Law Commons^™

Taking Judicial Legitimacy Seriously, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Chief Justice Roberts appears worried about judicial legitimacy. In Gill v. Whitford, the Wisconsin gerrymandering case, he explicitly worries about the message the Court would send if it wades into the gerrymandering debate. More explicitly, he worries about “the status and integrity” of the Court if is seen as taking sides in politically charged controversies. Similarly, during his confirmation hearing, Roberts warned that the Court has a limited role in our constitutional scheme and must stay within it. To decide cases on the basis of policy and not law would compromise the Court’s legitimacy. This Essay is skeptical. For one, …

Justice Brennan's Gender Jurisprudence, Rebecca Korzec

Akron Law Review

However, less attention has been focused on Justice Brennan's dramatic impact on the Supreme Court's gender jurisprudence. More than any other member of the Court, Justice Brennan recognized the complexity and pervasiveness of sex discrimination and its costs to society as a whole. Brennan's opinions recognized that sex differentiation is largely cultural in origin, rather than based on "real" gender differences. As a result, Justice Brennan created a truly independent gender jurisprudence, eventually emerging as the architect of the Supreme Court's contemporary test for evaluating claims of sex-based discrimination.

Understanding the significance of Brennan's contribution requires an appreciation of the …

Instrumentalist And Holmesian Voices In The Rhetoric Of Reapportionment: The Opinions Of Justices Brennan And Frankfurter In Baker V. Carr, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Carlo A. Pedrioli

In his autobiography, Chief Justice Earl Warren described Baker v.Carr as “the most important case of [his] tenure on the Court.” Following Brown v. Board of Education by eight years, Baker was the second “blockbuster” case of the Warren Court. Warren felt that, if the progeny of Baker had preceded Brown, Brown would have been unnecessary.

As with other major Supreme Court cases, Baker featured rhetoric from highly influential justices, two of whom in this case were Justice William Brennan and Justice Felix Frankfurter. Justice Brennan would write the groundbreaking opinion for the Court that would be part of “the …

Law Review Symposium 2011: Baker V. Carr After 50 Years: Appraising The Reapportionment Revolution: Introduction, Jonathan L. Entin

Faculty Publications

Introduction to Law Review Symposium 2011: Baker V. Carr after 50 Years: Appraising the Reapportionment Revolution, Cleveland, OH

Baker's Promise, Equal Protection, And The Modern Redistricting Revolution: A Plea For Rationality, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The conventional wisdom contends that Baker v. Carr did not set down a standard for lower courts to follow. This Article responds to this position. It reaches three conclusions. First, it argues the implicit promise of Baker v. Carr pointed toward a loose, flexible rationality standard for deciding redistricting controversies. Under this approach, states were given much room to enact redistricting plans in accordance to their states' particular needs. Second, the lower courts applied precisely this standard in litigation in the wake of Baker, and did so quite capably. This conclusion responds to those who exhort the imposition of a …

Constitutional Pluralism And Democratic Politics: Reflections On The Interpretive Approach Of Baker V. Carr, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

Baker v. Carr is one of the Supreme Court's most important opinions, not least because its advent signaled the constitutionalization of democracy. Unfortunately, as is typical of the Court's numerous forays into democratic politics, the decision is not accompanied by an apparent vision of the relationship among democratic practice, constitutional law, and democratic theory. In this Article, Professor Charles revisits Baker and provides several democratic principles that he argues justifies the Court's decision to engage the democratic process. He examines the decision from the perspective of one of its chief contemporary critics, Justice Frankfurter. He sketches an approach, described as …

Constitutional And Statutory Challenges To Local At-Large Elections, Timothy G. O'Rourke

University of Richmond Law Review

On April 22, 1980, in City of Mobile v. Bolden the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of at-large elections for the three-member city commission in Mobile, Alabama. In so doing, the Court reversed the judgment of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that Mobile's at-large plan impermissibly diluted the electoral influence of black voters in violation of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution. The Supreme Court's decision in Bolden [I] emerged from a sharply divided court. A six-person majority in the case consisted of four justices-Stewart, Burger, Powell, and Rehnquist-who joined in a plurality opinion; Justice …

Marbury V. Madison, Lord Coke, And Dr. Bonham: Relics Of The Past, Guidelines For The Present—Judicial Review Intransition?, George P. Smith, Ii

Seattle University Law Review

The purpose of this article is to explore the modern significance of Coke's influence as analyzed and interpreted through the famous Bonham's Case and thereby to provide an insight into the development of our own concepts of judicial review, as borrowed from the English, in its original historical legal perspective and as seen through the decision in Marbury v. Madison and applied modernly in the principle case of Baker v. Carr.

One Man-One Vote In The Selection Of Presidential Nominating Delegates By State Party Conventions

University of Richmond Law Review

If any conclusion can safely be drawn from the presidential nominating conventions of 1968, it is that the success of potential third party movements looms as a substantial threat to the traditional two party system in the United States. To a large degree, this fact may be attributed to the lack of balanced voter participation inherent in the nominating processes now employed by the two major parties. This lack of participation has engendered a sense of futility in the minds of the individual party members, causing them to limit their support for the slate of candidates their party ultimately chooses.

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, …

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.

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.

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.