Election Law Commons^™

Court, Congress, And Reapportionment, Robert B. Mckay

Michigan Law Review

In the United States, governmental power is divided vertically between nation and states and horizontally, at the national level, among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Constitution leaves the lines of demarcation deliberately imprecise. Thus, from the beginning it was easy to predict that among those holders of power there would be tension (at least), conflict (probably), or total collapse (a possibility). The miracle of the American governmental system, with just this complexity and lack of definition, is the fact of its survival. It is not at all surprising that there have been a number of crises, some of …

Reapportionment In The Supreme Court And Congress: Constitutional Struggle For Fair Representation, Robert G. Dixon Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Fair representation is the ultimate goal. At the time of the Reapportionment Decisions, much change was overdue in some states, and at least some change was overdue in most states. We are a democratic people and our institutions presuppose according population a dominant role in formulas of representation. However, by its exclusive focus on bare numbers, the Court may have transformed one of the most intricate, fascinating, and elusive problems of democracy into a simple exercise of applying elementary arithmetic to census data. In so doing, the Court may have disabled itself from effectively considering the more subtle issues …

Some Comments On The Reapportionment Cases, Paul G. Kauper

Michigan Law Review

Any appraisal of the Supreme Court's decisions in the legislative reapportionment cases must necessarily distinguish between the basic policy ingredients and social consequences of the decisions on the one hand, and the question whether the results were reached by a proper exercise of judicial power on the other. Respecting the first of these considerations, I have no difficulty identifying the social advantages accruing from these decisions. Because of the stress on the population principle, the decisions will afford a greater voice to urban interests, will make the legislative process more responsive to current needs of particular concern to urban dwellers, …

Residency Requirements For Voting And The Tensions Of A Mobile Society, John R. Schmidhauser

Michigan Law Review

It is the purpose of this article to determine the extent to which persons otherwise qualified to vote are disenfranchised by the complex of state residency requirements and to assess the practical and constitutional aspects of any statutory prospects for change.

Political Thickets And Crazy Quilts: Reapportionment And Equal Protection, Robert B. Mckay

Michigan Law Review

If asked to identify the two most important cases decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in the twentieth century, informed observers would be likely to name, in whichever order, Brown v. Board of Education and Baker v. Carr.

Legislative Apportionment And Representative Government: The Meaning Of Baker V. Carr, Jo Desha Lucas

Michigan Law Review

In three recent cases the Supreme Court has reopened the question of the extent to which federal courts will review the general fairness of state schemes of legislative apportionment. It is a question on which the Court has had nothing to say for over a decade, leaving the bar to patch together the current state of the law from the outcome of cases disposed of without opinion considered against a backdrop of language used in earlier decisions.

Legislative Reapportionment—The Kentucky Legal Context, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In its continuing role as guardian of citizens’ constitutional rights, the Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr unlocked widespread concern for equal representation in state legislatures. Having been suppressed for two decades in which an amazing shift of population has occurred, the question of reapportionment and what to do about it had become one of great importance. In November, 1960, apportionments of 30 state legislatures had been challenged in state and federal courts. In addition, ten cases of an electoral character are presently on the docket of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Apart from the legal implications and …

Nonpopulation Factors Relevant To An Acceptable Standard For Apportionment, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Of the many problems left unanswered in Baker v. Carr,' the one that has received the most attention both from lower courts and commentators is that of prescribing a specific standard for determining what constitutes a denial of "equal protection" in legislative apportionment.2 The starting point universally accepted - indeed, probably required by Baker - for attacking this problem is the definition of apportionment equality in terms of mathematical measurement of the individual's "voting power."3 Perfect equality in apportionment is viewed as requiring that each election district contain an equal population, so that every individual's vote in his district will …

On Charting A Course Through The Mathematical Quagmire: The Future Of Baker V. Carr, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

The Tennessee reapportionment decision, Baker v. Carr,' has been popularly characterized as one of the "very few judicial decisions which have fundamentally reshaped our constitutional system."'2 Newspaper and magazine commentators generally have predicted that the decision of last March is likely to "change the course of our history" by producing a drastic alteration in the balance of power on the state political scene.3 While this end may be desirable,4 any such estimate of the future impact of the Baker decision, at least insofar as its legal consequence is concerned,5 seems not only premature but somewhat exaggerated. The future significance of …