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April 19
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20
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1961
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October 9
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1961
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March 26
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1962
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Charles W Baker et al v Joe C Carr et al
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369
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186
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82 S Ct 691 7 L Ed 2d 663 1962 US LEXIS 1567
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179 F Supp 824 (MD Tenn 1959), ''probable jurisdiction noted'', 364 US 898 (1960) Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee
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206 F Supp 341 (MD Tenn 1962)
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The reapportionment of state legislative districts is not a political question, and is justiciable by the federal courts
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1958-1962
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Brennan
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Black, Warren
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Douglas
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Clark, Stewart
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Frankfurter
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Harlan
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US Const Amend XIV US Const art III Tenn Const art II
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'',
369 U.S. 186 (
1962 ), was a
Landmark United States Supreme Court case that retreated from the Court's
Political Question doctrine to decide that
Reapportionment issues (attempts to change the way voting districts are delineated) present
Justiciable questions, thus enabling federal courts to intervene in and to decide reapportionment cases. The defendants unsuccessfully argued that reapportionment of legislative districts is a "political question," and hence not a question that may be resolved by federal courts.
Plaintiff Charles Baker was a
Republican who lived in
Shelby County, Tennessee , the county in which
Memphis is located. His complaint was that though the
Tennessee State Constitution required that
Legislative districts be redrawn every ten years according to the federal
Census to provide for districts of substantially equal population, Tennessee had not in fact redistricted since the census of
1901 . By the time of Baker's lawsuit, the population had shifted such that his district in Shelby County had about ten times as many residents as some of the
Rural districts. Representationally, the rural citizens were worth more than the urban citizens. Baker's argument was that this discrepancy was causing him to fail to receive the "equal protection of the laws" required by the
Fourteenth Amendment .
Defendant Joe Carr was sued in his position as
Secretary Of State for Tennessee. Carr was not the person who set the district lines – the
State Legislature had done that – but was sued ''
Ex Officio '' as the person who was ultimately responsible for the conduct of elections in the state and for the publication of district maps. The State of Tennessee argued that legislative districts were essentially political, not judicial, questions, as had been held by a plurality opinion of the Court in ''Colegrove v. Green'' (
1946 ), wherein Justice
Felix Frankfurter declared that, "Courts ought not to enter this political thicket." Frankfurter believed that relief for legislative malapportionment had to be attained through the political process.
The decision of ''Baker v. Carr'' was one of the most wrenching in the Court's history. The case had to be put over for reargument because in conference no clear majority emerged for either side of the case. Justice
Charles Evans Whittaker was so torn over the case that he eventually had to recuse himself, and the arduous decisional process in Baker is often blamed for Whittaker's subsequent health problems, which forced him to resign from the Court.
The opinion was finally handed down in March 1962, nearly a year after it was initially argued. The Court split 6 to 2 in ruling that Baker's case was justiciable, producing, in addition to the opinion of the Court by Justice
William J. Brennan , three concurring opinions and two dissenting opinions. Brennan reformulated the political question doctrine, proposing a six-part test for determining which questions were "political" in nature. Cases which are political in nature are marked by:
:1. "Textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department;" as an example of this, Brennan cited issues of foreign affairs and executive war powers, arguing that cases involving such matters would be "political questions"
:2. "A lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it;"
:3. "The impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion;"
:4. "The impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government;"
:5. "An unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made;"
:6. "The potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question."
Justice
Tom C. Clark switched his vote at the last minute to a concurrence on the substance of Baker's claims, which would have enabled a majority which could have granted relief for Baker, but instead the Supreme Court remanded the case to the District Court. Frankfurter, joined by
John Marshall Harlan II , dissented vigorously and at length, arguing that the Court had shunted aside history and judicial restraint and violated the separation of powers between legislatures and Courts.
Having declared reapportionment issues justiciable in ''Baker'', the court laid out a new test for evaluating such claims in ''
Reynolds V. Sims '', 377 U.S. 533 (
1964 ). In that case, the Court formulated the famous "one-man, one-vote" standard for legislative districting, holding that each individual had to be weighted equally in legislative apportionment. The Court decided that in states with bi-cameral legislatures both houses had to be apportioned on this standard, voiding the provision of the
Arizona Constitution which had provided for two state senators from each county, the
California constitution providing for one senator from each county, and similar provisions elsewhere. (Even the Tennessee constitution, enforcement of which was the original basis for the case, has a provision which prevented counties from being "split" and portions of a county being attached to other counties or parts of counties in the creation of a district which was overridden, and today counties are frequently split among districts in forming
Tennessee State Senate districts.) However, "One-man, one-vote" was first applied as a standard for
Congressional districts in
1964 's ''
Wesberry V. Sanders ''.
''Baker v. Carr'' and subsequent cases fundamentally altered the nature of political representation in America, requiring not just Tennessee but nearly every state to redistrict during the
1960s , often several times. This re-apportionment increased the political power of urban centers but after much empirical research it is not clear whether "one-man, one-vote" had any effect on the distribution of government spending. After he left the Court, Chief Justice
Earl Warren called the ''Baker v. Carr'' line of cases the most important in his tenure as
Chief Justice .
