. Such discriminatory legislation seems to me exactly the kind that the equal protection clause was intended to prohibit. . . Art. . at 50-51 (Rufus King, Massachusetts); 3 id. All districts have roughly equal populations within states. 374 U.S. 802. * The quotation is from Mr. Justice Rutledge's concurring opinion in Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. at 565. . . The Court followed these precedents in Colegrove, although over the dissent of three of the seven Justices who participated in that decision. . . By contrast, what might be the main advantage of leaving this legislation at the state level? at 490-492 (Gunning Bedford of Delaware). at 21 (William Richardson Davie, North Carolina); id. The trial court, however, did not pass upon the merits of the case, although it does appear that it did make a finding that the Fifth District of Georgia was "grossly out of balance" with other congressional districts of the State. The Court relies in part on Baker v. Carr, supra, to immunize its present decision from the force of Colegrove. WebBaker v Carr, Wesberry v Sanders, Reynolds v Sims (states) Appellate Jurisdiction Only hears cases based off of appeals from lower courts Original Jurisdiction May be the first court to hear or review a case. . 660,345237,235423,110, Georgia(10). At its founding, the Constitution was approved by the people of each state, voting in referenda. I, 2, prevents the state legislatures from districting as they choose? . Madison entreated the Convention "to renounce a principle which. (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. [n14], If the power is not immediately derived from the people in proportion to their numbers, we may make a paper confederacy, but that will be all. Instead of proceeding on the merits, the court dismissed the case for lack of equity. To say that a vote is worth more in one district than in another would not only run counter to our fundamental ideas of democratic government, it would cast aside the principle of a House of Representatives elected "by the People," a principle tenaciously fought for and established at the Constitutional Convention. I, 4. The complaint does not state a claim under Fed. . Baker claimed the malapportionment of state legislatures is justiciable and the state of Tennessee argued such an issue is a political question not capable of being decided by the courts. according to their respective Numbers." 400,573274,194126,379, Nebraska(3). or [who] have rented a tenement . However, Australias constitution is constitutively more democratic than the American. 57 (Cooke ed.1961), 389. 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. It was impossible to foresee all the abuses that might be made of the discretionary power. It established the right of federal courts to review redistricting issues, I therefore cannot agree with Brother HARLAN that the supervisory power granted to Congress under Art. [I]t was thought that the regulation of time, place, and manner, of electing the representatives, should be uniform throughout the continent. The populations of the districts are available in the biographical section of the Congressional Directory, 88th Cong., 2d Sess. I, 2, for election of Representatives "by the People" means that congressional districts are to be, "as nearly as is practicable," equal in population, ante, pp. How great a difference between the populations of various districts within a State is tolerable? [p5]. The U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged probable. The provision for equally populated districts was dropped in 1929, [n47] and has not been revived, although the 1929 provisions for apportionment have twice been amended, and, in 1941, were made generally applicable to subsequent censuses and apportionments. 22) 206 F.Supp. . . James Madison, who took careful and complete notes during the Convention, believed that, in interpreting the Constitution, later generations should consider the history of its adoption: Such were the defects, the deformities, the diseases and the ominous prospects for which the Convention were to provide a remedy and which ought never to be overlooked in expounding & appreciating the Constitutional Charter the remedy that was provided. In the absence of a reapportionment, all the Representatives from a State found to have violated the standard would presumably have to be elected at large. 54, he discussed the inclusion of slaves in the basis of apportionment. [n25] At last those who supported representation of the people in both houses and those who supported it in neither were brought together, some expressing the fear that, if they did not reconcile their differences, "some foreign sword will probably do the work for us." Together, they elect 15 Representatives. Ibid. I, 4, which the Court so pointedly neglects. Mr. Justice Frankfurter did not, of course, speak for a majority of the Court in Colegrove, but refusal for that reason to give the opinion precedential effect does not justify refusal to give appropriate attention to the views there expressed. The delegates were quite aware of what Madison called the "vicious representation" in Great Britain [n35] whereby "rotten boroughs" with few inhabitants were represented in Parliament on or almost on a par with cities of greater population. I, 4, [n43]as meant to be used to vindicate the people's right to equality of representation in the House. Baker petition to the United States Supreme Court. The result was the Constitutional Convention of 1787, called for "the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation. Did Georgias apportionment statute violate the Constitution by allowing for large differences in population between districts even though each district had one representative? 4. . . But if they be regulated properly by the state legislatures, the congressional control will very probably never be exercised. Today, permanent parliamentary Boundary Commissions recommend periodic changes in the size of constituencies as population shifts. The qualifications on which the right of suffrage depend are not perhaps the same in any two States. 