Baker v. Carr

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Although Baker v. Carr did not establish the principle of “one person, one vote,” (which would come the following year with William O. Douglas's opinion in Gray v. Sanders), Brennan's opinion for the Court certainly set the stage for what came to be known as the “reapportionment revolution.” Prior to Baker, state-mandated legislative districts had continued to favor rural voters, even after populations had shifted to urban areas. In Baker, for example, residents of Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville, Tennessee, sued Joe C. Carr, the Tennessee secretary of state, to force him to redraw the state's existing legislative districts. The boundaries of these districts had remained unchanged since 1901. As a result, the votes of those inhabiting rural districts carried more weight, individually and collectively, than did those of their more numerous urban counterparts.

The plaintiffs, believing that only a federal forum could bring redress, brought their suit in federal district court, asking that the Tennessee apportionment act, which required reapportionment of the state's ninety-five counties only every ten years (a directive that had plainly been disregarded) be declared unconstitutional and that state officials be enjoined from conducting further elections under the existing act. The district court, citing the principle requiring that so-called legal questions were for legislatures, rather than courts to decide, dismissed the case. The plaintiffs then appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming, as they had in the lower court, that their right to equal protection under the laws, granted by the Fourteenth Amendment, had been violated,

The ostensible issue before the high bench was whether federal courts could mandate equality among legislative districts. At its core, however, Baker concerned the scope and power of the Supreme Court itself. Seventeen years earlier, in Colegrove v. Green (1946), Justice Felix Frankfurter had written a plurality opinion for a seven-member Court (one justice was absent, and a recent vacancy had not been filled) declaring that the high court had no authority to entertain cases concerning apportionment of state legislatures. Now, in the last opinion he would write before retiring from the Court, Frankfurter—always the advocate for judicial restraint—dissented from the majority, once again warning against the Court's entry into a “political thicket.” Colegrove had been decided by a vote of three to three to one, with Justice Wiley B. Rutledge concurring in the result but not with Frankfurter's reasoning. Because of the unusual circumstances surrounding its decision, the status of Colegrove as precedent had always been shaky. Brennan's opinion for the Court in Baker destroyed that status entirely.

The appellants in Baker had appealed to the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, meaning that Court review was discretionary and requiring the justices to vote first on the issue of hearing the case. When this vote was taken, a bare majority of the justices (five) supported Frankfurter's contention that Baker was a political case outside Court jurisdiction. Only four justices are required to grant certiorari, however, and the Court agreed to hear the case. After two days of oral argument, on April 19 and 20, 1961, the Court was still split four to four on the merits of the appeal, with Justice Potter Stewart still undecided. Chief Justice Earl Warren, cognizant of Baker's significance and potential for overturning Colegrove, held the case over for reargument in the next Court term. When Baker was reargued on October 9, 1961, neither side introduced anything new, and afterward Frankfurter attacked the plaintiffs' case with a sixty-page memorandum written to his colleagues. Only Brennan responded in kind, and his lengthy memo, addressing the injustice of malapportionment but asking only that Tennessee be obliged to defend its apportionment system (and intending to convince the still recalcitrant Stewart), carried the day. For his part, Warren, too, was convinced by Brennan's argument, and he assigned Brennan to write an opinion for what would eventually be a six-member majority (two justices dissented, and one did not participate) to overturn Colegrove and grant the Tennessee plaintiffs their day in court.

Brennan's opinion, though ultimately supporting the appellants' contention that Tennessee had acted unconstitutionally, comes at the matter tangentially. After rehearsing the facts of the case, Brennan addresses more technical matters. The court below had dismissed the case on grounds that federal courts lacked jurisdiction and that Baker presented a question that could not be resolved by judicial means. Brennan carefully distinguishes between these two arguments: Whereas a case that is nonjusticiable can still be considered by a court up to the point of decision, the court is barred from entertaining a case over which it lacks jurisdiction. In Baker the complaint clearly sets forth a case that arises under the Constitution; therefore, the district court unquestionably has jurisdiction. What is more, the appellants have sufficient interest in the value of their votes to be granted standing to sue. Justiciability presents a knottier problem for Brennan, who nonetheless succeeds in distinguishing this case, which concerns a question of federalism, from one raising a political question about the relationship among the three branches of government. The appellants, Brennan concludes, have a cause of action, and he sends their case back to the lower court “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

Baker was decided on very narrow grounds, but it was nonetheless hard fought. Justice Charles Whittaker found the pressure put on him by some of his colleagues during the Court's consideration of the case too much to bear. He was hospitalized for exhaustion before Baker was decided, and he took no part in its decision. A week after Baker was handed down on March 26, 1962, Whittaker resigned from the Court. Frankfurter, embittered by his defeat, suffered a debilitating stroke a few weeks later. On August 28, 1962, he, too, resigned from the Court. For urban residents of Tennessee—and other states—Baker had a happier aftermath. Within a year of its decision, thirty-six other states were involved in reapportionment suits. A string of Supreme Court cases that followed effectively declared the apportionment of every state legislature unconstitutional. Soon population equality was required of virtually all electoral districts, and even state senate seats were apportioned on the basis of population.

Earl Warren often referred to Baker v. Carr as the most interesting and important case decided during his tenure. Because the case succeeded in transferring political power from the largely landowning, largely conservative rural population to the more heterogeneous populace of the cities, Baker can be said to have opened the door to the major social restructuring America underwent during the Warren era as well as, perhaps, the conservative backlash that ensued decades later.