Baker v. Carr

Summary

Tennessee's constitution required the General Assembly to reapportion its seats every ten years according to the number of qualified voters in each county. The legislature did so each decade from 1871 to 1901, then stopped. Over the next sixty years the population grew from about two million to three and a half million and moved toward the cities, but seats were still allotted under the 1901 statute. By 1961, according to the complaint, about thirty-seven percent of the voters elected twenty of the thirty-three senators, and some House districts held eighteen times as many voters as others. Charles W. Baker and other voters from Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga sued Joe C. Carr, the Tennessee secretary of state, and other election officials in federal court, claiming that the debasement of their votes denied them the equal protection of the laws. A three-judge district court dismissed the suit under Colegrove v. Green (1946) and its successors. The appellants argued that the legislature would never reapportion itself, that Tennessee offered no initiative or other route to amend its constitution without legislative action, and that only a federal court could break the deadlock. Tennessee answered that apportionment is a political question committed to the people and their legislatures, that courts have no manageable standard for deciding how much weight each county deserves, and that a dozen decisions had refused such suits. By a vote of 6 to 2 the Court reversed. Justice William J. Brennan Jr. held that federal courts had jurisdiction, that the voters had standing to complain of the dilution of their votes, and that their equal protection claim was justiciable. He reviewed the political question cases and found that they arose from the separation of powers among the branches of the national government, not from the relation between federal courts and the states. He listed six features that mark a political question and found none present here, and he distinguished claims under the Guaranty Clause, which the Court had treated as nonjusticiable since Luther v. Borden (1849). The Court did not decide what standard the Constitution requires or what remedy should follow, and it sent the case back for trial. Justice Felix Frankfurter, joined by Justice John Marshall Harlan II, dissented at length. He called the decision a massive break with the Court's history, saw no guidance for remedies, and insisted that relief from unequal districts must come from an aroused electorate rather than the courts, since the Court's authority rests on public confidence in its restraint. The library text gives extended excerpts of Brennan's opinion and the beginning of Frankfurter's dissent; the concurrences, Harlan's separate dissent and the footnotes are not reproduced. Gray v. Sanders (1963) first used the phrase one person, one vote, and Reynolds v. Sims (1964) required both houses of state legislatures to be apportioned by population. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) the Court held that claims of partisan gerrymandering present political questions beyond the federal courts.

Plot or Argument

• Part I: sixty years without reapportionment

  Brennan describes Tennessee's constitutional scheme, the decennial reapportionments from 1871 to 1901, the population growth and movement since then, the complaint's figures on unequal districts, and the relief the voters sought: a declaration that the 1901 Act is unconstitutional and an injunction against further elections under it.

• Part II: jurisdiction of the subject matter

  The Court separates two grounds the district court had blurred, want of jurisdiction and nonjusticiability, and holds that a claim arising under the Fourteenth Amendment falls within the federal courts' jurisdiction, whatever the merits.

• Part III: standing to sue

  Voters who allege that the value of their own votes is diminished have a personal stake in the outcome sufficient to sue; they need not first prove that they will win relief.

• Part IV: what makes a question political

  Brennan surveys foreign relations, the dates of wars, the validity of enactments, the status of Indian tribes and the Guaranty Clause cases, concludes that the doctrine is primarily a function of the separation of powers, and lists six formulations that mark a political question. None is inextricable from an equal protection challenge to a state apportionment.

• Guaranty Clause cases and Gomillion

  The Court explains why Luther v. Borden and its successors do not control, and cites Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), where a redrawing of Tuskegee's city boundaries was reviewed under the Fifteenth Amendment, to show that districting is not immune from constitutional review. The library excerpt of the majority opinion ends here.

• Frankfurter's dissent: the limits of judicial power

  Frankfurter warns that the Court reverses a uniform course of decision, that it gives lower courts no standard for remedies, and that there is no judicial remedy for every political mischief. Appeal, he writes, must be to an informed, civically militant electorate.

• Frankfurter's dissent, Part I: the Colegrove line

  Frankfurter restates the complaint and the history of Colegrove v. Green and the per curiam decisions that followed, arguing that each refused federal intervention in the allocation of electoral weight among a state's districts. The excerpt closes in the middle of this survey.

Characters

• Charles W. Baker, lead appellant

  Shelby County voter whose name heads the list of plaintiffs challenging the 1901 apportionment.

