. 8. . In 1991, a group of white voters in North Carolina challenged the state's new congressional district map, which had two majority-minority districts. Since the right to vote is inherent in the Constitution, each vote should hold equal weight. no serious inroads had yet been made upon the privileges of property, which, indeed, maintained in most states a second line of defense in the form of high personal property qualifications required for membership in the legislature. [n39]. At that hearing, the court should apply the standards laid down in Baker v. Carr, supra. to be a precedent for dismissal based on the nonjusticiability of a political question involving the Congress as here, but we do deem it to be strong authority for dismissal for want of equity when the following factors here involved are considered on balance: a political question involving a coordinate branch of the federal government; a political question posing a delicate problem difficult of solution without depriving others of the right to vote by district, unless we are to redistrict for the state; relief may be forthcoming from a properly apportioned state legislature, and relief may be afforded by the Congress. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. While the majority is correct that congressional districting is something that courts can decide, the case should be remanded so the lower court can hold a hearing on the merits based on the standards provided in Baker v Carr. The truth is that it does not. Instead of proceeding on the merits, the court dismissed the case for lack of equity. 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. . Luce points to the "quite arbitrary grant of representation proportionate to three fifths of the number of slaves" as evidence that, even in the House, "the representation of men as men" was not intended. . . 733, 734; Act of Aug. 8, 1911, 3, 37 Stat. The extent to which the Court departs from accepted principles of adjudication is further evidenced by the irrelevance to today's issue of the cases on which the Court relies. The Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause says that a state cannot "deny to any person within its jurisdiction theequal protectionof the laws." Ibid. . In the Pennsylvania convention, James Wilson described Art. On the apportionment of the state legislatures at the time of the Constitutional Convention, see Luce, Legislative Principles (1930), 331-364; Hacker, Congressional Districting (1963), 5. . The case was heard by a three-judge District Court, which found unanimously, from facts not disputed, that: It is clear by any standard . "Baker v. Carr: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact." . The above implications of the three-fifths compromise were recognized by Madison. 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. Other provisions of the Constitution would, of course, be relevant, but, so far as Art. May the State consider factors such as area or natural boundaries (rivers, mountain ranges) which are plainly relevant to the practicability of effective representation? Traditionally, particularly in the South, the . In this manner, the proportion of the representatives and of the constituents will remain invariably the same. See Thorpe, op. The NBIS rating scale ranges from 0 (poorest rating) to 9 (highest rating). I, 4. This court case was a very critical point in the legal fight for the principle of One man, one that the population of the Fifth District is grossly out of balance with that of the other nine congressional districts of Georgia, and, in fact, so much so that the removal of DeKalb and Rockdale Counties from the District, leaving only Fulton with a population of 556,326, would leave it exceeding the average by slightly more than forty percent. In all of the discussion surrounding the basis of representation of the House and all of the discussion whether Representatives should be elected by the legislatures or the people of the States, there is nothing which suggests [p32] even remotely that the delegates had in mind the problem of districting within a State. at 660. . These remarks of Madison were in response to a proposal to strike out the provision for congressional supervisory power over the regulation of elections in Art. What is the most valid criticism of this study? The stability of this institution ultimately depends not only upon its being alert to keep the other branches of government within constitutional bounds, but equally upon recognition of the limitations on the Court's own functions in the constitutional system. I, 2, was being discussed, there are repeated references to apportionment and related problems affecting the States' selection of Representatives in connection with Art. [n53] None of them became law. 19.See the materials cited in notes 41-42, 44-45 of the Court's opinion, ante, p. 16. [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. Nor is this a case in which an emergent set of facts requires the Court to frame new principles to protect recognized constitutional rights. The District Court was wrong to find that the Fifth district voters presented a purely political question which could not be decided by a court, and should be dismissed for want of equity. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, supports the principle that voters have standing to sue with regard to apportionment matters, and that such claims are justiciable. The second question, which concerned two congressional apportionment measures, was whether the Act of June 18, 1929, 46 Stat. 21, had repealed certain provisions of the Act of Aug. 8, 1911, 37 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. A challenge brought under the Equal Protection Clause to malapportionment of state legislatures is not a political question and is justiciable. [n6]. Wilson urged that people must be represented as individuals, so that America would escape [p15] the evils of the English system, under which one man could send two members to Parliament to represent the borough of Old Sarum, while London's million people sent but four. [n48]. . * The populations of the districts are based on the 1960 Census. b. This diversity would be obviously unjust. Both sides seemed for a time to be hopelessly obstinate. It was found necessary to leave the regulation of these, in the first place, to the state governments, as being best acquainted with the situation of the people, subject to the control of the general government, in order to enable it to produce uniformity and prevent its own dissolution. Far from supporting the Court, the apportionment of Representatives among the States shows how blindly the Court has marched to its decision. . . The qualifications on which the right of suffrage depend are not perhaps the same in any two States. Ibid. It was impossible to foresee all the abuses that might be made of the discretionary power. . Only a demonstration which could not be avoided would justify this Court in rendering a decision the effect of which, inescapably, as I see it, is to declare constitutionally defective the very composition of a coordinate branch of the Federal Government. v. Varsity Brands, Inc. Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, A Tennessee resident brought suit against the Secretary of State claiming that the failure to redraw the legislative districts every ten years, as outlined in the state. 71 (1961). Act of Feb. 2, 1872, 2, 17 Stat. (University of Toronto Press 2017), the two having the most similar constitutions are, arguably, Australia and the United States. [n36] Section 2 was not mentioned. . [n27]. Materials supplementary to the debates are as unequivocal. Thus, it was ruled that redistricting qualified as a justiciable which activated hearing of redistricting cases by the federal courts Now, the case of Wesberry v. Alternatively, it might have been thought that Representatives elected by free men of a State would speak also for the slaves. William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut had summed it up well: "in one branch, the people ought to be represented; in the other, the States." I, 2, prevents the state legislatures from districting as they choose? That right is based in Art I, sec. The problem was described by Mr. Justice Frankfurter as. None of those cases has the slightest bearing on the present situation. 1496. I, sec. . I believe that the court erred in so doing. 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. [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. In addition, Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas each elected one of their Representatives at large. Ibid. It is whimsical to assert in the face of this guarantee that an absolute principle of "equal representation in the House for equal numbers of people" is "solemnly embodied" in Article I. . . "Rotten boroughs" have long since disappeared in Great Britain. . The one thing that one person, one vote decisions could not effect was the use of gerrymandering. . at 357. Further, it goes beyond the province of the Court to decide this case. [n1] In all but five of those States, the difference between [p21] the populations of the largest and smallest districts exceeded 100,000 persons. H.R. Together, they elect 15 Representatives. ." [n20] A number of delegates supported this plan. lie prostrate at the mercy of the legislatures of the several states." In deciding whether this law is constitutional, which of the following issues are the courts likely to consider most important? . . 802,994177,431625,563, Minnesota(8). ." Suppose that Congress was entertaining a law that would unify pollution regulations across all fifty states. The distribution of powers between the federal and state governments assumes that the states retained the powers they had at federation, subject only to the specific powers conferred on the federal government. 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