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Michigan Law Review

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Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Election Law

Reapportionment In The Supreme Court And Congress: Constitutional Struggle For Fair Representation, Robert G. Dixon Jr. Dec 1964

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 …


Congressional Apportionment: The Unproductive Search For Standards And Remedies, Michigan Law Review Dec 1964

Congressional Apportionment: The Unproductive Search For Standards And Remedies, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

The increasingly complex problems of elucidating congressional apportionment standards and granting appropriate relief when voting rights have been materially diluted were again brought to the fore in the recent districting decision of Calkins v. Hare. This federal district court decision is illustrative of the uncertainty caused by the Supreme Court's opinion in the landmark case of Wesberry v. Sanders. Although Wesberry resolved two previously contested issues by ruling that congressional apportionment disputes are susceptible of judicial determination and by setting a standard of population equality in delimiting districts, two associated questions were left unanswered. First, even though Wesberry …


Political Thickets And Crazy Quilts: Reapportionment And Equal Protection, Robert B. Mckay Feb 1963

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 Feb 1963

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.