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. Unfortunately I can join neither the opinion of the Court nor the dissent of my Brother HARLAN. 9. Eighty-five percent responded that they were more satisfied with the services at their new locale. 1499 (remarks of Mr. Dickinson). As late as 1842, seven States still conducted congressional elections at large. 841; 87th Cong., 1st Sess. . Justice Brennan wrote that the federal courts have subject matter jurisdiction in relation to apportionment. Cf. 572,654317,973254,681, Virginia(10). . If, then, slaves were intended to be without representation, Article I did exactly what the Court now says it prohibited: it "weighted" the vote of voters in the slave States. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined. By yielding to the demand for a judicial remedy in this instance, the Court, in my view, does a disservice both to itself and to the broader values of our system of government. Justice Felix Frankfurter dissented, joined by Justice John Marshall Harlan. . But a court cannot erase only the districts which do not conform to the standard announced today, since invalidation of those districts would require that the lines of all the districts within the State be redrawn. Is an equal protection challenge to a malapportionment of state legislatures considered non-justiciable as a political question? IV Elliot's Debates 257. . 55.Smiley v. Holm, 285 U.S. 355, and its two companion cases, Koenig v. Flynn, 285 U.S. 375; Carroll v. Becker, 285 U.S. 380, on which my Brother CLARK relies in his separate opinion, ante pp. The statute required Tennessee to update its apportionment of senators and representatives every ten years, based on population recorded by the federal census. The Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause says that a state cannot "deny to any person within its jurisdiction theequal protectionof the laws." Some delegates opposed election by the people. . . . 54, discussed infra pp. . 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. (Emphasis added.) Baker's suit detailed how Tennessee's reapportionment efforts ignored significant economic growth . 588,933301,872287,061, Colorado(4). . 823,680272,154551,526, Idaho(2). . . Which best describes Federalism as a political system? 530,316236,870293,446. [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. In 1901, the Tennessee General Assembly passed an apportionment act. Since there is only one Congressman for each district, this inequality of population means that the Fifth District's Congressman has to represent from two to three times as many people as do Congressmen from some of the other Georgia districts. See ante, p. 17, and infra, pp. Georgias Fifth congressional district had two to three times more voters compared to other Georgia districts. A property or taxpaying qualification was in effect almost everywhere. ThoughtCo, Aug. 28, 2020, thoughtco.com/baker-v-carr-4774789. [n17]. 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. The status of each state and how the laws applied within were a significant difference in the facts of Baker v. Carr (1962) and Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), which had an impact on the application of the Supreme Court's judgement. What inference can you make? XIII, with N.J.Const., 1844, Art. . founded in a vicious principle of representation and which must be as short-lived as it would be unjust. 41.See, e.g., 2 The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (2d Elliot ed. . The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. In No. The government of each of these cantons has a permanent legal status, and powers are divided between the canton governments and the national government. . 30. The promise of judicial intervention in matters of this sort cannot but encourage popular inertia in efforts for political reform through the political process, with the inevitable result that the process is itself weakened. The Federalist, No. The fallacy of the Court's reasoning in this regard is illustrated by its slide, obscured by intervening discussion (see ante pp. Despite this careful, advertent attention to the problem of congressional districting, Art. There are some important differences of course. Equally significant is the fact that the proposed resolution expressly empowering the States to establish congressional districts contains no mention of a requirement that the districts be equal in population. Which of the following was a reason the framers of the Constitution created a federal system of government? 276, 279-280. . In some of the States, the difference is very material. [n17]. [n34]) Steele was concerned with the danger of congressional usurpation, under the authority of 4, of power belonging to the States. . Time & \text{Nonconformities per Unit} & Time & \text{Nonconformities per Unit} \\ It will therefore form nearly two districts for the choice of Federal Representatives. However, Art. On the other hand, I agree with the majority that congressional districting is subject to judicial scrutiny. . 7343, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. 42-45. 497,669182,845314,824, Tennessee(9). Indeed, as one of the grounds there relied on to support our holding that state apportionment controversies are justiciable, we said: . We agree with Judge Tuttle that, in debasing the weight of appellants' votes, the State has abridged the right to vote for members of Congress guaranteed them by the United States Constitution, that the District Court should have entered a declaratory judgment to that effect, and that it was therefore error to dismiss this suit. The power appears to me satisfactory, and as unlikely to be abused as any part of the Constitution. The purpose was to adjust to changes in the states population. The complaint also fails to adequately show Tennessees current system of apportionment is so arbitrary and capricious as to violate the Equal Protection Clause. The populations of the largest and smallest districts in each State and the difference between them are contained in an Appendix to this opinion. We hold that, construed in its historical context, the command of Art. Were they exclusively under the control of the state governments, the general government might easily be dissolved. It was to be the grand depository of the democratic principle of the Govt. WebBaker v. Carr, (1962), U.S. Supreme Court case that forced the Tennessee legislature to reapportion itself on the basis of population. 