• Joe C. Carr, appellee

  Tennessee secretary of state, sued with other officials responsible for conducting elections.

• Justice William J. Brennan Jr., author of the opinion of the Court

  Wrote the majority opinion holding the apportionment claim justiciable and setting out the political question formulations.

• Justice Felix Frankfurter, dissenter

  Author of the plurality opinion in Colegrove v. Green, who defended its approach in a long dissent.

• Justice John Marshall Harlan II, dissenter

  Joined Frankfurter and wrote a separate dissent of his own.

• Charles S. Rhyne, counsel for the appellants

  Washington lawyer and former president of the American Bar Association who argued for the Tennessee voters.

• Archibald Cox, Solicitor General, amicus curiae

  Argued for the United States in support of the voters.

Lessons

• Political rights and political questions

  Brennan drew a sharp line: a lawsuit about voting is a political case, but it is not therefore a political question. The doctrine, he said, protects the separation of the federal branches, not the states from federal courts.

  • What is the difference between a political case and a political question in Brennan's opinion?
  • Name two of the six marks of a political question that Brennan lists.
  • Why might the Framers have left some questions to Congress and the President alone?

• A deadlocked legislature

  Tennessee's legislators were chosen under the very districts the voters challenged, and amending the state constitution required the legislature's own action. The voters argued that only courts could break the circle, while Tennessee replied that the people retained political remedies.

  • Why would members elected under the 1901 districts be unlikely to change them?
  • What political remedies does Frankfurter think the voters still had?
  • Should courts step in when ordinary politics cannot correct itself?

• Neither purse nor sword

  Frankfurter borrowed Hamilton's description of the judiciary in Federalist No. 78 to argue that the Court depends on public confidence and should not enter fights it cannot finish. Brennan answered that deciding the limits of each branch's authority is itself the Court's duty as ultimate interpreter of the Constitution.

  • Where does the phrase neither the purse nor the sword come from?
  • How does Frankfurter think the Court could lose its authority?
  • Is a court weakened more by acting boldly or by declining to act?

• Deciding the door, not the room

  Baker decided only that federal courts could hear the case. It announced no standard of equality and no remedy, leaving those to later cases; Frankfurter thought that was its weakness, while the majority thought it was proper judicial modesty.

  • What three things did the Court hold, and what did it leave undecided?
  • Why did Frankfurter fear that lower courts would have no guidance?

Context

By 1960 many state legislatures had not redrawn their districts for decades, while Americans moved in large numbers from farms to cities and suburbs. Rural counties kept the seats they had held at the turn of the century. In Colegrove v. Green (1946) Justice Frankfurter had warned that courts ought not to enter this political thicket, and the Court had turned away similar suits since.

Composition

The Tennessee voters' appeal was first argued on 19 and 20 April 1961 and reargued on 9 October 1961, with Charles S. Rhyne for the appellants, Solicitor General Archibald Cox supporting them for the United States, and Tennessee's lawyers defending the dismissal. The Court announced its decision on 26 March 1962. The library text, from Wikisource, gives excerpts of Brennan's opinion through his discussion of Gomillion v. Lightfoot and the opening of Frankfurter's dissent.

Reception

Chief Justice Warren later called Baker the most important case of his tenure. Within two years the Court decided Gray v. Sanders (1963), Wesberry v. Sanders (1964) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964), and legislatures across the country were redrawn on the basis of population. Senator Everett Dirksen led an effort in the mid-1960s to call a convention or pass an amendment allowing one house of a state legislature to be apportioned on other factors, but it did not succeed. Brennan's six formulations remain the standard test for political questions, applied, for example, in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019).

Comparisons

• the-federalist-papers

  Frankfurter's neither the purse nor the sword echoes Hamilton's Federalist No. 78, and Madison's Federalist No. 54 and No. 57 discuss representation in proportion to population.

• the-founding-documents

  The Guaranty Clause of Article IV and the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause are the two provisions Brennan weighs; the Constitution's own census and House apportionment rules supply a contrasting federal model.

• marbury-v-madison

  Brennan's claim that the Court is the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution, deciding which questions belong to other branches, builds on Marshall's argument that the judiciary must say what the law is.

• democracy-in-america

  Tocqueville describes American townships and state legislatures as the school of self-government, the local bodies whose composition was at stake in Baker.

• the-anti-federalist-papers

  Anti-Federalist writers worried that large districts would give the people too few representatives; the Tennessee voters complained of districts grown wildly unequal over sixty years.

