passed an apportionment act. 5-6. The constitutional right which the Court creates is manufactured out of whole cloth. There are some important differences of course. 572,654317,973254,681, Virginia(10). (Cooke ed.1961) 369. The companion cases to Smiley v. Holm presented no different issues, and were decided wholly on the basis of the decision in that case. . . Three levels of federal courts Supreme, Circuit (Appellate), Federal district Stare decisis Let the decision stand. . b. MR. JUSTICE CLARK, concurring in part and dissenting in part. In Baker v. Carr, the court determined that the legislative apportionment was a legitimate concern, whereas in Wesberry v. Sanders, the court found that Georgia's apportionment plan grossly discriminated against Fifth Congressional District voters because they were 2 to 3 times as numerous and as a result underrepresented in terms of . For a period of about 50 years, therefore, Congress, by repeated legislative act, imposed on the States the requirement that congressional districts be equal in population. 3. 522,813265,164257,649, Pennsylvania(27). b. Women were not allowed to vote. 248 (1962). The acts in question were filing false election returns, United States v. Mosley, 238 U.S. 383, alteration of ballots and false certification of votes, United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, and stuffing the ballot box, United States v. Saylor, 322 U.S. 385. Act of Feb. 25, 1882, 3, 22 Stat. . Soon after the Constitution was adopted, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, by then an Associate Justice of this Court, gave a series of lectures at Philadelphia in which, drawing on his experience as one of the most active members of the Constitutional Convention, he said: [A]ll elections ought to be equal. Pp. Reynolds v. Sims: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact, What Is Originalism? A challenge brought under the Equal Protection Clause to malapportionment of state legislatures is not a political question and is justiciable. 52.See, e.g., 86 Cong.Rec. I, 2, of the Constitution provides that Representatives are to be chosen "by the People of the several States. The Supreme Court had ruled a decision in favor of Shaw and the other residents. It is not surprising that our Court has held that this Article gives persons qualified to vote a constitutional right to vote and to have their votes counted. . . 627,019223,387403,632, Texas(23). Section 4. In 1961, Charles W. Baker and a number of Tennessee voters sued the state of Tennessee for failing to update the apportionment plan to reflect the state's growth in population. . 553,154303,026250,128, RhodeIsland(2). WebWesberry sought to invalidate the apportionment statute and enjoin defendants, the Governor and Secretary of State, from conducting elections under it. That is the high standard of justice and common sense which the Founders set for us. . (Emphasis added.) . 57 (Cooke ed.1961), at 389. On the other hand, I agree with the majority that congressional districting is subject to judicial scrutiny. The districts are those used in the election of the current 88th Congress. . The decision remains significant to this day because this case had set history for the political power of urban population areas. But since the slaves added to the representation only of their own State, Representatives [p28] from the slave States could have been thought to speak only for the slaves of their own States, indicating both that the Convention believed it possible for a Representative elected by one group to speak for another nonvoting group and that Representatives were in large degree still thought of as speaking for the whole population of a State. Cf. I, 2, lays down the ipse dixit "one person, one vote" in congressional elections. 10. according to their respective Numbers." 552,863227,692325,171, Oregon(4). 610,947350,839260,108, Louisiana(8). . 660,345237,235423,110, Georgia(10). The Federalist, No. See Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962) (Italics added.) [n26] The deadlock was finally broken when a majority of the States agreed to what has been called the Great Compromise, [n27] based on a proposal which had been repeatedly advanced by Roger [p13] Sherman and other delegates from Connecticut. In No. Tennessee had undergone a population shift in which thousands of people flooded urban areas, abandoning the rural countryside. . [n14] Such expressions prove as little on one side of this case as they do on the other. If the Court were correct, Madison's remarks would have been pointless. . Gibbons[p7]v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. WebBaker v. Carr, supra, considered a challenge to a 1901 Tennessee statute providing for apportionment of State Representatives and Senators under the State's constitution, which called for apportionment among counties or districts 'according to the number of qualified electors in each.' The Court's talk about "debasement" and "dilution" of the vote is a model of circular reasoning, in which the premises of the argument feed on the conclusion. . The Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause says that a state cannot "deny to any person within its jurisdiction theequal protectionof the laws." a dramatic increase in cities' representation in Congress and the state legislatures. District boundaries can If they do, the small ones will find some foreign ally of more honor and good faith who will take them by the hand and do them justice. enforcing the Clean Air Act, which is the responsibility of both state authorities and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. [n42] The requirement was later dropped, [n43] and reinstated. References to