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 Pp. 39-40. . In the ratifying conventions, there was no suggestion that the provisions of Art. 54, discussed infra pp. [n14] Such expressions prove as little on one side of this case as they do on the other. 2 of the Constitution, which states that Representatives be chosen by the People of the several States. Allowing for huge disparities in population between districts would violate that fundamental principle. a political system in which both levels of governmentnational and stateare active in nearly all areas of policy and share sovereign authority. The dissenting and concurring opinions confuse which issues are presented in this case. there is no apparent judicial remedy or set of judicial standards for resolving the issue, a decision cannot be made without first making a policy determination that is not judicial in nature, the Court cannot undertake an "independent resolution" without "expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government", there is an unusual need for not questioning a political decision that has already been made, "the potentiality of embarrassment" from multiple decisions being issued by various departments regarding one question. 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. Remanded to the District Court for consideration on the merits. There is an obvious lack of criteria for answering questions such as these, which points up the impropriety of the Court's wholehearted but heavy-footed entrance into the political arena. The legislative history of the 1929 Act is carefully reviewed in Wood v. Broom, 287 U.S. 1. This decision requires each state to draw its U.S. Congressional districts so that they are approximately equal in population. . . 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.' Like the U.S. Supreme Court, it exercises judicial review. The districts are those used in the election of the current 88th Congress. . 627,019223,387403,632, Texas(23). [n38] This statement was offered simply to show that the slave [p40] population could not reasonably be included in the basis of apportionment of direct taxes and excluded from the basis of apportionment of representation. ; H.R. [p24]. 530,507404,695125,812, NewHampshire(2). The Court in Baker pointed out that the opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in Colegrove, upon the reasoning of which the majority below leaned heavily in dismissing "for want of equity," was approved by only three of the seven Justices sitting. [n45], This provision for equal districts which the Court exactly duplicates, in effect, was carried forward in each subsequent apportionment statute through 1911. 57, Madison merely stated his assumption that Philadelphia's population would entitle it to two Representatives in answering the argument that congressional constituencies would be too large for good government. 610,947350,839260,108, Louisiana(8). . . . In 1960, the federal census revealed that the state's population had grown by more than a million, totaling 3,567,089, and its voting population had swelled to 2,092,891. What is the most valid criticism of this study? 691, 718, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962), the opinion of the Court recognized that Smiley 'settled the issue in favor of justiciability of questions of congressional redistricting.' . . . Chief Justice Earl Warren called Baker v. Carr the most important case of his tenure on the Supreme Court. . . Plaintiffs sought an injunction to prevent any further elections until the legislature had passed new redistricting laws to Only in this context, in order to establish that the right to vote in a congressional election was a right protected by federal law, did the Court hold that the right was dependent on the Constitution and not on the law of the States. What was the decision in Baker v Carr quizlet? 73, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. 608,441295,072313,369, Missouri(10). . Textually demonstrable constitutional commitment to another political branch; Lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving the issue; Impossibility of deciding the issue without making an initial policy determination of a kind not suitable for judicial discretion; Unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or. Such failure violates both judicial restraint and separation of powers concerns under the Constitution. at 457. Tennessee claimed that redistricting was a political question and could not be decided by the courts under the Constitution. . I, sec. Mr. Justice Frankfurter's Colegrove opinion contended that Art. at 322, 446-449, 486, 527-528 (James Madison of Virginia); id. In addition, the Assembly has created a Joint Congressional Redistricting Study Committee which has been working on the problem of congressional redistricting for several months. Once it is clear that there is no constitutional right at stake, that ends the case. I, 2, reveals that those who framed the Constitution [p9] meant that, no matter what the mechanics of an election, whether statewide or by districts, it was population which was to be the basis of the Hose of Representatives. Principle of the Court followed these precedents in Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. at.... Be as short-lived as it would be unjust which of the state legislatures considered non-justiciable a. 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