• brown-v-board-of-education

  Both Warren Court decisions brought the Equal Protection Clause to bear on state institutions, one on schools in 1954 and the other on legislative districts in 1962.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The population figures for 1901 and 1960 that Brennan sets side by side.
• The distinction between lack of jurisdiction and nonjusticiability in Part II.
• Brennan's list of six formulations that identify a political question.
• Why the Guaranty Clause cases, beginning with Luther v. Borden, are set aside.
• Frankfurter's appeal to an informed, civically militant electorate.

Key terms and names

Apportionment

The division of legislative seats among districts or counties, usually by population or number of voters.

Justiciable

Suitable for decision by a court; a nonjusticiable question is one courts decline to resolve.

Political question doctrine

The principle that some constitutional issues are committed to the elected branches rather than to the courts.

Standing

A party's personal stake in a dispute that entitles him to bring it to court.

Guaranty Clause

Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, by which the United States guarantees each state a republican form of government.

One person, one vote

The principle, announced in cases following Baker, that legislative districts must contain roughly equal populations.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How had Tennessee's population changed between 1901 and 1960, and why did the districts not change with it?
2. Comprehension What three things did the Court hold, and what did it decline to decide?
3. Comprehension Which earlier case did the district court rely on in dismissing the suit?
4. Interpretation Why does Brennan think the political question doctrine concerns the federal branches rather than the states?
5. Interpretation What does Frankfurter fear will happen when lower courts try to fashion remedies without a clear standard?
6. Interpretation How do the appellants answer Tennessee's claim that the people have political remedies?
7. Big Question When elected officials have no incentive to change unfair rules, who should be trusted to change them?

Faith Connections

• Leviticus 19:35-36 (Scripture)

  Israel is commanded to use just weights and a just measure; the Tennessee voters complained that their votes were weighed on unequal scales.

• Deuteronomy 1:13-17 (Scripture)

  Moses asks each tribe to choose wise men to represent and judge it, and charges the judges to hear small and great alike.

• Aristotle, Politics, Book III (Great Conversation)

  Aristotle asks who should hold the deliberative power in a city and how the many and the few should share in it, the question beneath every apportionment dispute.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Because the political question doctrine exists to respect the separation of powers among the federal branches, and because none of its six marks is present when citizens claim that a state's districting denies them equal protection, federal courts may hear such a claim; whether relief is due is a matter for trial.

Rhetorical device: distinction. Brennan separates two ideas that seemed joined, political questions and political cases (quote 3), so that a voting dispute is no longer barred merely because it is about politics.

Debate: Resolved: that federal courts should decide disputes over how state legislative districts are drawn.

Memory Work

The doctrine of which we treat is one of "political questions," not one of "political cases."

The Court's authority — possessed of neither the purse nor the sword — ultimately rests on sustained public confidence in its moral sanction.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how Brennan and Frankfurter each understand the role of the courts in a democracy, and which features of the Tennessee case each thinks most important.

Comparison with The Federalist Papers: Compare Hamilton's description of the judiciary in Federalist No. 78 with the way Frankfurter uses it in his Baker dissent and the way Brennan's opinion answers it.

Medical Lens

The opinions deal with legislative districts, standing and the political question doctrine and contain no medical subject matter.

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Divide the class into unequal 'counties' and give each one representative; pass a measure, then discuss whether the result was fair and who could change the rules.

• Classroom

  Stage a reargument of Baker in which one side must answer each of Brennan's six political question formulations and the other must defend Frankfurter's warnings.

• Essay

  Write a brief for Tennessee arguing that apportionment belongs to the people and their legislature, drawing on Colegrove v. Green and Federalist No. 78.

• Dialogue

  Imagine a 1962 conversation between a Memphis voter and a rural state legislator who has served since the 1930s, each explaining what the decision means to him.

Further Reading

• On Democracy's Doorstep: The Inside Story of How the Supreme Court Brought "One Person, One Vote" to the United States, J. Douglas Smith

  Narrative history of the reapportionment cases from Baker to Reynolds v. Sims.

• The End of Inequality: One Person, One Vote and the Transformation of American Politics, Stephen Ansolabehere and James M. Snyder Jr.

  Political scientists' study of how redistricting after Baker changed state legislatures.

• The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics, Alexander M. Bickel

  Influential 1962 book on judicial review and the political question doctrine, written by a former Frankfurter clerk.