Talk:Baker v. Carr

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Justiciability is not a term understood by the English-speaking public in general. It appears that most other countries do not even use the term the way the US Supreme Court does. It may be helpful to make a short definition of what is meant by justiciability/justiciable within this article to assist readers with this term of art. Matthew K 06:07, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

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[edit] Changes by the Burger Court in the early 1970s?

I recall reading that the Burger Court watered down Baker vs. Carr by ruling that legislative districts could be within 20%. A legislative district could be 20% over average population, or 20% under, and that would be deemed acceptable. FriendlyRiverOtter 21:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, SECOND EDITION (later republished as THE OXFORD GUIDE . . . ), editor-in-chief Kermit L. Hall, editors James W. Ely, Jr., Joel B. Grossman, Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York, Auckland, Cape Town, Dar es Salaam, etc., 2005, "BAKER v. CARR," Jack W. Peltason, page 70:

"It did not take long for other states to go through the door opened by Baker v. Carr. In one year, thirty-six states had become involved in reapportionment lawsuits. During the next several years the Court rounded out the reapportionment revolution. Justices Harlan and Frankfurter proved to be inaccurate prophets about the difficulties that the courts would have in finding appropriate judicial standards. The judges quickly retreated from the 'rationality test'--that apportionment plans were to be evaluated in terms of whether or not they had any rational basis--to what many think to be a simplistic but nonetheless more manageable standard of mathematical strict equality--*one person, one vote. Within a short time the Court had concluded that no factors--not geographical districts, nor a desire to keep governmental units intact, nor a federal, compromise in which one chamber would represent population and the other governmental units such as counties--but strictly equal population districts would pass constitutional muster. The Court, in a series of cases, moved from a requirement of 'substantial equality among districts' to 'precise mathematical equality' to a distinction between congressional districts where strict equality is required, and state legislative districts where some tolerance is allowed to permit consideration of other appropriate factors." [The extraneous comma in "federal, compromise" is just as it is in this reference.]

So, a distinction is drawn between Congressional districts (that is, the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C.) and state legislative districts. And maybe that's where the Supreme Court currently stands. Any help with recent cases? FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 01:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The political difficulty of preaching a standard you yourself are not following

It's like preaching to a teenager that he or she ought not smoke when you yourself smoke. Or it's like we in the United States preaching to other countries that they ought not have nuclear weapons, when we have helped make them one of the standards of being considered a first-rate nation.

Okay, in both cases there might be reasons. With the teenager, you can tell them, Look, I'm hooked on cigarettes, you don't need to make the same mistake I have made. With nuclear weapons, we can tell other peoples, let's don't make a bad situation worse, let's don't lead to greater proliferation, and it's not all roses, it can escalate a situation either in actuality or in possibility.

So the Court specifically rejected the little federal model, that states cannot have one house by population and the other by county. Well, this is exactly what we do on the national level. Low population states like Wyoming and Vermont get two Senators, just like large-population states like California and Texas. People in Wyoming are over-represented, and more importantly, people in California are under-represented. What can we say? That this is kind of hardwired in, and we don't need to repeat the mistake where it is not hardwired in. FriendlyRiverOtter 21:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

