Baker v. Carr Case Brief

Baker v. Carr 369 U.S. 186 (1962) • In this case, the Supreme Court case finally retreated from its 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. • 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 1900. By the time of Baker's lawsuit, his district in Shelby County had about ten times as many residents as some of the rural districts. His argument was that this discrepancy was causing him to fail to receive the "equal protection under 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 members of the Tennessee Legislature, having mainly been elected by districts that would lose power in a redistricting, had no desire to bother with reapportionment. If it is a political issue, it's one that the political process can't really fix by itself. • The State of Tennessee argued that legislative districts were essentially political, not judicial, questions, as had been held by a plurality opinion of the Supreme Court in Colegrove v. Green, which declared that, "Courts ought not to enter this political thicket." Tennessee argued that reapportionment of legislative districts is a " political question," and hence not a question which may be resolved by Federal Courts • In Colegrove v. Green it was determined that relief for legislative malapportionment had to be attained through the political process. • The Supreme Court eventually ruled that Baker's case was justiciable, but the decision was very split. • In addition to the opinion of the Court by Justice Brennan, three concurring opinions and two dissenting opinions. • The case had to be put over for reargument because in conference no clear majority emerged for either side of the case. • Brennan found that this was covered under the 14th Amendment, and reformulated the political question doctrine, proposing a six-part Project Wonderful -Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0test for determining which questions were "political" in nature. Cases which are political in nature are marked by: • 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" • A lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it. • The impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion. • The impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government. • An unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made. • The potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question. • Justice Clark switched his vote at the last minute to a concurrence on the substance of Baker's claims, which would have enabled a majority that could have granted relief for Baker, but instead the Supreme Court remanded the case to the District Court. • Frankfurter, joined by Harlan, 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. The dissent claimed that there are several types of cases that the judiciary did not traditionally decide: • Cases concerning war or foreign affairs • Cases concerning the structure and organization of political institutions of the US • Cases involving abstract questions of political power, sovereignty and government. • Having declared reapportionment issues justiciable in this case, the Supreme Court laid out a new test for evaluating such claims in Reynolds v. Sims. 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 whichwas overridden, and today counties are frequently split among districts in forming Tennessee State Senate districts.) "One-man, one-vote" was applied to 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. • The political question doctrine was established in Marbury v. Madision and says Federal Courts should decline to rule in cases where: • The U.S. Constitution has committed decision-making on this subject to another branch of the federal government; • There are inadequate standards for the court to apply; or • The court feels it is prudent not to interfere.