“Baker v. Carr”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that decided that redistricting (attempts to change the way voting districts are delineated) issues present justiciable questions, thus enabling federal courts to intervene and to decide redistricting cases. The defendants unsuccessfully argued that redistricting of legislative districts is a "political question", and hence not a question that may be resolved by federal courts.

Background

Plaintiff Charles Baker was a Republican who lived in Shelby County, Tennessee, and had served as the mayor of Millington, Tennessee, near Memphis.^[1] The Tennessee State Constitution required that legislative districts for the Tennessee General Assembly be redrawn every ten years according to the federal census to provide for districts of substantially equal population (as was to be done for congressional districts). Baker's complaint was that Tennessee had not redistricted since 1901, in response to the 1900 census.

By the time of Baker's lawsuit, the population had shifted such that his district in Shelby County had about ten times as many residents as some of the rural districts. The votes of rural citizens were overrepresented compared to those of urban citizens. Baker's argument was that this discrepancy was causing him to fail to receive the "equal protection of the laws" required by the Fourteenth Amendment. Defendant Joe Carr was sued in his position as Secretary of State for Tennessee. Carr was not the person who set the district lines – the state legislature had done that – but was sued ex officio as the person who was ultimately responsible for the conduct of elections in the state and for the publication of district maps.

The state of Tennessee argued that the composition of legislative districts was essentially a political question, not a judicial one, as had been held by Colegrove v. Green^[2], a plurality opinion of the Court in which Justice Felix Frankfurter declared that "Courts ought not to enter this political thicket." Frankfurter believed that relief for legislative malapportionment had to be won through the political process.^[3]

Decision

The decision of Baker v. Carr was one of the most wrenching in the Court's history. The case had to be put over for reargument because in conference no clear majority emerged for either side of the case. Associate Justice Charles Evans Whittaker was so torn over the case that he eventually had to recuse himself for health reasons. The arduous decisional process in Baker is often blamed for Whittaker's subsequent health problems, which forced him to retire from the Court in 1962.^[4]

The opinion was finally handed down in March 1962, nearly a year after it was initially argued. The Court split 6 to 2 in ruling that Baker's case was justiciable, producing, in addition to the opinion of the Court by Justice William J. Brennan, three concurring opinions and two dissenting opinions. Brennan reformulated the political question doctrine, identifying six factors to help in determining which questions were "political" in nature. Cases that are political in nature are marked by:

Justice Tom C. Clark switched his vote at the last minute to a concurrence on the substance of Baker's claims, which would have enabled a majority which could have granted relief for Baker. Instead the Supreme Court remanded the case to the District Court.

The large majority in this case can in many ways be attributed to Justice Brennan, who convinced Potter Stewart that the case was a narrow ruling dealing only with the right to challenge the statute. Brennan also talked down Justices Black and Douglas from their usual absolutist positions to achieve a compromise.^[5]

Dissent by Justices Frankfurter and Harlan

Frankfurter, joined by Justice John Marshall Harlan II, dissented vigorously and at length, arguing that the Court had cast aside history and judicial restraint, and violated the separation of powers between legislatures and Courts.^[6] He wrote:

Aftermath

Having declared redistricting issues justiciable in Baker, the court laid out a new test for evaluating such claims. The Court formulated the famous "one person, one vote" standard under American jurisprudence for legislative redistricting, holding that each individual had to be weighted equally in legislative apportionment. This affected numerous state legislatures that had not redistricted congressional districts for decades, despite major population shifts. It also ultimately affected the composition of state legislative districts as well, which in Alabama and numerous other states had overrepresented rural districts and underrepresented urban districts with much greater populations.

This principle was formally enunciated in Reynolds v. Sims (1964). The Court decided that in states with bicameral legislatures, as had Alabama, the state in this suit, both houses had to be apportioned on this standard. This voided the provision of the Alabama Constitution which had provided for two state senators from each county and similar provisions elsewhere. (Similarly, the Tennessee Constitution had a provision that prevented counties from being split and portions of a county being attached to other counties or parts of counties in the creation of a legislative district. This was overridden under the principle of basing districts on population. Today counties are frequently split among districts in forming Tennessee State Senate districts.) "One person, one vote" was first applied as a standard for Congressional districts. State legislatures were supposed to redistrict according to changes in population but many had not for decades.

Background

Decision

Dissent by Justices Frankfurter and Harlan

Aftermath

See also

References

Further reading

External links