The difference is that states are not organized as federations, as the U.S. itself is. States are sovereign entities within a (now rather tight) coalition. Counties, on the other hand, are not and have never been sovereign. Counties don't have individual interests to further at the State level, whereas States may have individual interests to attend to at the Federal level. Furthermore, the apparant discrepency you point out (to wit that because every State has two Senators, high population States are under-represented while low population States are over-represented) was undertaken as part of the Great Compromise. States each send two members to the Senate to represent the interests of the State as a State, but the population of each State is represented in the House. So States with more people have more Representatives than States with fewer people. Keep in mind that until the 1920s, Senators were selected by State legislatures rather than by popular election, and even now, State senators are elected at large, rather than by district. It's not hypocrisy for the Federal government to say that States can't work the same way as the Federal government does, because States don't need to work the same way the Federal government does. JSC ltd 16:29, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Please understand, I’m not saying that it’s hypocrisy, more something along the lines of awkward. Just like the adult talking to the teenager, ‘I don’t want to see you make the same mistake I’ve made,’ it’s not hypocrisy, but it is potentially awkward and might be poorly received.
How well was Baker decision received and implemented? At the time, it was very much involved with issues of civil rights and discrimination (which was basically majority citizens denying to themselves that African-Americans were treated as second-class citizens, or making excuses for such). The 1901 apportionment of the Tennessee state legislature may not have been originally intended for discriminatory purposes, but fifty and sixty years later, it may have been maintained for discriminatory purposes. One interesting question is why the Tennessee courts didn’t rule, ‘Hey, you guys have got to reapportion. The state Constitution says so.' Well, courts are generally pro-status quo. They generally side with existing power, often to such the extent that they do not even see the interests of people who are excluded. And the formalistic language and reasoning, and the emphasis on procedure further leads in that direction. Yes, we did get the spectacular decision of Brown vs. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, 1954. But that was almost a happy accident, due in considerable part to the fact that Earl Warren, as a former governor, was a very practical man. He viewed the situation, segregation can only hold if African-Americans are inferior, and that doesn't hold. He did not get hung up on all kinds of court precedents. Justice Bill Douglas had worked in the SEC during the Roosevelt administration. Justice Hugo Black was a former United States senator. And even the Brown decision, was watered down by slow implementation. (It's also the case that President Eisenhower could have spent some of his political capital.) And a half century before, the Court had ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, that discrimination was just fine, as long as we maintained the official fiction of separate but equal (and we sure weren't going to look too closely at the details!). And during the Great Depression, the Court struck down some New Deal legislation citing the sacred right of contract, and not looking at real world facts, well, in the cases involved, between individual and corporation, how much negotiation was there, really? [Actually, I'm more thinking of cases on child labor, minimum wage, etc. from the 1920s. Admittedly, cases from the 1930s, for example, those involving the NRA (National Industrial Recovery Act is the name of the legislation; National Recovery Administration is the name of the agency), were more complex. But still, we had the situation in which elected officials were grappling with economic issues, very serious and immediate economic issues, doing their best to address the situation in which they had been elected, only to have the Supreme Court come in and act as some kind of uber-legislature (appointed by elected officials, much longer lag time).]
What I’m saying is that the Supreme Court is a very human institution, and we should not over depend on it, just like we should not over depend on the president. If we’re going to have free speech in our country, it is going to be because we as citizens believe in free speech, and not primarily because the courts make us. And if we’re going to have acceptance and respect of all citizens regardless of race, color, ethnic background, religious belief (or nonbelief), creed, political affiliation, sexual orientation, etc, etc, etc—and maybe we should think through some of the hard cases like someone who has previously committed a crime, well, I think they ought to be able to vote after they’ve paid their debt to society, but other people may think differently, and that’s okay. My point is if we’re going to have a good society in this and other regards, most of us are going to have to make the effort to think through these issues and work through these issues and converse over these issues (and it’s not just left-brain analytical thinking, it’s also feeling through them, there is an emotional texture and an emotional thread as much as anything else). And the same goes for creating more jobs, changing our foreign policy so that it truly promotes democracy and human rights, economic growth and environmental protection, creating jobs that meaningful, etc, etc, etc, in so many different areas. We citizens need to engage with each other, and at times argue with each other, but just try and argue fairly. And perhaps that's democracy, that last part.
JSC, I will graciously accept you said in parenthesis, that ours is an evolving system (and maybe even more readily accept it than you intended!). And your point that Senators used to be indirectly elected is well taken. So, we had improvement in that area, which required a Constitutional Amendment, maybe fifty years down the road (even that’s probably optimistic!), or maybe seventy-five years down the road, Senators can be elected more in accordance with population. And if you think about it, these days, we’re really more American citizens than citizens of a particular state, although for each of us our state is important, too. What would really make a difference would be if 10% of us were involved in civic affairs, either at the local level, state level, national level, or international level (when I was in Boy Scouts, we had the merit badges Citizenship in the Community, Citizenship in the Nation, and Citizenship in the World, and I saw no essential contradiction between them). If 10% of us were involved at any one time, other times we might be involved with work, school, family, etc, that would make a big, big difference, probably more so than the details of how we elect people.
So, the Supreme Court is what, nine formalistic scholars making decisions for the rest of us? And we’re too stupid, or too tempted by the short-term, that we have to be kept in line? And yeah, again, they make some good decisions, and some not-very-good decisions. Again, I would say that some of the best Justices have been very practical individuals. And I would say morality is not necessarily about making difficult decisions that punish ourselves, rather it’s more about making full-bodied decisions, authentic decisions, decisions that ideally are good for both the present and the future.
As far as a not-very-good decision in the recent past, how about Gonzales vs. Castlerock in the summer of 2005. As a practical individual, I would ask, Did the police do a little bit of a lousy job, or did they really do a lousy job? And as the facts of the case show, they did a really lousy job, and thus Jessica Gonzales should have had the right to sue. But the Supreme Court did not look at it that way. FriendlyRiverOtter 21:06, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Charles Baker (and co-plaintiffs) filed directly in federal court

THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, SECOND EDITION (later republished as THE OXFORD GUIDE . . . ), editor-in-chief Kermit L. Hall, editors James W. Ely, Jr., Joel B. Grossman, Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York, Auckland, Cape Town, Dar es Salaam, etc., 2005, "BAKER v. CARR," Jack W. Peltason, page 68:

"Baker v. Carr was initiated in Tennessee in 1959 when a number of plaintiffs from Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville brought an action before the federal district court in Nashville against Joseph Cordell Carr, the Tennessee secretary of state, and George McCanless, the attorney general. The Tennessee Constitution required the General Assembly to apportion the members of the General Assembly among the state’s ninety-five counties after each decennial census. But the last time it had done so was in 1901, and even then it had failed to give city voters a fair share of seats. The Tennessee courts had been equally unsympathetic and declined to intervene.

"The Baker plaintiffs, pointing out that the federal courts were the only forum that offered any promise of relief, asked for a *declaratory judgment that the Tennessee apportionment act was unconstitutional and an *injunction to prevent state officers from conducting any more elections under it. The three-judge district court, following established precedent, dismissed the complaint on the grounds that the relief requested and the legal wrongs alleged were not within the scope of judicial power conferred on federal courts by *Article III of the Constitution and the federal statutes implementing that article. Furthermore, said the district court, even if the Courts had jurisdiction, the questions presented to it were nonjusticiable, that is, they were '*political questions' unsuited for judicial inquiry and adjustment."

I would like to see a longer, fuller, richer article. And as long as we keep our article divided into sections, it will remain eminently readable. For example, we could have a two-paragraph section entitled "Justice Charles Evans Whittaker and his breakdown," in which we discuss his struggles, his reclusal, and his health problems. And in general I want to see us put the Baker case in a far richer social and political context. And for the years 1959, 1960, 1961, and 1962, that context absolutely has to include the civil rights movement, and the opposition to such. If state legislators did anything to make voting more rational, more logical, more streamlined, they could be accused of helping African-Americans. I think the clunky, cluttered, illogical system was accepted in large part because it was felt that it kept black citizens in their place (it would absolutely astonish me if something like this was not going on).

And the part about Justice Frankfurter. The quote "Courts ought not to enter this political thicket" is a great quote. But the next part where he's saying that the remedy has to be achieved through the political process makes him look like a cardboard figure, like we're just using him to illustrate an intellectual position that makes for a well-ordered article. For the obvious response is that if some citizens are over-represented, they're going to like the current system just fine and have no incentive to change it. Justice Frankfurter is a smart guy. He has to be aware of this. And he probably has an answer, too. It just might not be a "convenient" answer for the article. Well, I think we should include the answer as it is, in all its real world messiness. FriendlyRiverOtter 19:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

The textbook answer might be that Frankfurter is the "traditionalist," Douglas the "radical," Chief Justice Earl Warren the "coalition builder," Brennan as perhaps the "liberal intellectual," and so on and so forth. And that's fine to a certain extent. But if we can later go past these one-dimensional labels, that will make for such a richer article. People do not always act according to type.

And as an example of what was going on in the Civil Rights Movement, the Nashville sit-ins took place from February to May, 1960. FriendlyRiverOtter 03:44, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Primary and Secondary Education Act of 1966

Our article attributes Baker vs. Carr as paving the way for the above. Maybe. Maybe as one cause. It hardly seems like there was enough time to really get rolling. And as far as the Voting Rights Act, that was Selma most of all. Of all of Martin Luther King Jr's achievements, Selma was arguably the greatest, as well as the achievement of many, many other citizens and concerned individuals. FriendlyRiverOtter 21:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some social, political, and cultural context

Civil Rights Act of 1957


Civil Rights Act of 1960



Civil Rights Act of 1964

Voting Rights Act of 1965


Civil Rights Act of 1968


Voting Rights Act of 1970

The 24th Amendment--outlawing poll taxes in federal elections--was proposed by two-thirds of the House and Senate on August 27, 1962, and ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures on January 23, 1964. [1]

24th Amendment
1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

[ratified Jan. 23, 1964]

"This violence was accompanied by the federal government’s abandonment of Reconstruction. In 1877, Southern Democrats struck a deal with GOP presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes to help Hayes win the contested election of 1876. In exchange, the military force that had enforced the radical political gains in the South was withdrawn. For supporting Hayes, the Southern Democrats were able to ensure white political supremacy for decades to come. The notorious laws of the Jim Crow era followed." [2]