Old Sarum (ante, p. 15), for example, occurred during the debate on the method of apportionment of Representatives among the States. [n41]. [State legislatures] might make an unequal and partial division of the states into districts for the election of representatives, or they might even disqualify one third of the electors. Chief Justice Earl Warren called Baker v. Carr the most important case of his tenure on the Supreme Court. On the contrary, the Court substitutes its own judgment for that of the Congress. [n36] The delegates referred to rotten borough apportionments in some of the state legislatures as the kind of objectionable governmental action that the Constitution should not tolerate in the election of congressional representatives. at 533. The fact that the delegates were able to agree on a Senate composed entirely without regard to population and on the departures from a population-based House, mentioned in note 8, supra, indicates that they recognized the possibility that alternative principles, combined with political reality, might dictate conclusions inconsistent with an abstract principle of absolute numerical equality. (d) Any Representative elected to the Congress from a district which does not conform to the requirements set forth in subsection (c) of this section shall be denied his seat in the House of Representatives and the Clerk of the House shall refuse his credentials. . by reason of subsequent changes in population, the Congressional districts for the election of Representatives in the Congress created by the Illinois Laws of 1901 . . 162; Act of Nov. 15, 1941, 55 Stat. 48. Nothing that the Court does today will disturb the fact that, although in 1960 the population of an average congressional district was 410,481, [n11] the States of Alaska, Nevada, and Wyoming [p29] each have a Representative in Congress, although their respective populations are 226,167, 285,278, and 330,066. The only remedy to his lack of representation would be a federal court order to require re-apportionment, the attorneys told the Court. 18-19, are equally irrelevant. There is nothing to indicate any limitation whatsoever on this grant of plenary initial and supervisory power. At that hearing, the court should apply the standards laid down in Baker v. Carr, supra. "Baker v. Carr: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact." . The "three-fifths compromise" was a departure from the principle of representation according to the number of inhabitants of a State. This is the "historical context" which the Convention debates provide. 1. Elianna Spitzer is a legal studies writer and a former Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism research assistant. . Baker has standing to challenge Tennessees apportionment statutes. . . I had not expected to witness the day when the Supreme Court of the United States would render a decision which casts grave doubt on the constitutionality of the composition of the House of Representatives. . One principle was uppermost in the minds of many delegates: that, no matter where he lived, each voter should have a voice equal to that of every other in electing members of Congress. 8. 4: Civil Rights And Liberties, The Constitution- Political Science Chpt. The qualifications on which the right of suffrage depend are not perhaps the same in any two States. . Is the standard an absolute or relative one, and, if the latter, to what is the difference in population to be related? WebBaker v. Carr (1962) is the U.S. Supreme Court case that held that federal courts could hear cases alleging that a states drawing of electoral boundaries, i.e. How would this new jurisdiction best be described? If Congress failed in exercising its powers, whereby standards of fairness are offended, the remedy ultimately lies with the people. . I, 4, which empowered the "Legislature" of a State to prescribe the regulations for congressional elections meant that a State could not by law provide for a Governor's veto over such regulations as had been prescribed by the legislature. It took only two years for 26 states to ratify new apportionment plans with respect to population counts. [n35] Without such power, Wilson stated, the state governments might "make improper regulations" or "make no regulations at all." Contrary to the Court's statement, ante, p. 18, no reader of The Federalist "could have fairly taken . Pp. Both sides seemed for a time to be hopelessly obstinate. . [n29], The debates at the Convention make at least one fact abundantly clear: that, when the delegates agreed that the House should represent "people," they intended that, in allocating Congressmen, the number assigned to each State should be determined solely by the number of the State's inhabitants. a. Construct the appropriate control chart and determine the LCL and UCL. Thus, in the number of The Federalist which does discuss the regulation of elections, the view is unequivocally stated that the state legislatures have plenary power over the conduct of congressional elections subject only to such regulations as Congress itself might provide. 3, 1928, 69 Cong.Rec. . "Baker v. Carr: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact." 45. 19.See the materials cited in notes 41-42, 44-45 of the Court's opinion, ante, p. 16. . Star Athletica, L.L.C. "; (2) the Due Process, Equal Protection, and Privileges and Immunities Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and (3) that part of Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment which provides that "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers. Justice Felix Frankfurter dissented, joined by Justice John Marshall Harlan. 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